DIY Soundproofing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Arthur Noxon, president of Acoustic Sciences. I'm going to talk today about do it yourself soundproofing. Now this is- the context for this is in a recording studio. Okay, sound proofing; number 1, sheet rock across the windows, two layers of sheet rock across the windows, you can push them in the window well, cut them just to the right size, push them in the window well. If you want to make a little trickier, a more repeatable window plug, take a piece of sheet rock, glue a piece of sound board, which is sometimes known as celotex, fiberboard, to it, and then sheet rock. The soundboard is larger, here's the soundboard, the sheet rock is smaller here, and another layer of sheet rock here, everything is glued together with panel adhesive. This is sort of like a sliding gasket, these two layers of sheet rock are like your sound barrier, and this is your sound isolator between the two. This is sized so that it pushes into the frame of the window well, that's the window here, and here's outside. And then you put a handle on it, and you plug it in and take it out, so every time you're going to use your room. Second thing is, you got to do your doors. Use weather stripping, gasketing around the entire perimeter of the door, use felt, screw on felt wipers that come with a metal flange, and they're attached to the bottom of the door on both sides. You want to be able to go around, all the way around the door with a high power flashlight, have someone do that on the other side of the door, and see no light coming through, so the first thing is to soundproof the door, the gaps at the edges of the door. Sometimes doors are very thin and hollow sounding, that sounds awful. Take a piece of sheet rock or a piece of Medite, panel adhesive, put it on the door, just let it dry, and four hours you're done if the door is off the hinges, otherwise put a couple of screws in to hold it in place until it dries. Paint it, or cover it with wallpaper, do something like that. But that hardens the door up and takes the twang of the door out of the sound in the room. If you're in a panic and you don't know what to do, you have no money, you have to do two things, you have to get rid of base energy in a room, and you have to defuse sound in a room, and you have to do soundproofing. And if you want to do all of that, for 25 cents a square foot, here's what you do; you can spend a lot more than that, but here's what you do. Go to the home improvement store, buy a few stacks of sheet rock, get some molding trim, like something cheap, 2 by 2, maybe cedar, it's easy to drill into. And what you do is, you- here's the ceiling, here's the wall, and here's the floor of your room, the sheet rock is 8 feet long, your room height is 8 feet long, so, now keep the sheet rock 8 feet long. What you're going to do is, you're going to put molding here, screw that in, you're going to get some building insulation, and put it up in here, and you're going to lay your sheet rock in at an angle, and you do this all the way around the room. Cut your corners in, it'll be a little tricky, you'll figure it out. Now you have a room that has angled, all angled walls. You've got a ceiling, but you've got carpet on the floor, the walls are soft and flexible, and they act sort of like a membrane base trap all the way around the room. You'll be a happy camper. Thanks."