Couple quick questions about building walls.

i have recently come accross around 400 sqaure feet of carpet, and carpet padding, (i assume thats what the soft stuff that goes under it is called.) i was wondering if i could use that while building a wall, as in, i have a control room, and a live room, .. basement, 7.5 inch ceiling, if i were to build two walls around the perimiter of both rooms,.. could i use plywood instead of gypsum, or dry wall? havent seen much about it, so im assuming no,..but that would be great, because plywood is in excess for me at the moment, and also, could i use the carpet between layers of plywood, (or dry wall if plywood is unnacceptable), i.e. first layer of plywood with vertical seems, carpet, second layer of plywood horizontal seems, carpet, third layer of plywood, (not sure which seems,) then sound treatment. i am pretty sure i have read that carpet hung on the walls decreases the high frequencies of that room, but of course, i could be, and probably am, wrong. please any information of this ghetto way of sound proofing will be greatly appreciated. Colin

Colin, it's not obvious from the reference materials we have posted, but acoustically, carpet (when used between layers of mass, such as plywood, gypsum, etc) is considered AIR - so your construction idea would create a mass-air-mass-air-mass (or worse) partition, which would suffer quite a bit in the low frequency isolation. Another problem is that carpet likes to be a good home for dust, mites, mold, fungus, etc, and should NEVER be placed in a location where it can't BREATHE. As far as using plywood, you would just need to use MORE of it - if 2 layers of 5/8 gypsum would work, it would take 3 layers of ply (including proper SEALING of each layer's cracks, etc) to get about the same result. If you've not already read the very TOP announcement in this forum, it will lead you to an understanding of general concepts of isolation that will help with a lot of your questions... Steve