Treating Floor in New Construction - Reducing Footfall and Vibration


Looking for some good ideas/solutions to treating my new dedicated music room's floor.  The room will be fairly large at 22w x 29L, built on the main floor of the new house with a basement below.  My current room is in my basement with concrete floors so footfall is never an issue.

I have asked the engineering firm to give me some recommendations on making the floor stronger structure wise; not sure what they will suggest, maybe floor joist on more narrow centers, say 12 inch vs 16.  

Have you tackled this issue?  What about mass loaded vinyl (MLV); would a layer of heavy vinyl between the OSB floor boards and carpet pad help?  Use two layers of OSB flooring and glue them together?  Ideas?

stickman451

Showing 2 responses by williewonka

Stickman - One thing that I know for sure will stiffen a floor is to use good quality ply wood, glued directly to the joists.

The houses in our development were built with that cheapo board made from large flakes of wood. 

When I upgraded my kitchen I put reinforcing beams in the basement because we were putting ceramic floors down and I wanted to prevent bouncing.cracking - it worked somewhat.

Then I helped my neighbour replace a high traffic section of his kitchen floor - we ripped up the old floor and replaced it with quality plywood glued directly to the joists

The difference was amazing - his floor is like concrete (i.e. by comparison)

Both houses have joists at 12" centres

Hope that helps
Dweller with a 30x30 room the listening position might have been located in a "NULL zone" - was the poor bass performance the same all over the room.

Without any acoustic treatments you should get hotspots and cold spots for bass

Also - I have found the distance between the speakers and the amount of toe-in can either impact or augment bass performance considerably.

Regards...