A Beginner’s Guide to Soundproofing & Building Acoustics
Sound is of two different types; airborne sound and impact sound. They both vary from each other in terms of the way they travel around the spaces and rooms of a building or your house.
What is impact sound?
The noise created when there is contact (impact) of one object with another is impact sound. Usually this may be the sound of hammers on walls or footsteps on floorboards for example. Sound vibrations are created due to these impacts that can pass between walls and floors from one room to another.
How can you reduce impact sound?
Even with a wall that insulates solid airborne sound, through a concrete floor impact sound can pass from one room to another. It is very invasive and once it has started is difficult to control. For controlling or reducing the sound it has to be stopped from taking place at source. This implies suitable soundproofing materials have to be applied to your walls, floors, and ceilings.
What is airborne sound?
The travel of sound waves around an internal space or room causes airborne sound. It can rebound from the surrounding walls, floors, and ceilings causing these surfaces to vibrate that will then radiate these sound waves again to other areas inside the ‘receiver space’.
How can you insulate against airborne sound?
Usually the condition of windows, doors, sockets fitted poorly, or any cracks in a wall will significantly decrease its airborne sounds insulation. For reducing the loudness or amount of this noise it needs to be insulated using soundproofing materials appropriately on your walls, floors, and ceilings.
How do you deal with nuisance noise?
Big, open plan spaces in your office or home are not usually best positioned to address the degrees of undesirable noise that we are surrounded by at times. Animal noises, people shouting, low flying aircraft, and other invasive sounds can usually disturb concentration in the workplace and quiet and peace at home.
Rooms which are subjected to echoes (or sound reverberation) are normally huge and their wall surfaces are not capable of absorbing enough of the sound, consequently bouncing it back across the space in the room. To decrease the loudness or amount of this sound it needs to be absorbed with proper soundproofing materials on your ceilings or floors.
How do you control noise?
Before soundproofing a building is considered the methods and quality of building construction is worth considering.
The two main ways of reducing and controlling noise are:
Increasing Mass – The more mass a wall or floor has it will be made to vibrate with less sound. The general thumb rule is 5 decibels will be reduced in the sound transmission when the mass is doubled.
Additional Layers – Addition of many layers to the wall or floor construction can improve the noise control greatly. Every layer will be comprised of soundproofing materials, separated slightly for reducing transfer of airborne and impact noise.