What kind of foam for soundproofing

There are also 4 windows in the room. This leaves very little wall space. The room echoes with all the conversations when having more than 4 people speaking. I would like to stay away from ceiling tiles made for this purpose. My question is how many wall panels would be needed and how big do they have to be to help with the sound absorption. I found information on how to make them. I am just not sure if i have enough wall space to place the adequate amount of panels to fix the problem.

My husband would like to ad beams to ceiling in hopes that those would help. I have enough wall space for possibly 5 — 30x20inch panels. Would this be enough? I would like to make them look more like art pieces than the standard panels.

Please help! Any info would be appreciated! Thanks, Mary. Mary, Thanks for the comment. As I have mentioned before, treating residential spaces can be extremely challenging because in order to absorb the sound, you HAVE to cover up some of the reflective surfaces with an absorptive surface. Which, of course, means changing the way the room looks. I wish I did! Considering the cubic volume of the room and the surfaces that make up the space, I would suggest starting with forty-five or fifty square feet of panels.

The panels mentioned above would cover approximately twenty-one square feet of this, so about half. There is no way that twenty-one square feet would make the problem worse, but it may or may not introduce a noticeable reduction to the room. It literally sounds like its coming from my unit. Is their anything I can do to minimize this? Preferably something that can be removed later. There is a product that I can suggest for this, but I must state that blocking sound is something that needs to be done fairly specifically to be done at all.

This basically means that you could potentially get a product on the floor of their laundry room and still have a problem. Sound travels via the path of least resistance, so if there is an easier path for the sound to use than coming straight through the floor like a duct, pipe chase, etc you may or may not get enough reduction to notice a difference. I would start with a layer of Quiet Floor NP , which is a rubber-based roll of recycled car tires.

If you would like a sample or quote for a sheet or two, feel free to let me know. Thanks, Ted. Dear Ted thank you so much for very valuable info! There are a lot of people who will apprecciate an answer on my question. The problem is for frontloaders washers that they vibrate more than top loaders. What should I place on the floor under machine to reduce vibration to my neighbor downstairs? Should I place an absorptive material on the walls? I will paitiently wait for your response before buying machine.

Sincerely, [email protected]. There are a few different ways to approach a situation like this. In order to get you a more concrete answer to your question, I am going to need to get an idea of the overall weight of the machine s at their heaviest.

The easiest and lowest-performing approach would be to put a layer of Acoustik on the floor directly below the machines. I have also had previous customers install simple spring isolators under a piece of plywood to essentially make a new, floating floor.

I am trying to sound abate my Honda civic before installing an after market audio system. With which materials should I treat the doors, especially the two front that have the speakers? As you might know, there are two layers of metal and holes in the inner sheet metal.

I have planned to use dynamat and a MLV. Is there a critical role for foam, especially in order to maximize the dynamic range of the mid-woofer speakers in the two front doors? I had to defer to my co-worker, Mike, on this one as he is a much better resource for a situation like this. Mike owned a very high end car audio company for quite a few years.

This is what he has to say:. I would recommend using our VMAX product on all your door skins, covering the entire area behind the door panel. You will want to cover all the open holes in the door kin so that you separate the front of the speaker from the rear of the speaker as best as possible.

You will simply use a razor blade to cut small openings for wires, latches, etc. This sealed design will allow for a better low frequency response from your speakers and a louder response with less distortion. The VMAX material will reduce all the vibrations in the metal door structure and create the separation needed.

To enhance and control the back wave of the speaker, you can glue a small piece of our Sound Silencer to the inner door skin directly behind the speaker, if space is allowed. Using typical foam in the door cavity will create problems due to water and moisture that will enter your door cavity.

The Sound Silencer will not be affected by these conditions. Hello Ted, Great job simplifying this stuff. Imagine a portable generator or an irrigation pump running. It makes quite some noise. Is there any sort of material it could sit on and be less noisy? And by how much would the noise drop. Please, keep in mind mobility and portability. It would likely reduce the sound that is coming out of the bottom of the machine, bouncing off a hard surface and up toward your ear — but it would not be introducing a direct line-of-sight noise barrier that would offer the most reduction.

I am just about to start building a new Chicken Coop. I guess I would need to be concentrating on sound blocking to prevent the sound reaching the neighbours. The coop will only be 4ft by 6ft so only a small space. What materials would you suggest? Another key challenge is ventilation. Thanks if you can help. Unfortunately I am not sure how to suggest you proceed.

You will need to build some kind of room or enclosure around the coop and build a baffled duct system to push and exhaust air into and out of the enclosure. Hi ted. I am a music educator and I liked your illustrations as to how to block or absorb sound. I am currently looking to equip my basement with material for sound blocking purposes.

My goal is to have enough material so I can totally seal the room and not let the sound out since a rock band will be using the basement for rehearsals. In my mind, I thought that covering all the walls and ceiling with foam would do the job. How true is that? Without a doubt, if you have a band practicing in your basement, you will hear and probably feel the bass upstairs.

Foam will not reduce the sound that makes its way to the rest of the house. There is not a cheap, easy, effective way to block the sound of a band from getting upstairs. It is approx. The idea is that people praying in the room could raise their voice or play worship music maintaining privacy and not disrupting anyone outside.

But now that I read your article I am confused. Thank you! Rather than re-writing the article, do you have any specific questions I could answer for you?

Panels that absorb sound within a room do not block sound, and typically, vice versa. If you were to pour water onto a sponge, it would go right through it. Sound barriers are essentially the opposite — hard, air-tight, dense and heavy. If you fixed that fish tank with new glass, the water would not pass through it. Absorbing sound and blocking sound are two very different ways to approach acoustics. Let me know what specific questions you have so that I can address them specifically to hopefully add some clarity for you.

I am looking to add sound proofing materials to the conference room in my office building. Our conference room echoes so badly that we need to do something. I was looking at the foam that looks like egg cartons?

The ceiling is covered in pipes, so we were thinking that we could hang something from them just to put up some obstacles to get in the way. Thanks for the questions. If you could send me the dimensions of the room as well as a digital picture or two, I would be happy to do what I can to help. There are methods of attachment that would allow you to get a few of our panels in place without using glue OR nails — they could be removed as if they were never there — so have hope!

And, I would be happy to help. All I need is a rough idea of the dimensions of the room height, width, and depth and a few digital pictures. This would allow me to build a quick digital acoustical model of the space and estimate the number of panels or square footage needed to take the edge off. If you send me a message with your name and address I could get a few different types of panels into your hands for review. Downstairs townhome with window to loud carport parties, and indoor upstairs stomping loose floors, kitchen cookn and loud relatives.

I could throw a few things out there, but they would be simply assumptions. Acoustical treatment can only reduce things to a point — engineering and physics also need to be considered. Thanks for a clear explanation. My question. If I build my own hifi rack I want to absorb vibrational sound and environmental energy. What materials are best at that? Bearing in mind that it has to carry load, sometimes of many kilos.

I ask because one can find many materials used including wood, glass, metals, slate, carbon fibre, composites etc, either on their own or in combinations with each other constrained layer damping. I am a bit confused by all of this. Your thoughts would be very welcome. I am not quite sure what you are asking, sorry. I am making an assumption that you want to stop vibration transfer from one surface to another.

That is not done with acoustical panels — that is something that you accomplish with a vibration isolator. A step down from that is a proper load-rated rubber isolator.

Am I looking to absorb sound then? I am going to assume that you are looking for absorption through out the room. It is important, however, to understand that by placing panels on the walls and ceilings of a room, the result is going to be a reduction ion the sound pressure in the room and a reduction in the reflections that a listener would hear from reflecting from the surfaces.

If two people are talking loudly, the sound from their mouth still goes straight to their ear — THAT path of sound transmission is not affected at all.

It may sound a BIT quieter because your ear will not be picking up reflections from the surfaces around them, but the only way to make people sound like they are talking softly is to ask them to talk softly. Thank you for the information in your post. I would like to reduce the noise going to my housemates rooms that my small parrot makes.

He has a high pitched squawk. The issue is that I will need to keep one side open, therefore it seems that sound blocking will just reflect the sound waves out of the open side.

Can you suggest anything short of sound blocking the whole room? I was thinking of using absorption material, sandwiched with blocking material on the outer side, around the cage and facing the cage away from neighboring housemates.

I could then line the whole room with something cheaper. What would be the best combination? Many thanks in advance. In order to block the sound from the bird, you are going to need a fully-enclosed room.

If you have any common air space that connects a listener to the noise source, the sound is going to travel through the air. Thanks for the reply. Would this change the frequency of a noise audible to an outside listener?

You may see a small amount of reduction on the outside of the room by introducing absorption and lowering the sound pressure and strength that you have in the room, but it will ALWAYS be more effective to use a BARRIER type product to block sound than it will with an absorber. Useful article.

I have been diagnosed with severe hyperacusis and i live in india. Any help would save my life not exaggerating. Thanks for the comments. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the common and available building materials in India, but the physics that I mentioned in the article are going to be consistent and applicable wherever you are. You first need to make your wall as airtight as possible — sealing any and all gaps and cracks anywhere they might be present.

After that, it comes down to mass and density — the heavier something is, the more sound it is going to block. You may benefit greatly from covering your windows with wood or brick and making them as airtight as possible. Sorry I am not able to offer more help. Please let me know if you have any more questions. I read that vacuum blocks sound. If you have air, you have sound.

You can not have one and not have the other. Sound travels through air. Thanks for the above article. We live in an old building, ground floor flat. It is very small so any noise upstairs, and there is a lot — especially at weekends — travels through the whole house. I had a brainwave this morning which requires the advice of an expert such as yourself to check it is even conceivable unfortunately probably not but I have to try!

I wondered about a sound proof capsule that we could sleep in. Have you ever heard of such a concept? Would it work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is affecting my health greatly. Creating a sleeping chamber may or may not help — it really depends on two factors — 1 how the chamber is built and 2 the severity and nature of the problem. You could absolutely build a room within a room which, I assume, is your thought.

There are a few very important things to consider, though. In a situation like this, it has its challenges. The first thing to consider is airflow. In order to block sound, you have to block air, which is typically needed while sleeping. One thing to consider is that if there is a fire, you will not hear the fire alarm, which could be a really bad situation.

When I mentioned the type or nature of the problem, the reduction of the sound is going to be directly relative to frequency high vs low pitch of the sound as well as whether or not this is a vibration-borne structure energy. If the nature of the problem is sound created by a sub-woofer or bass drum, it will be incredibly hard to reduce effectively due to the length of the sound wave.

If the structure is literally and physically shaking, you will need to build this room on spring isolators to decouple it from the structure. If this is something you would like to explore more, considering the factors above, please let me know and we can discuss wall construction and assembly, floor and ceiling assembly, and ventilating the space.

In the s I owned and remodeled redesigned a small two bedroom condominium. It originally had walls of wire mesh and a plaster wall for one bedroom and a sliding wooden panel in the other bedroom for a wall between that bedroom and living room. There was a small bathroom between the two bedrooms. The doors to the bathroom and bedrooms were hollow core. I used metal frames and sheet rock for walls in all spaces.

It worked great. Could knock hard on the sheetrock between any room and just barely hear a sound on the other side. The floors and ceiling were concrete. Hung ceiling tiles on frames in one bedroom but the concrete ceiling sagged so much it was very difficult to set the frame; so I used ceiling tiles glued to the ceiling in the other parts of the apartment. The glued ones seem to work fine. Also, made sure when using ceramic flooring tile or wood to isolate the apartment below.

Hi Ted, I am building a small Anechoic chamber in my home for use in sleep study and sensory deprivation for the induction of lucid states, an area when I have extensive understanding and a life time of experience. I have an external chamber lined and sound proofed and soon to begin constructing the internal chamber which will have an internal volume of approx. I am wanting to create an environment that is as quiet as possible for maximum sensory deprivation and from this base look at potential sleep chamber design.

The is no internal noise generation other than what my body will produce, blood flow, hear beat and other organ noise. Look forward to any advice you may have for an echo absorbing wall lining Cheers Peter. There are a few different ways to approach a situation like this, depending on what you want the space to look like and how much work you want to do. Because of the foam itself, the size, and the shipping charges — this can be a quite costly way to go.

You could also look at stacking up a few layers of the Bass Buster or Ultra Touch insulation , both of which are cotton-based products. Although these cotton products can, technically, be used as a finished surface, you would probably want to cover them with a stretch-fabric system to encapsulate the dust particles that are inherent to cotton-based products and also to create a more finished look.

I lease one room in an office suite where I would like to block sound coming from the lobby like conversations when I am in my office. I have a hollow core interior door. I am leasing the office space so I cannot make major modifications. I was wondering if there is something that can be attached to the inside of the door that would help.

I am a hypnotherapist, and even though I already use white noise machines, I can still hear occasional voices outside my door when people walk by. I currently use a door sweep at the bottom of the door but I quickly realized that is not enough since the sound mostly comes through the door itself. Is there any type of board or something similar preferably white like the door, that could be nailed to the door? I will do my best to explain and help, but if you have any questions or wish to talk about the problem for a few minutes, please feel free to call.

Sound always travels via the path of least resistance, which it sounds like you know. You may benefit from an adjustable door seal kit, or maybe not.

The door seal kit will not inhibit the use of the door like weather stripping will because of the ability to adjust the pressure and amount of contact. It might be something to look into. But, to answer your question, there is a direct relationship between the mass and density of a surface and the amount of sound that it blocks. The heavier the better — which is why a heavy solid-core door blocks more sound than a light hollow-core door.

I have sold quite a few acoustical quilted curtain panels that have been attached to a track over the door and slid into place like a barn door sliding from left-to-right when the soundproofing is needed. The product is too heavy and dense to pleat like a piece of fabric, so a standard curtain rod is not enough. The room is 24ft long x 12ft wide. Half of it — the kithen half — has a normal height ceiling 8ft high and the other half — the dining room part — has a double height pitched ceiling, which is clad in timber.

There are four velux windows in the timber ceiling. Walls are brick and plaster, floor is lino. I now understand that all the hard surfaces and high ceiling create the poor sound quality in the room.

Can you suggest anything to fix this? I dont want to put anything on the ceiling as I like the timber look here.

Will this foam make any difference of do I really need to put more up on the opposite wall? Appreciate any help you can give. Residential problems like this are some of the most difficult types of situations that I am asked to approach. There is a direct relationship between the cubic volume of the room, the surfaces in the room, and the amount of absorptive material one needs to make the room more comfortable and easy to use.

The difficult part is that homes are now being built with open floor plans and very nice looking hard surfaces. The bigger the room is, and the more hard surfaces there are, the more severe the echo is and the more panels it takes to reduce the problem. Introducing panels into the space inevitably means covering up the surfaces in the room now with a different surface, which will obviously change the aesthetic.

Getting enough absorption into the room while not totally tweaking the aesthetic can be very tricky. Relative to the size of the room, I would probably suggest starting with right around sq.

I would be happy to take a look at a few pictures of the area if you would like to send them to me. Thank you for the suggestions. This gives me a lot to think about, and it is good to know that there are possible solutions. I do have a question though. So in some home listening room, foam panels are placed on key areas on the wall to stop the sound from reflecting off the wall and coming back to your listening position, which improves the sound quality at your position.

Glad you enjoy the article. Just so we are on the same page — I am not a professor of acoustics — I am a guy in an office and work in the acoustics industry. I have enough of a grasp of the physics to explain them to people in general terms that hopefully increases a general knowledge of acoustics and sound.

If you really want to know more of my background, read this post. A good acoustical panel allows sound to pass into and through them easily so that the sound that is left once it gets to the wall bounces off the hard wall and comes back through a different maze.

As it does this, it loses energy. So, rather than the panel stopping reflection, the panel reduces reflections. Here is a great video on How Sound Works In Rooms that goes over a few other things, but there is a part in there where absorbers are explained with a visual at about in the video. Thanks for sharing your tips. I have a fountain in my office because I like the noise water makes, but the little water pump makes more noise than the water itself, which is pretty annoying.

I want to make a new fountain made of wood — Japanese style, but before I do I want to know if I can prevent this from happening again. If you still hear it, give me a call or send an e-mail and we can line it with Melamine composite panels. We need help desperately to block the kitchen hood noise from a restaurant.

Can you please help us? What can we put at the window to block the noise from entering? Blocking sound is generally going to involve construction, and to answer your question, it is very likely that I can help you.

Could you tell me more about the space so that I can better assist you? Could you send a few photos of the situation so I can visualize the problem? Does the kitchen area and the dining area have any shared airspace? Is there a wall that separates these two rooms? Is there a door in the wall? What is the wall construction? Are there any blowers that are mounted onto the common wall?

Is the hood isolated from touching the structure? The bedroom in by the street and the driveway is in front of the bedroom. We were trying to block some sound from the outside, especially buses or the newspaper delivery car.

Also, the sound coming from my neighbor like when she closes the dresser and things like that. My husband put a thicker drywall and added a special sound proofing sheet from Menards in there on 3 of the walls outside wall, the one to the neighbor and the one to the other room.

The outside wall now blocks some of the sounds, but it seems to allow more of the low frequency sounds like the rumble of the newspaper delivery car or the sound of the school bus engine.

I also noticed a stronger echo in the room when I clap my hands for example. We bought thick curtains that cover the outside window on top of the blankets that we put there and the blinds.

There is furniture in the room and carpet on the floor. The walls do not have anything on them, but I want to buy some canvas prints. Can you please give us some suggestions? Thank you very much. It sounds like there are a few different things going on here. Whenever dealing with acoustics and sound problems, it is important to understand that the lower the frequency, the easier it is for that sound to get through whatever you put in front of it. One possible product that you may benefit from would be Climate Seal window inserts.

They are essentially a clear piece of acrylic plastic that has magnetic bellows around the perimeter — like the seal for a refrigerator door — making it as air tight as possible. They are held in place with magnets and typically do a good job at blocking sound — assuming the sound is coming in through the window and not a wall-mounted air conditioner or some other weak link like a space between the window and the rough opening, or some other airspace.

But, like all other products, it does not perform as well at lower frequencies than it does with mid or high frequencies. The situation with the neighbor closing dressers could be an impact noise issue, which is usually approached differently. Acoustical panels inside of the room will absorb the echo that you mentioned, but they will not reduce sound transmission. I am wanting to create a quiet space in my house for taking business calls help desk. Any ideas on how to either quiet the entire room or maybe just around my desk?

Any suggestions would be helpful. Soundproofing a room — or even trying to reduce the sound that is entering or leaving a room is very specific to the room itself. I would start by replacing the hollow core door with a heavy, dense, solid core door and getting a door seal kit for around the edges of the door. Making the door air tight can have a significant impact on the amount of sound that is reduced. I would also strongly suggest watching or having the installer watch our sound-rated door installation video — paying close attention to the details about getting the new jamb into the rough opening.

You can also print out the sound-rated door installation instructions pdf. If the new door and gasketing is not enough for your needs, I would want to find out where the sound is getting in at that point. Is it the ducts to the room? The walls themselves? Is it through an outlet in the wall? Is it still coming through the door? This is not a fabric curtain that can be drawn to one side like a shower curtain. This is more like a moving, solid blanket with a layer of lead on the inside.

In can be installed on a roller-track like a barn door and drawn completely to one side if there is an open space next to the door.

Here is a picture of one that I did with a previous customer in his residence:. These are not the only options, though. So, if neither of these are feasible, please let me know and we can look into it further. Hello Ted, Thank you very much for brilantly explain soundproofing and sound absorbing materials.

I may ask you for your opionion and advise. We have moved our Real Estate office in Manhattan to almost indetical space as we use to have where we had no acoustic issues what so ever. We are seating in open loft type of office environment with no drop ceiling, our desks are in same position at they use to be may be a foot closer space is about 3 feet narrower.

Now in new space we all are hearing each other, conversations are echoing through the space. Person seating far on the other side is louder than person seating closer. We created two glass offices in case we do not close the door we can hear everything what is being said in that office, glass offices sounds like speakers.

The main difference between our new and old office is the celling. Our previous office use to have open flat ceiling our new office have wavy industrial ceiling please see attached picture.

What is your advice to lower the voice travel through our office space. We can install 6 to 8 high class partitions but we are not sure if this will solve our problem.

We could install two feet hanging ceiling partitions but we are not sure what would be the better solution. Thank for your expert opinion. With regards, Stanley. The first two products that come to mind would be the Echo Eliminator recycled cotton panels and the Fabric Wrapped Fiberglass acoustical panels. These panels perform nearly the same, but their respective advantages and disadvantages are considerably different. The fabric wrapped fiberglass panels are custom made and much more decorative and aesthetically pleasing.

There are literally a few hundred different types of colors and styles of fabric to choose from, so they can be made to work with or accent an existing aesthetic.

One nice thing about acoustics is that the location of the panels is not nearly as critical as the number of panels installed into the room relative to the size of the room. When you are trying to reduce the overall echo and reverberation of a room, you can, essentially, put the panels wherever you want and get the same general reduction.

Glass partitions would not likely make any reduction or change to the space. I have a different requirement for sound insulation from the examples above as what I am looking to do is to reduce the noise of an outboard engine in my boat. On my sailboat, the engine sits in a well in the cockpit, right beside the person helming the boat.

Do you have any thoughts on a suitable material and thickness levels needed? The material should be waterproof but it would only be used when I am on the boat so does not need to be completely weatherproof as I can store it out of the elements when not in use.

I think a picture of the motor relative to the helming position might help me help you on this one, but the first product that came to mind would be one of the Quilted Curtain options. There is a standard interior grade curtain as well as an exterior grade curtain option. These are custom-made barrier and absorber blankets that can be made to any size. I live in NYC and am in apartment with dry walls and crappy floors.

When I lie on my bed all I can hear is a low base frequency or bass noise coming from other apartments. Most of the time, residents in apartments can not make any modifications to the structure. So, unless you can make structural modifications to the ceiling adding a layer or two of drywall , I would invest in a great set of cordless headphones.

As noted in the article, blocking sound is done to the structure and is not accomplished with a wall panel. We bought a small town home and had to have the furnace replaced with a high efficiency furnace.

The furnace noise is really annoying, particularly the sound of the intake air pipe. I should mention that the furnace is located in a small room off the kitchen.

The main problem is the sound of the air intake pipe and the blower at night, which often wakes me up. The bedrooms are on the second floor and the furnace is quite loud in all the 3 bedrooms. We are wondering if it would help to insulate the furnace room. Would it deaden or at least soften some of the noise coming to the bedrooms?

Our furnace installer said he has insulated some of the furnace rooms in other similar town homes because of the same problem, but he did not think it was that effective. This is another situation where it is VERY difficult to try to offer suggestions and recommendations because this is SUCH a site-specific type of problem. Is the sound coming through the HVAC ducts with the air? Use these panels in rooms with low-end problems.

Bass traps are super thick foam pieces that go into the corner of your room and are the best for absorbing, you guessed it, BASS. If you have a subwoofer, bass amp or nice big monitors it is always good to have a few bass traps. The below table shows the Noise Reduction Coefficient ratings for our foam at all the different frequencies. Recording studios will require a combination of foam thicknesses.

Bass traps and panels are a popular combo which is why we created our recording studio acoustic treatment bundles! The thick bass traps go in the upper corners of your room and help absorb the low end bass waves that tend to congregate in corners.

Panels are used at the reflection points in the studio. Home theater rooms also require a combination of acoustic foam thicknesses in order to get crisp and clear sound. Also, many home theater rooms have more than two channels so there are more reflection points to consider. Below is a diagram showing home theater acoustic treatment plans for two channel and five channel setups.

Still not sure which acoustic foam you need? No worries! Thicker panels are better; however, two-inch-thick panels are is the best choice for a home recording studio. This is the most popular standard. Large panels are harder to mount and to replace with new ones.

Smaller tiles are easier to mount, especially if you are working alone. The most flexible choice is to buy the inch square or inch square sizes of acoustic tiles. Here are the best things to use for different wall surfaces and textures :. The panels are easy to place and to remove without damaging the walls. The technique also makes the acoustic panels more portable if you need to remove them frequently, take them to another location, or have to be careful not to damage walls of rented spaces.

The basic sandwich is an acoustic panel mounted on cardboard using permanent spray adhesive. The advanced sandwich technique has more layers, which are, in order, these options:.

If you prefer, use adhesive squares. Use at least three adhesive squares two in corners at the top and one in the center at the bottom for a one-square-foot acoustic panel or four adhesive squares one in each corner , if the acoustic-panel thickness is more than two inches.

Here is a video tutorial about this technique:. Q: What is the difference between soundproofing vs. A: Soundproofing is much more difficult.

It blocks sound by stopping vibrations from one place to another. Sound treatment changes the sound, using acoustic panels to improve quality, but does not lower the volume. Q: What are the common shapes types of acoustic foam panels? A: Acoustic panels come in three popular styles, which are wedges, pyramids, and egg crate.

There are subtle differences between them; however, they all work in the same way to absorb sound and re-direct the sound waves. An NRC of zero is a reflective surface that absorbs no sound. A decent NRC rating for a home recording studio is around eight. A higher NRC is better. An NRC rating is only a measurement of the mid-range frequencies. It will not help problems with bass sound frequencies.

Q: What about ceiling sound treatment? A: The sound that hits the ceiling will bounce back down to the walls and the floor. Cover the ceiling area directly above the mixing station to get a better sound. Q: What are other ways to improve sound treatment? A: Bass traps go along well with acoustic tiles. Lower frequencies come out of the woofers and subwoofers and move in an omnidirectional spherical pattern way.

The bass sound collects in the corners of a room and builds up until it causes a distortion problem. This means you will not be able to hear the low-end of your sound mix correctly. For the best results, place these bass traps in all corners of the room where the walls meet and in the spots where the wall corners meet the ceiling.

You will be amazed at the richness of the sound that is achievable for a modest investment in time and money to use acoustic tiles for the sound treatment of your home recording studio. Combine this effort with the recommendations for voice-over equipment , microphones , and the best home studio monitors. This will make your home studio a magnificent space for voice-over recordings.

Have any questions about using acoustic foam panels in your studio or rehearsal space? Hi there! I loved the article, but I saw that some manufacturers claim you can use pins or nails to install acoustic panels.

First, let me say thanks for the feedback. As you read in my article, I went over some of the popular methods of hanging and attaching acoustic panels in a studio.

You can use T-pins, which are similar to pushpins. If you worry about damaging your home or studio, feel free to use a different method to attach them. I recommend Command strips. Not only do these strips come in different sizes, but they peel away easily. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What are the Best Acoustic Foam Panels? Top Features: 12 inches square 2 inches thick 2 colors of blue and charcoal pack with six of each color Attractive checkerboard pattern with strong sound absorption.

Buy Now. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. Also Great. Top Features: Available in multiple colors Easy to install Comes in a package of four 4 1' squares of 2" thick professional acoustic foam Discounts available for ordering multiple bundles. Top Features: 12" x 12" size 2" thick for improved sound absorption Great for acoustically treating walls and ceilings for a variety of purposes. Top Features: Comes in a 24 pack to save money and increase coverage of your space Great for spot treating studios, rehearsal spaces, and other areas Each package covers 24 sq.

Top Features: Unique hexagonal design - 12" x 12" x 2" Affordable choice for soundproofing rooms of all sizes Great for studios, vocal booths, and control rooms Reduces noise, reverbn and flutter echoes. Top Features: 12" x 12" 2" size Unique groove structure design offers better sound absorption than many other panels Easy to cut and install. Author Recent Posts. Scott Winstead. Follow this blog for opinions on blended learning and flipped classroom techniques, reviews of home studio equipment, and tips for voice-over actors and digital audio content makers, technology how-tos, and more!

Latest posts by Scott Winstead see all. Related Posts. Thanks for sharing the ideas. Thank you for your feedback!