2. speakers
  3. 991605915

Best DIY Sound Dampening Materials?

Do you have any recommendations on sound dampening materials for a DIY project? I have a wonderful system, but a not so wonderfully small space (12 feet x 12 feet), and I need to dampen the acoustics off the walls and floor.

For the walls, I'm considering taking 4 inch foam (do you have any recommended purchasing sources?), cutting 4x3 foot squares, framing it, canvasing it and hanging a series of these pictures up on the walls (painting the canvas a slight hue of the wall paint). To keep peace with the girlfriend, I need to dampen my room in an aesthetically pleasing way - yes, she's worth it. So, will this work? Are there better alternatives?

For the floor, I'd like to create a removable 16x16 inch wall to trap and avoid the Allison affect. Am I crazy?

Help ... please!

Thanks
dds_hifi

Showing 1 response by rushton

rushton's avatar
rushton
2,445 posts
 
Dds_hifi, instead of dampening the room, consider diffusers that will make your room physically smaller but acoustically much larger without losing energy to the dampening materials. Read Steve Deckart's fascinating article about his experience adding DIY diffusser panels to his 13x15 room:
http://www.decware.com/achowto.htm.

If you're interested in following up on this path, in addition to Mr. Deckart's DIY plans, Tom_nice has some plans he has offered to send to people in the past. See the following Audiogon thread:
http://audiogo1.iserver.net/cgi-bin/forum5.pl?ymisc&957302144&read&3&4&

Or, take a look at the sources Jon Risch has published in his posting to Audio Asylum:
http://audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/35692.html
More to discover