LESLIE: Alright, our next caller’s from The Quake in California. And it’s Patrick. You’ve got a question about soundproofing. What can we do for you?
PATRICK: I’m trying to soundproof an old barn; like a turn-of-the-century barn. And it’s going to be a rehearsal space and recording space for my band.
TOM: Oh, very cool.
PATRICK: And so, I’m wondering like how I can do it on a budget. Like I’ve looked online and stuff and all the products are like really high-end products. But I was wondering if there’s like an alternative product, like you know, that work just as well?
TOM: Well, tell us about this space. What are you trying … is the garage completely standalone, that you’re trying to soundproof? The barn completely standalone?
PATRICK: It actually was like a winery at the turn of the century. So there’s like …
TOM: (overlapping voices) Oh, it sounds really nice.
PATRICK: … there’s like three different spaces inside of it and they’re all about the same size. But …
TOM: Alright. Well, you know, to soundproof a space, especially a recording studio, you need dead air space. Most of the time, when you go to a professional recording studio, you have a room within a room. And there’s dead space and large, deep doorways and door jambs that create this dead air space that give you the insulation … the soundproofing ability.
Now, you know, the poor man’s way to soundproof is to use insulation. There’s insulation that’s developed for soundproofing; it has special batting that’s designed to muffle the sound. But it’s not as good as having a disconnected space. I mean, typically, if you’re building this and you could create a wall inside of a wall, where the walls don’t physically touch and each one is insulated and then there’s air space between these two cavities, that will give you a lot of sound deadening capability. But it really comes down to separating one room from the other. Do you follow me?
PATRICK: Yes. So, on the … on the vertical walls we’re going to have that, for sure.
TOM: OK.
PATRICK: But on the ceiling, you know, we’re … like there’s a … there’s … on the ceiling there’s an upper floor kind of thing.
TOM: OK.
PATRICK: And you know, so …
TOM: So are there people above? Will there be noise above the ceiling?
PATRICK: No, there’s nobody up there.
TOM: Alright. So what you want to do is probably suspend the ceiling down. You’re going to use heavy insulation, like a rock wool insulation batting, on that ceiling. And that will give you some deadening capability at the ceiling level as well.
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