How to Soundproof a Room Cheaply

Series Summary

Recording studios are wonderful tools to help artists record their music and present it to the world. One of the reasons they are so important today is because of soundproofing. In a good recording studio, every room is isolated sonically from every other room. Soundproofing is the essence of the studio experience. In this free video series, an acoustics specialist explains how to soundproof a room. Cheap, DIY soundproofing is possible by following these steps, which include building a sound booth, making an acoustic barrier and taking ventilation into account. With these tips and techniques, a room will be soundproofed and ready for recording or other experiments.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Arthur Noxon, president of Acoustic Sciences. And I'm going to discuss with you now the cheapest way to soundproof a room. The first thing to do, is to plug up all of the weak sound leaks in the room, typically that's the door and the window. Now to plug up a window you need a window plug. And a window plug is, might be a sheet of sheet rock, cut out to fit into the frame of the window, and you just maybe put a couple of handles on it, and just plug it into the window. Now you've eliminated the sound in the room from getting out the window. Now sometimes you want to soundproof within the house and there's a door. Now in order to sound, the best- The first thing you have to do to soundproof a door, is to eliminate all the air leaks. So go to the home improvement store and get a weather stripping kit, and open the door, install the, for six dollars this little foam strip, install it all the way around the door. Buy the proper thickness kit, so you might measure the gap between the door sill and the door, close it and measure it. Because you want a compression fit, it doesn't do you any good to put a foam strip around the door, and then have an 8th of an inch gap between the door and the front beginning of the foam strip, that's not a compression seal, it needs to seal air tight all the way around. And then on the floor, you need some sort of a wiper. Again, at the home improvement stores you can find these metal strips with a felt wiper attached to the bottom with some screw holes; buy two of them. Put one on one side of the door, snug up against the floor, and the other on the other side of the door, snug up against the floor, so you've got a double wiper that you drag across the floor. Even if it's carpet, still put a double wiper. Anyway, that's the quickest way to make a significant improvement in soundproofing a room in the house."