A couple years ago a friend of ours moved from a quiet courtyard apartment to a unit near a major city thoroughfare, resulting in many sleepless nights. At the time I gave her all the soundproofing tips I could think of (within their budget), including planting trees in front of their windows, hanging rugs/tapestries on the wall to dampen sounds, heavy drapes for their windows, earplugs, and even acoustic foam room tiling. Nothing has really worked, and she's just gotten used to the ambient sounds of traffic.
Blocking Out Exterior Noise From Your Apartment
I might have to send her two links about soundproofing again. First, is an informative article from Wired titled, How to Soundproof an Apartment to Muffle Your Wife's Drumming. Some of the tips learned from soundproofing a room for a percussionist are: create a drop or false ceiling, mass-loaded vinyl flooring, replace hollow doors with solid-core ones, add acoustic seals around the edges of doors, and fill any gaps around windows or doors with flexible, non-hardening caulk. A notable point made was "soundproofing is not one thing, but a bunch of little things that add up, decibel by decibel."
The article also prominently mentions a damping material that dissipates sound in walls, floors and ceilings, called Green Glue. A water-based gel, Green Glue is to be applied inbetween drywall or subflooring, and can help reduce low frequency noise associated with exterior sounds by destroying vibration energy. The writer of the article noted above was able to significantly reduce their sound leakage with a $175 investment in 12 tubes to cover a decent sized wall. If you're fortunate to own your unit, this seems like a worthy avenue to investigate, while renters such as myself could discuss with their landlords, as it might not be a hard sell to offer adding a desirable feature to their property: a quiet space.
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Professionals will tell you that MASS and isolation are key.
When my neighbor complained about my subwoofer I went on a quest to find out as much as I could find about soundproofing.
Everything I read says that to do it properly, you lay a bead of caulk - or this green glue - between the studs and the drywall.
Then you add *another* bead of caulk - or this green glue - and screw in a *second* layer of drywall.
The double layers add mass and the caulking or glue provide isolation.
view boomer's profile
PS - I made my neighbor happy by simply moving the subwoofer to a different part of the room. ;->
view boomer's profile
There are also products like Quietrock that use instead of Gyp board that will keep that sound out many times more than standard 5/8" gyp board. And the great thing about it is that it looks like gyp board, and is installed like it too.
view madtrait's profile
If you go down this road remember that you need to deal with all the holes in your wall as well: electrical outlets, places where pipes come out, etc..
You'll need to treat the outlet boxes with acoustic caulk in order to seal them or the sound will escape right through your freshly hung double-drywall.
view Max's profile
My friend works for a soundproofing company and took some green glue to the lab to test it because green glue was making claims that it was better than their system. They found that green glue didn't hold up to its claims.
What others have said it is isolation and adding mass that helps. In the instance of green glue it is more the extra mass of the extra layer of sheet rock that is deadening the noise.
silicone glue does the same thing green glue does and it is much much cheaper.
view jussipoika's profile