# Sound Proof Home Theater



## Guest (Aug 16, 2008)

I am getting a new home theater system soon and I need a cheap way to soundproof the room. I hear about Acoustic Seals how do they work? And what are other good ways to do this?

Background info, it's a finished basement. 2 small windows 3 air conditioning ducts 4 doors (1 leading upstairs, 1 to a laundry room, 1 to a bathroom, and one to a storage closet). The windows have vertical blinds. 

I don't want to really put anything on the walls I was hoping to just line the room with those seals, around the ceiling, doors, floor and windows.

I would prefer to block all the sound from leaving, but the more noise that's blocked from going upstairs and outside, the better.

As cost effective as possible


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## Guest (Aug 16, 2008)

If needed I could supply pics of the room


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

Welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, soundproofing doesn't work that way. You have open paths via the HVAC that are going to transmit sound. The walls are structurally connected to the rest of the house, etc. Seals in the corners will do basically nothing over what's already there. 

Seals on the doors (and replacing the doors with solid core wood doors) will help some but you still have a lot of very easy noise transmission paths. Sound proofing takes physical structure decoupling and mass. 

Bryan


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## Space (Jul 18, 2007)

ElSkippy3042 said:


> If needed I could supply pics of the room



Any and most information is helpful when trying to do something of this type via the Internet 


Good luck,

Brien


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

The most cost effective noise control is insulation in the ceiling of the basement. This can stop more than 50% of the sound from going into the rest of the house. Ducts are an easy way for sound to transfer into other areas so you would need to make sure that they are insulated as well.


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## Space (Jul 18, 2007)

tonyvdb said:


> The most cost effective noise control is insulation in the ceiling of the basement. This can stop more than 50% of the sound from going into the rest of the house. Ducts are an easy way for sound to transfer into other areas so you would need to make sure that they are insulated as well.


Actually, if we are looking for factual, the most cost effective is to turn the unit off 
But what fun would that be right?

Insulation does damp frequencies in the range that can be annoying to the human ear. It also plays a significant part in sound isolation, but it is not the main character.

Mass is what it takes to isolate sound. You can isolate sound and never use insulation.

Cost effective yes. But not as effective as mass


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

It's actually a combination of both. Insulation stops the cavity from ringing and amplifying transmission. Mass helps drop the resonant frequency of the cavity so fewer frequencies can excite the cavity at all.

The 3rd thing is mechanical isolation. In an existing room, that's not possible unfortunately but it deals with not allowing the physical structure of the room in question to come into contact with the rest of the structure so no vibrations can pass between them mechanically. 

Bryan


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