Need advice on how to insulate my stereo room. My rig is is in the finished basement of my home. Problem is that the house is old'ish and the sound reverberates throughout the house - probably through the basement drywall and ceiling.
The upstairs floors are hardwood, with throw rugs. The walls are plaster on lathe.
The basement ceiling is drywall. However, the ceiling height is only about 8 feet, so a drop ceiling is not an option.
Not sure there's much I can do, but any suggestions have to be aesthetically nice or my wife will object.
Just to clarify Soix's comment - Green Glue is not the same as liquid nails. Green Glue is designed to attenuate vibration and sound by remaining in a permanent semi-viscous state unlike liquid nails which hardens (cures) completely. The difference is substantial.
Green glue plus the extra drywall will really help with everything but the low base. The "glue" name is misleading. It really does work. Resilient channel is an option, but more work, plus you loss a little height. I don't believe that the resilient channel will give much better results than a green glue/drywall solution for the ceiling. You might give Ted White at Sound Proofing Company a call. He knows the details of both solutions.
Adding drywall and green glue (or liquid nails) may help with some of the problem, but the deeper bass will probably continue passing through the walls and travelling to the upstairs via studs, etc. You just can't practically add enough mass to attenuate those frequencies. If you're willing and able to do it you might look into resilient channels that act like shock absorbers between the drywall and studs, beams, etc. Again, the Geddes book I mentioned earlier does a good job of explaining this stuff.
Ths, my rig sits on a carpeted concrete slab in the basement. Doubt that the carpeted slab will transmit that much sound to the rest of the house. As the above posts suggest, most of the sound is passing through the drywalls and ceiling to the rest of the house. I think the only way to attenuate the sound is by doubling up on the drywall as suggested, plus the Green Glue stuff.
I'd recommend the book Premium Home Theater by Earl Geddes, and the concepts apply to stereo as well. I bought several books on the topic but found this one to be the most useful and an easier read. His approach addresses bass without dampening out higher frequency detail, which sounds like a concern of yours, and unlike most of the other books he recommends actual products which I found very helpful. Best of luck.
Dtc is on the right track - to stop everything down to about 500Hz, another layer of drywall (preferably 5/8"), with copious amounts of Green Glue would be a good start. Sound is like light, and if you seal up your listening space, you can achieve decent attenuation. Lower frequencies are much more difficult - really the only way to stop them is with massive reconstruction. Mass and stiffening will only go so far (bass will pass through a 6" cinder block wall with no problem if the sound source is on the other side of it); what you need is acoustically dead space and that may not be attainable given your current situation. Good luck.
You might want to look at the tread on building a home theater on AVS forum. This is a very common topic in building a theater. Insulation is not a very good insulator. You should look at applying another layer of drywall, especially in the ceiling, using Green Glue between the layers. It is not really a glue, but a viscoelastic material that dissipates the sound. The Sound Proofing Company has a lot of material on their website on how to approach this problem. Ted White from their is active on the AVS forum. The bass is the hardest problem and low bass is almost impossible to totally block without a lot of rebuilding. But a Green Glue ceiling will greatly help the problem and will not reduce the ceiling height by much.
Lead wall paper. Yes, there is such a thing, but expensive. Often used as an underlay in floors. I used it in a media room that I built some time ago. It needs to be sealed as it could be an environmental hazard. If you have children, forget about it.
There is a new drywall product called quietrock that is very effective for reducing noise and if funds permit you could drill and blow cellulose insulation in your basement ceiling. Both are excellent products for reducing sound. Good Luck.
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