[Aaron Gould]

I am building my home theater in the basement of my newly built home. Three sides are concrete, and the fourth side separates the room from the stairwell and the furnace area.

The walls are not even framed yet, so anything is possible.

I am considering resilient channel for the ceiling.

Would having resilient channel ONLY on the ceiling, and not on the walls defeat its purpose? Or will the sound simply travel up the wall frames, and around the ceiling to the first floor?

I can't really spend much money, and I do not need to prevent all sound from escaping. The floor immediately above (kitchen and dining room) is not a living space, so sound level is not a big issue there. Our "great room" and bedrooms on the second floor are the ones I would like silence in (or as much as possible).

Perhaps the "empty" first floor is enough of a buffer?

Or maybe adding insulation between the above floor joists would help? Maybe JUST having insulation would suffice?

[Erik Farstad]

Aaron, I used RC on the ceiling only, as well as using 3' wide rolls of aspalt/roofing material and it does a very good job of sound control. Much like you I wasn't too worried about sound, but I did want to provide some control. As long as you seal any gaps where air can escape into the wall cavities, you should be good to go. Where air travels so does sound. You can see pics by follow my link below...have fun and good luck!

E

[Aaron Gould]

Thanks for the input!

I think I will stick with the plan of putting resilient channel on the ceiling only. I will grab some tubes of "Accoustic Sealant" too to fill in the gaps when the drywall is secured.

I'm not sure I'll go so far as to put roofing material though. Do you think sound dampening insulation (Fiberglass Pink QuietZone, or Roxul Safe N'Sound) would do a similar job if I were to pack it between the floor joists before attaching the resilient channel/drywall?

Also -- I visited both a Building Box and Home Depot today to check out resilient channel. They both had 12' pieces at exactly the same price. However, the Building Box's version was more rigid than Home Depot's (it was labeled RC-2). Should I go with the more rigid channel? To be honest the Home Depot stuff felt like I could bend it a few times and it would snap in half. I'm not sure what the RC level was on Home Depot's channel...

[Tom Moran]

I used RC-1 which is probably what you saw at Home Depot and I would guess that the RC-2 is just a newer, improved version. I can't imaging the improvement has much to do with sound control as stiffer would not mean better.

What I can guess is that the stiffer stuff would be easier to install. The only down side of the RC-1 was that it often got pushed back by the sheetrock screw rather than allowing the screw to go into the material and this made it kind of a pain to install. You have to screw into it near a joist so there is something to support it and then go back and get screws in the other places where you can get them to take.

I just put it on the ceiling and some insulation in the joists and used 5/8" sheetrock for both the ceiling and the walls. Moderate sound insulation without much hassle.

Tom

[Chris Tsutsui]

I dunno, Maybe you should consider wall resilient channels...

The bass might go through or under the drywall, and then bypass the resilient ceiling up through the framing. Even the smallest crack can end up transmitting the sound so you have to make sure it's air tight.

If you have concrete walls with a resilient ceiling, you'll probably have some really strong horizontal standing waves. If you frame the concrete walls and use some acoustic materials there as well, you'll probably end up helping the bass sound quailty.

However, if you don't care that much about having a linear bass response then I wouldn't bother with the acoustic treatments.

[Aaron Gould]

Well there's going to be some cracks anyway (like under the doors), but I'm going to try to seal it as much as possible. I'm not concerned about containing 100% of the sound.

What I'm really wanting to know is whether resilient channel on the ceiling, in tandem with sound-dampening insulation everywhere else, is better than just plain drywall attached to the framing, and no insulation. (Acoustic Sealant will be used to seal all gaps too, including spaces left all around the drywall).

The channel plus insulation will cost somwhere around $200-250 CDN. I'm really just wondering if what the proposed solution will be worth the roughly $250.

[Erik Farstad]

Aaron, Insulation between joists will also help dampen the sounds, but it is really the use of RC on the ceiling that will do the job...IMHO. Insulation does not hurt but only help...so if it's in your budget it doesn't hurt...especially that quiet zone stuff!

E

[Aaron Gould]

I will definitely be insulating the ceiling, and perhaps the wall separating the stairwell as they have nothing at all except wood framing. I may also add resilient channel to that stairwell wall too, but I'll sleep on that idea.

The three concrete wall sides already have a thin layer of insulation starting at approximately three feet up. They are outside walls so that insulation would be for temperature protection. I'll probably add some QuietZone around the top of those three walls in an effort to reduce sound from crawling up the sides...

[NathanH]

Question here:

I'm in a similar situation. I've got steel-studed walls that are attached to the floor joists above. I have a room seperated by a soffit down the middle of the ceiling, which will be used to divide the space into two areas.

One half of the ceiling where the HT will reside, I will finish in drywall and perhaps use RC.

The other half where a pool table will reside will have ceiling tile for practical purposes.

All ceilings will be insulated.

Is it worth doing the drywall half in RC?

[Tom Moran]

Yes, the RC will make a difference in keeping bass vibrations from travelling up into the room above.

Tom

[Bill Lucas]

Not really. Bass (sound) doesn't know boundaries. Give it an adjacent area to escape through and it will travel through that area. Regards.