Hello everyone

in order to fully enjoy my axiom home theatre, i will need to soundproof the living room of my new appartment.

does anyone have a good and reasonably easy and well priced way to do this?

thanks!

Hello Ravi,

I might as well be plain-spoken about this to save you a lot of grief and effort.

Short of building a room within a room, at enormous expense, there's no way to retro-fit a room and make it "soundproof". The methods used by pros require gutting and rebuilding, or starting with a new building (like a house). Staggered studs, double layers of wallboard, dissimilar materials, double floors, and heavy, sealed doors with weatherstripping--all of these go into making a room truly soundproof.

That said, there are a couple of things you can do to lessen the annoyance to tenants living below your apartment. You can place your subwoofer in a shallow tray with alternating layers of gravel, sand, and scrap carpet. Any "sandwich" of dissimilar materials will work--bubble wrap, carpet, and plastic foam. This will prevent direct mechanical transmission of low bass through the floor to your neighbor's suite. (Keep the cat away from the tray of gravel or it might do you know what!) The same approach will work with large floorstanding speakers. But it will do nothing to suppress acoustical transmission of subwoofer frequencies, so go easy on the level control. Obviously, a heavy carpet with underpad on the floor will help.

Anyplace air can get through, sound will follow, so weatherstripping on the apartment door will prevent some sound leakage into the hallway.

Regards,

Alan
sounds like a good plan, but my problem is the I have no one below me! I am worried about the people beside me and on top of me! I'm on the bottom floor of a duplex.

Ravi,

Excellent choice re nobody below you! The good news is that a lot of bass tends to migrate downward rather than up to the tenants above you. Depending on the age of the building, it may have thick walls and you'll be okay. Most 80-year-old houses and apartment buildings are more solid and soundproof than modern buildings.

The bad news is that if you can hear muffled voices through the walls from the people beside you (or from above), you won't be able to blast your system. If all you hear are occasional footfalls, then you should be okay.

Regards,