2. home-theater
  3. 191511-185661

Sound insulation advice for home theater room in middle of the house?

I'm an interior designer working on a house where the client wants to create a movie room. I need some recommendations for the materials to soundproof the walls.

Part of the complication is that they want 2 doors into the room (1 on each side - see image below), as well as a movable partition that separates the movie room from the family room. According to my limited knowledge, this makes MLV (my first choice) basically useless? Due to the number of openings?

What would you recommend, for a midrange budget, to outfit the walls (and possibly the doors) with sound reduction materials?

They're not planning to blast movies at full volume, but they do want to invest into soundproofing so they don't need to always worry about disturbing the kids or guests.

Also, the middle of the house is a vast open space, and it's very "echo-ey". We had 5 people trying to have a conversation, and it was almost unbearable. Any recommendations for making it more tolerable from audio quality perspective, while keeping to a clean and minimal look?

If anyone is willing to do a personal consultation (20-30-minute Zoom call to go over the floorplan and make recommendations, more for my own education / curiosity, but also to make a nice final product for the client) - I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount.

Thank you in advance!

nathank9000

Showing 2 responses by baylinor

baylinor's avatar
baylinor
1,498 posts
 

You will have to do a lot of research on google by looking at people's dedicated listening rooms to pick and choose the methods that would best apply to their layout. You are welcome to start with the construction of my house of stereo under my system details. The double sheetrock with green glue sandwich for walls and ceiling plus offset studs construction would be a good start. Then thick outdoor solid wood doors are also a must. Finish it up with quite a bit of absorbing material to tame the low frequencies that are so prevalent in a home theater. Like 4 corner bass traps and decorative wall mounted absorbers panels. Then add some diffusers at first reflection points to liven the room back up to improve the high frequencies for better dialog deciphering. It won't be an easy overnight design but if those folks are serious about getting satisfactory results they will have to likely spend a lot more money than you all thought. 

 

baylinor's avatar
baylinor
1,498 posts
 

@soix 

Resilient channels slid onto soundproof mounts screwed into the joists is how I did the ceiling as shown in pics and described in my system. Both methods accomplish the same goal, isolating inner wall from outer wall.

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