Should I decouple the walls?

I'm getting contradictory information on this site. Should I bolt the walls to my (non-floating) wood floor? Or should I use neoprene between the floor and walls? From what I understand, building code dictates that the wall studs be fastened to the floor but this simultaneously negates the effect of any material you put under the walls. Should I just bolt the walls to the floor and be done with it? Please help.

That's not your only buffer point though - you could have RC in between the frame and the Wallboards. The wallboards would not touch the wooden floor to transfer vibrations. Making sure that your wall layers don't touch your floorboard is important here though: trim work done after the fact is included.. I believe I've seen (in research) bolt mechanisms that have a wide hole in the bottom plate so the shaft of the screw doesn't contact the bottom plate and the screw tightens on a cupped washer which has a neoprene absorber between that and the frame. - then you'd also have to have pucks underneath. Calculation for tension and weight would be a pain here though - you could have too much weight coming down on too few pads which would decrease TL.. none of this is expert opinion. only pointers to what you might look for.

Hi Speedo If your floor is a slab on grade then you may bolt your plate to the floor. If you want to put neoprene under it certainly won't hurt but i doubt it would be exetremely benifical. By measurable results that is. See it takes a lot of energy (very high sound level) before the concrete slab begins to vibrate and transmit that vibration to your walls plates. In fact you will hear the sound thru your walls way before the concrete slabs even begin to vibrate. Simply because your walls have a lot less mass than your floor and will require less energy to vibrate. Unless you are willing to put a lot of money and built walls that have the same mass as your concrete slab then no you don't have to do that. regards