im moving to a 3 bedroom and the third bedroom is going to be my own little theater room. its 11.8 feet wide, 14 feet long, and 9 feet tall. is there a cheap and easy way to soundproof the room? there are 3 doors and a window, but the window can be covered over, itll just be blacked out anyway. guys at work suggested soundboard, but it cant be painted and itll look like crap. ideas?

Easy yes, cheap no....

Is this a rental, or something you have purchased?

I would have suggestions for both, but they're both lengthy...

drop me an e-mail

avdude
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id email but it wont look through outlook on my computer i think. its a rental but i dont really mind because i can just reuse it in a new place, and i intend to stay here for awhile. i dont mind paying kind of a lot if the effect is amazing. im most worried about the people upstairs, i dont want to rumble thier vases off the shelves like i just did to mine :p. how good is the effect? can i be really blasting it and not have anyone whine about it?

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The only really cheep thing you can do is:
Get some 6 pound 1” thick insulation board, I think corning makes it. It runs about $40.00 for a 4’X10’ sheet. This is what most general purpose acoustic panels are made out of. Build yourself some wood picture type frames (whatever size you want) out of 1" X 1” stock. Streach and back staple speaker cloth over the frame. Cut out your insulation board to fit inside the frames. Lightly Spray the inside back of the speaker cloth with 3 M super77 spray glue then stick the insulation board to it. Hang on the walls like a picture frame, obviously the more of this stuff you use the better. Put in an extra dense carpet pad and heavy carpet and some heavy curtains. This will reduce your mid and high frequency sound waves, but alas there really is not anything you can do on the cheep to reduce low frequency standing waves which are usually the biggest problem.


Enjoy

Yeah, if the bass is your problem, then headphones are your solution.

The only thing that will stop bass* is mass,** and you can't add mass tothat ceiling!

*pronounced base
**rhymes with gas

thanks guys. ive been looking into some things and this seems too damn expensive right now, ill save this for my house when i put in a REAL theater. thanks anyways, ill just have to piss everyone off for awhile. funny thing is is that the room im using in the new apartment is the master.

I have done this for a few customers. Don’t use a sub and in its place use butt kickers in stalled in your seating [Link: guitammer.com] When you sit down you will swear there is a sub woofer in the room, but when you stand up, you wont hear or feel any low frequency sound waves. You will need to reinforce the inside of your chair or couch as the case may be with 2X4’s and plywood, as these things will tear your seating apart. This works very well I have done this for people who have town homes with complaining neighbors, works every time.

Just a quick distinction, sound proofing and acoustically treating a room are 2 different things. Hanging fiberglas panels will absorb reflections, but do little for sound transmission, especially bass. To effectively sound proof you will need to decouple the room from the existing structure. The butt kickers are probably the cheaper alternative.

How is the buttkicker connected to a system? I have heard of this things for a long time now and from the looks of them the have speaker level connections?

So how do you incorporate it into say a 5.1 system with sub on the LFE Out?

You use an external amplifier to drive them. Just connect it to the line level out for LFE.

Addressed that above a bit-----quote "but alas there really is not anything you can do on the cheep to reduce low frequency standing waves which are usually the biggest problem."

Panels and other broadband absorbent materials, reduce low mid to upper end sound transmission to adjacent rooms a bit, by helping to reduce the room’s acoustical distortion level.

Decoupling is best left to people with fat pockets.

I agree with RTI, sound proofing is not cheap. I just didn't want anyone to think they could buy some 1" fiberglass panels and solve all the problems.

Cheers

VTS, so you split the line level LFE and send the signal to a sub and to an amp for the buttkickers? so good enough. Are they worth it? I have never had the chance to see one in action.

I have installed several of these, very powerful. Far beyond all of the other shakers (tactiles & Aura systems) I have tested. Takes about 500+ Watts each to get them really moving. You will need 1 shaker for an individual chair, and 2 for a regular old couch, once again the better you reinforce the couch the better they work, further I replace the furniture feet with 2” thick flexible machine rubber, this really makes the effect more natural. Further if you can, cross them over at 60Hz or lower for best performance.