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The 5 Principals of Sound Isolation

Today’s home theaters are louder than ever and many people are asking for more
(and more) sound isolation measures in their rooms. Rest assured no one wants
to spend big bucks on a sound system, only to be told to “turn that down.”
Sound isolation is science, not magic, and as such it is possible to outline a foundation of basic principles that
define sound isolation in any given situation. In this case, there are 5 basic principles that govern the sound
isolation of any partition.
Before we get started, it’s important to mention what we call the “zeroeth principle” of sound isolation – seal
quality. If your partitions are not sealed, then all is lost and a high level of performance cannot be attained.
With that mentioned and emphasized, lets get started.

Principal Number 1 - Mass:

The first principle of sound isolation is mass. Mass impedes the transmission of sound in a simple way - it’s
harder for the sound to shake a very heavy thing than a very light thing, no different than saying it’s harder to
push a shopping cart full of lead bricks than an empty cart. However, to make large changes in performance
you have to make very large changes in mass. In theory doubling the mass of a panel without an air cavity will
improve things by 6 dB. Typically, on the common single wood stud wall, doubling the number of drywall layers
yields 4-5dB of improvement.

As this series of tests show,

just adding layers of drywall
to the common wood stud
wall or wood joist ceiling
yields only a small benefit. To
really improve your wall, you
have to not only add mass,
but also improve some of the
other 4 principles.

Considering the fairly high

cost of drywall installations,
simply adding layers is
perhaps the least efficient
way to improve sound
isolation available to builders
today.

Principal Number 2 - Mechanical de-coupling, or mechanical isolation:

One of the most familiar of the 5 basic principles is mechanical decoupling. Sound clips, resilient channel,
staggered studs, double studs… All of these function by inhibiting the movement of sound from one side of
the wall to the other through mechanical paths (like studs or joists). Instead, the vibration has to pass through
the air cavity in the wall, where some of it will be lost, and through the insulation/absorbing material, where (at
some frequencies) much of it will be lost.
What most people don’t understand about mechanical decoupling is that it is frequency-dependent. When
you decouple, for example, two pieces of drywall, you create a resonance, and only well above that resonance
does the decoupling help you – below about 1/2 of an octave above that resonance it actually makes things
worse. Like this:

De-coupling is a very
powerful tool, but one must
plan around this resonance
and the low-frequency
performance problems it can
cause.

In our next tip, we’ll go

through some basic steps for
handling resonance in walls,
and constructing good walls
in general.

Principal Number 3 - Absorption:

Installing insulation in a wall or ceiling cavity increases the sound loss due by eliminating/removing/destroying
some sound. Another benefit of insulation in a cavity is to lower the resonant frequency of decoupled walls. All
that noted, insulation loses its effectiveness at very low frequencies. Put some fiberglass in front of a center
channel and you’ll hear badly muted dialogue (the insulation is effective), put it in front of a subwoofer and you
might not hear any difference at all.
The soundproofing war isn’t won or lost by what’s inside the walls, so please don’t get too caught up in fretting
over what insulation to choose, just make sure to use something. Fortunately, common fiberglass routinely
used in construction has been shown to be as effective as any other insulation type, particularly at low
frequencies. Absorption is most effective in decoupled or damped walls, in a conventional 2x4 wall, sound can
easily pass through the studs and doesn’t need to go through the insulation.

Principal Number 4 - Resonance:

This works AGAINST the good things done by principals #1, #2 and #3 above by making it very easy for
sound to vibrate a wall. At resonance frequencies even a massive, de-coupled wall with insulation will vibrate
very easily (as we saw above in the decoupling section). Since a vibrating wall vibrates air on the other side,
resonance increases the ease with which sound is transmitted. This is not a good thing.

There are two basic ways to deal with resonances:

A. Damp them - This reduces their magnitude and therefore reduces the sound exiting the wall on the
other side. There are Visco-elastic damping compounds available as well as commercially available
pre-damped drywall and flooring. As a side note, limp mass materials are not effective at damping the
resonances of walls.
B. Move them - If we lower the resonance frequency of a wall by employing principals # 1, 2 and 3, we
are less likely to encounter sound at those lower frequencies. This will reduce the opportunity to have that
wall resonate.

Principal Number 5 - Conduction:

Another important principle of sound isolation, and the last, is conduction. Conduction plays a role in keeping
common wood stud walls (not decoupled) from attaining a high level of performance. The drywall conducts
vibration to the studs, which transfer it to the other side, keeping performance low.
Outside of the performance of walls, conduction plays a large role in flanking noise – noise traveling from one
room to another by some path other than the direct.
To reduce the conduction of a structure, you can either insert mechanical breaks (like cuts), or raise the
damping of the structure (damping dissipates the energy as it travels, lowering conduction considerably, often
to the point where it is irrelevant)

In a previous CEDIA tip we discussed this in more detail, but this diagram says it all:
To minimize the amount
of vibration that becomes
“structure-borne” it is
important to treat the surfaces
on the sound source side.
No partition can ever
perform better than the
level of Flanking Noise. In
the scenario to left, no
modification you can make
to the wall will help improve
sound isolation. This is
because it isn’t the wall that
is failing; it is because the
adjacent surfaces are failing.
The only way to improve on
the situation is to increase
the transmission loss of the
flanking pathways.

Noise through duckwork

Structural noise via framework
Noise via Concrete Slabs
Direct noise as measured in a lab

Getting the most out of these 5 principles:

Well above we saw the five basic principles of sound isolation. We can distill these 5 principles into 4
basic areas of improvement that can be made in a partition. To improve things, you can
1. Increase the mass of the partition
2. Add decoupling where there previously was none
3. Add absorption where there previously was none, or increase the level of absorption
4. Add mechanical damping to the system
Anything that doesn’t accomplish one of those 4 things will not help your cause, and in general, anything
that doesn’t make a LARGE improvement in one of those won’t help your cause very much. For example,
if you already have R19 insulation in a ceiling cavity, adding 2” of mineral fiber won’t make a dramatic
improvement.
In our next CEDIA tip, we will take an in-depth look at how to best
MEMBER OF
use each of these 4 points of improvement to our best advantage. CUSTOM
We’ll look at how they interact, and how you can best utilize your ELECTRONIC
clients resources of money and space. DESIGN &

Good luck and we hope you enjoyed the tip. www.audioalloy.com

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Phone: 989-832-1602 | info@audioalloy.com | www.audioalloy.com