4. People with chemical sensitivies are also affected by rubber's off gassing. There are thousands of installers, and hundreds of home theater and listening room designers who all use the same four steps for sound proofing: (1) sealing, (2) adding mass, (3) decoupling, and (4) dampening (note: that dampening is often separated into dampening and absorbing for ease of understanding). If you use an acoustic tile for the ceiling, you will add another 5-7 dB...but the cost will be much higher than the cork or the Roxul combined. The basement needs a separate HVAC system. Your email address will not be published. Then glue the luan to the cork (let cure 24-48 hours) and then glue the sheet vinyl to the luan (let cure for 24-48 hrs). The transfer sound is a different matter. Resilient channels is even better but requires careful install. Again, so long as you work with 1/2" cork, you will be adding 22 dB of acoustic insulation for a mere 1/2" (12mm) of floor height. Soup CAN = metal. Cork does not off gas whereas Rubber can get pretty nasty when it gets warm...as in people with asthma have been known to be hospitalized because of rubber underlayments. Find studies that have actually measured the results, fortunately the sound industry has commissioned a lot of them. Depending upon your specific needs, you can choose panels, drywall or plywood for soundproofing your room against airborne noises. Music that has deep bass is a very different animal (and harder) than talking. It deals with dividing walls and floors, and also requires some sound insulation internally to protect bedrooms from noise. It will also decrease the chances of additional squeaks caused due to the subfloor rubbing against the joists. White noise is a rhythmic sound that can suppress the other background noises. The price and the off-gassing alone are enough for consumers to choose cork. Yah. Many consumers like what cork can do as well as it's price tag. These threads always degenerate into the same confused rhetoric. Remember playing "telephone" with soup cans and string? I hope you are doing a separate heat/AC system in the basement or one of you is going to be uncomfortable living in the house. This is what resilient materials such as rubber and cork do. Condo soundproofing has greatly improved over the last 20 years. Cork and rubber have the same acoustic profile. "They want to block television noise from flowing too freely from the upstairs to the downstairs and you seem to think that they are constructing the Cone of Silence.". You might as well throw money on the floor and save the time and trouble of using cork. But to do any kind of soundproofing, you first need to understand how you get that noise. You will need to remove even wood furring strips from the joists. I'm also not sure we'd love the look of having carpet JUST in the living room. In fact, creaking floors alone accounted for nearly half of all noise complaints logged by this study. I read an article that talked about a padding that could go under luan / underlayment (which will go on top of the sub floor so that the OSB doesn't show through the sheet vinyl). That is correct. Don't rely on string and paper cups unless you are in a physics lab. The Challenge: Aside for airborne sound coming through the ceiling, soundproofing floors face an additional challenge called Impact Noise (e.g. You need 3mm of cork to achieve the same as 2mm of rubber. Sound is a mechanical wave, or energy that travels through matter by disturbing it. All of that range is airborne. - After that, certainly rock board in rooms where you really need more sound control, and then obviously interior finish products to cut down on interior reflections. It will improve the sound absorption between floors and walls if it isn’t compressed. Posts: 13 Rewards Points: 10 Soundproofing Between Floors I am remodeling a basement into a mother-in-law … Any air gaps can compromise the effectiveness of the drywalls. No one stomps around. Transfer sound should have been addressed during the initial construction with attenuation methods incorporated with the wood and tile flooring installations (i.e. Also, every additional decibel reduction requires a little more effort as the curve is not linear. Finally attach the drywall and you are good to go. I know the top floor will have it's own thermostat / hvac. It is easily renewable resource without off gassing. Once you are done with filling the spaces with the sealant, cover it with two layers of gypsum wallboard. It has an STC of 32 to 37, and an IIC of 32. The foam is available in open and closed cell formats. On the advice of acoustic engineers, what has worked well for me between stacked apartments, restaurants and offices or combinations of those uses is ceiling drywall supported by 1/2" deep resilient channels or a 1 1/4"+ proprietary resilient suspension system. Even TV noise was removed. I was reading up on some products that can be used with vinyl sheet flooring... in kind of a sub-floor - product - plywood - vinyl floor sandwich. And the door in the tenant's 'utility space' will also always be closed. The vibration of the string transfers through to vibrate the receiving cup. Quietrock is two thin sheets of drywall with acoustic paste in between them, it is cheaper and better to use two regular drywall sheets and acoustic paste. You can also use rubber mats for the floor to dampen the sound. This is exactly what happens without decoupling. And no one creating sound isolation booths for recording studios would think addressing those three things are remotely adequate. - For windows, check into the FAA retro-fit units they use for funded upgrades around LAX. . In our current house (on crawl space) we got rid of the carpet and did sheet vinyl with luan over the OSB sub floor. But again, it's one of those things that in this tenant-room-mate-land-lord relationship you know a movie is going to end in about 2 hours so we are all fine with it. The first step to soundproof the ceiling will be to block any gaps in the ceiling. I really think we would. Robust detail compliant products are proven solutions that don’t require testing after fitting. When the string is tight, the vibration of the speaker's cup is transferred through the string to the other cup. More mass means sound has to work harder to move the material, not unlike throwing a boulder compared to throwing a pebble. I would say 99% of ALL VINYL products do NOT allow underpad to be used with it. Next, install insulation material in between the sets of joists. It doesn't work unless the string is tight. I also read that using plywood vs luan is helpful. Building designers have created a checklist to deal with building design and sound transmission.