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My unfinished basement needs some acoustical help. I'm playing the system loud enough to create obvious problems with loading it up so, I'm in need of some inexpensive suggestions. I want to put some R-19 unfaced pink insulation in between the ceiling (as it were) joists, held up with those thin metal stays, skipping every other one, as I don't want it too dead either, and cover the whole ceiling with grill cloth from PartsXPress. I need to take some area measurements as to how much of what, I'll need, but in the mean time if you good folks would toss this around and give some direction or better ideas, I'd much appreciate it. Thanks to all.
Follow Ups:
I am in a similar situation, but with cone speakers. The living room is right above my basement listening room, and I have exposed joists to work with, along with various wall treatments.
I bought r-30, comfort wrap fiberglass in 25 foot rolls, at home depot, for just under $12 per roll.
I have installed two rolls so far as a trial, and I like the results enough to get 3-4 more rolls and go for more coverage.
It does cut down on the bleed, and seems to help the sonics, but I have lots of "real" acoustic treatment stuff which I can move around and use to blend in with the fiberglass...
r-30 is 9" thick, btw, which does a nice job of filling in between the joists. I may tweek a bit and remove some of the comfort wrap (basically perforated plastic of some sort, to tune the upper frequency reflectivity of the stuff.
i say go for it- it's cheap enough that you can always "bin" it if you don;t like it....
What are you trying to achieve?
If you're trying to stop transmission of sound to the room above the basement, what you're suggesting won't achieve that goal.
If you're trying to modify the sound within the basement, then placing insulation between alternate joists in the ceiling isn't the usual approach. Normally you would treat areas of the wall and/or ceiling which are causing issues of some kind. Usually that is the first reflection points on the room surfaces and placing bass traps in the corners where they are most effective. If those points are the only areas treated, and absorption which operates over a broad frequency range is used,then the room should not end up sounding dead. The reason for rooms sounding dead after acoustic treatment is often because the absorption used was too narrow band, absorbing highs only or highs and the upper mids, which results in the reflected sound having a very different frequency spectrum to the direct sound.
If you're only going to treat the ceiling, you don't want to treat the whole ceiling, and you aren't concerned about sound travelling through to the room above. then treat the first reflection area which will be on the ceiling probably mid-way between you and the speakers. Leave an air space between the insulation and the ceiling since that will improve the effectiveness of the absorption and help it cover a wider frequency bandwidth than placing the insulation directly in contact with the ceiling. A 4" gap is a good space to aim for if you can achieve it.
Ideally though, I think you need to consider what kind of result you're aiming for and then design the treatment to achieve that aim. If you're running into problems at high volume, probably the best starting point is turning the volume down. Small spaces don't handle high sound levels as well as larger spaces and your basement is a small space. Acoustic treatment can help achieve the sense of a bigger space in some ways but if what you're chasing is high sound levels it may not help you achieve what you want since absorption lowers the sound level in the room and that means you're simply going to turn things up again in order to get the sound levels you want. You may get closer to what you want by adding bass traps and treating the first reflection points on the walls as well, and possibly the floor depending on what kind of floor it is and what your floor coverings are, but there is a limit to how loud you can play things in a small space without running into issues because of the limited size of the space, even if the space is acoustically treated.
David Aiken
David,
Thanks for responding. I am in fact trying to kill two birds with one stone. I do want to reduce the amount of sound reaching the upper floor, but I'm more interested in taming the upper-mids and am interested in increasing the amount and range of the bottom end. I have a concrete floor with an area rug and shipping blankets hung from the walls to kill the reflection coming from the mylar foil covered rather thin fiberglass insulation. I have an egg crate foam mattress pad in a pine frame on the back wall, behind two padded swivel chairs and the front end components. The other (right side) of the area are three open shelved racks with crap on them. The speakers are Maggie 1.6qr's, which are about 2/3rd's the way back in the area, that I have commandeered (sp?). Behind the speakers, about three feet behind, is/are various heights of stacked boxes and other crap, which go back about another 8-10 feet. Insulation of the ceiling half way back to the chairs sounds like a good place to start. Bass traps is/are something that I do need to construct, but that will have to wait a bit until the weather gets a little better. The area is not as small as you think and once again, I need to get my tape measure out and get some measurements for those who are interested in assisting me with this. Thanks again David, I really do appreciate it.
When I said you had a "small space", I meant acoustically. I can think of only a couple of domestic rooms I've seen that might count as something other than "small" in acoustic terms. As an example one was the living room in a 19th century farmhouse. The room was actually originally used as a ballroom for parties back in the days when the house was originally built. Even it really probably counts as small in acoustic terms.
David Aiken
Here ya go...
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
Good stuff, but not cheap by any means - average price for Quietrock 525 is around $100 for a 4x8 sheet.
You can always get the 510 for $39
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
try re-posting in the 'room acoustics' forum. you'll get some more reads over there.
Steven d.
Thanks for the advice and I'll try posting over there, if you will tell me where there is. I don't see it listed. Thanks.
I see you have some replies...
It's listed from the main page, but not once in any particular forum, it seems.
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