Ben Da Menda said the following on 07/11/2005 15:21:
Anyone out there had any experiences with insulating for sound? I am looking
to insulate a bedroom to use as a music practice room any info much
appreciated.
Ben.



A good introductory book on the subject is "The Master Handbook of
Acoustics" by F Alton Everest.

From Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/9wc8c

You should do some serious Googling as well.

A little advice before you start. There are two fundamental
considerations for a music room (whether it be for practice or
recording). The first is acoustic isolation (i.e. soundproofing) and
the second is acoustic treatment (i.e. the reverberation characteristics
of the space).

You need to understand that these are separate engineering problems and,
whilst your final solution will to some extent address both together,
they are in fact quite distinct.

To soundproof a space, you generally need lots of mass, "decoupling" to
isolate the room from the rest of the building, and you need to make the
room airtight (and then worry about ventilation).

Acoustic treatment will alter how the room "sounds" (i.e. "live" or
"dead") and will, in itself, have little effect on the soundproofing.

You also need to think about standing waves, which cause resonances at
specific wavelengths (bad) and which are dealt with by carefully
fiddling about with the relative dimensions of the room, creating
non-parallel surfaces and employing devices such as Helmholtz resonators.

Note that stuff you may have seen in rehearsal rooms/studios like
acoustic tiles, eggcrates, hessian sacking, fabric-covered perforated
hardboard with rockwool, heavy drapes, matresses, etc is mainly acoustic
treament - not soundproofing.

HTH and have fun.