# Foam board as a sound barrier?



## Ibanezplayer (Aug 26, 2008)

I have done a bit of research and, I read that foam board like the kind used for insulation works as a sound proofer. I was just wondering if anyone has tried this and if it worked all that well?


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## Desecrated (Aug 26, 2008)

it will work on certain frequencies, not all of them and most likely not to soundproof your room, but more to help you sculpt the acoustic in it, your neighbours will still not like you.


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## Matt Crooks (Aug 26, 2008)

The _only_ thing that will "soundproof" a room is mass. Greater mass = greater sound isolation. The cheapest way to obtain greater sound isolation is to add multiple layers of drywall to the room, seal all the cracks with caulk, and gasket the door.

The foam board will literally do nothing to reduce the sound transmission from your room to your neighbors.


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## noodles (Aug 26, 2008)

Back in my days of general contracting, I had some good results isolating a generator from a dentist's operating room with soundproofing board, which is essentially highly compressed cardboard. Like Matt said, it worked on the principal of greater mass, as the stuff was probably about four times heavier than a comparable sheet of drywall.

I really wish I could remember the name of it, but we found it at Home Depot or Lowes. It was expensive, but it worked really well. You have to lay drywall over it, because trying to paint it will simply soak it and make it separate. It is literally highly compressed paper, which you can see when viewed from the side.


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## gaunten (Aug 26, 2008)

one thing that maybe noot works so good, but looks kickass oldschool is old egg packs (those big for like 24-30 eggs) my brother had a studio in his basement (a pretty big room) and all the walls were filled with black and white egg packs, in a diagonal order. that looked really rock n' roll 
don't know how good it worked though, but since he lives in the forest with one neighbour about 400 feet away across the street, it didn't really matter


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## Mattmc74 (Aug 26, 2008)

One time I used heavy weight cargo blakets over all of the walls. It looked kind of stupid but it got the job done. You could still hear sound outside but it was less than before.


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## Matt Crooks (Aug 26, 2008)

Egg crates on the wall do nothing acoustically. They do not change the sound inside the room, nor do they stop the transmission of sound out of the room. The only thing that they do is require a lot of effort to put them on the wall... a total waste of time.

Cargo blankets will in fact stop some high frequency sound from escaping the room, however, they do nothing to stop low frequencies (ie. the low end of a guitar, bass and drums).


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## Mattmc74 (Aug 26, 2008)

Matt Crooks said:


> Egg crates on the wall do nothing acoustically. They do not change the sound inside the room, nor do they stop the transmission of sound out of the room. The only thing that they do is require a lot of effort to put them on the wall... a total waste of time.
> 
> Cargo blankets will in fact stop some high frequency sound from escaping the room, however, they do nothing to stop low frequencies (ie. the low end of a guitar, bass and drums).



 You could hear the kick drum pretty well!


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## newamerikangospel (Aug 27, 2008)

Mass + seperation (float the walls, floor, ect) are two steps.

Sound transfers through walls since its vibrating the wall. You can buy things that add mass to joints (studs, floors, ceilings, ect), and will help reduce the sound, but would require you to spend alot of money and strip your room to install. 

Cheap way would be mass, lots of mass.


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## Matt Crooks (Aug 27, 2008)

newamerikangospel said:


> Mass + seperation (float the walls, floor, ect) are two steps.
> 
> Sound transfers through walls since its vibrating the wall. You can buy things that add mass to joints (studs, floors, ceilings, ect), and will help reduce the sound, but would require you to spend alot of money and strip your room to install.
> 
> Cheap way would be mass, lots of mass.



Yeah, isolation is not really an option unless you're doing a new build, and it's so pricey that I don't even mention it when people ask "does xyz soundproof my room?".

I am starting the build on my new studio room this fall... it will be three layers of 5/8" sheetrock on RISC isolation clips... should be pretty quiet outside the room  The downside is that a 20ish x 15ish room is going to be around $8k with me doing the labour.


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