will the sound stay contained in my HT? (1 Viewer)

[Earl J]

My living room has an 18' high ceiling and is about 30x15. Personally I think that most of that height is a waste and I'm entertaining the idea of a dedicated home theater constructed above the living room. This would give the living room about a 9' ceiling and the home theater about an 8' ceiling. Make sense so far?

If I went ahead with this, the dedicated home theater would share walls with the master bedroom and another bedroom. Will it be possible to build this home theater so that 99.9% of the sound is contained into that room? Would the bass still be an issue?

By the way, I don't plan on making this a DIY project and would likely use a professional contractor. Thanks for your help.

Earl

 

[Scott Jelsma]

Earl, Building a sound-proof (or nearly sound proof) room is not an easy task. A typical approach that seems to be used frequently is the "room within a room" concept. The essence of this is that the walls, ceiling, and floor of the sound-proofed room should not make direct contact with the rest of the house. Controlling bass is especially difficult. Check out this site http://www.usg.com/Design_Solutions/...eofcontent.asp for more information on sound control.
If you hire a contractor to build your room, I would recommend finding someone who has specific experience with sound-control building techniques.

 

[MikePon]

There is also a system called "Iso-Wall" from ASC.
www.asc-soundproof.com The sound engineers at this company are of the opinion that the room within a room concept will help but some of the bass will still transmit. A combination of the room within a room and the Iso-Wall will eliminate most of the bass. I'm not sure you will get 99.9% of the bass. 24" solid concrete walls will stop 100% of the bass as long as you have no doors to get into it and a way of supporting the weight.

 

[Earl J]

Scott and Mike, thanks for your advice and those links. It's good to know that it is atleast possible to reduce most of the sound. Scott, I definitely agree that I should hire someone with sound-proofing experience to do the job. The reason why it's such a concern is because this room would pretty much be in the center of the house. I have my new borns room about 10' from where this room would be. I don't want to teach him to be a bass junky for atleast another year or two

 

[Scott Jelsma]

Earl,

Keep us posted on the progress of your project. I would really like to know what kind of sound-proofing system your builder uses and how happy you are with the results.

 

[Dennis Erskine]

A combination of the room within a room and the Iso-Wall will eliminate most of the bass.

Let's see, this "stuff" is installed on the *inside* walls of the room. It "eliminates most of the bass". My contention exactly. If that's the way you wish to reduce the bass transmission, use on the walls outside the room.