Staggered stud and/or rc-1

Hi everyone... I am in the starting phases of building a garage practice/recording room. I only have about 14ft by 19ft and need to try to sound proof it for the neighbors. My garage is 2x4 studs at the moment. I saw an idea about adding a 2x2 to the base and top plates, then adding a second set of 16"oc studs. I also read about resilient channel as another method to decouple the inner wall from the outer. And the third was doubling up on the drywall IE... 2 5/8s sheets (most expensive). My questions are. 1) Which method yield the best sound proofing from best to worst? 2) If I could only do two of the three which would be the best two. Probably answered in one...lol 3) is there a diminishing return as I doo more and more? I am not opposed to spending money but would rather not waste it. thanks...jam

Study the sticky threads.

Hey jamminji - I'll say this much... I tried staggered studs and was very disappointed. The top plate connects the inner and outer stud. If I had someone tap on an inner stud and went outside to listen, I could hear it coming from the common top plate. I ended up doing a second wall with a 1" air space. I'm sorry I ever bothered with staggerd studs... they are not even close to the isolation you get with a double wall. I have no experience with the RC channel. Creatch

Thanks for the reply... I have been reading all the stickys but still felt I needed to ask this question, because I habve not "found" the answer in the stickys. I was thinking the same thing about the plates. So yours saying... if I were to NOT go the full inner wall idea, then I should just save that money and go RC on the existing studs. I have other areas that I can put the money for sure! Odd though, as in my reading, they seem to imply that the staggard stud idea works well. jam

Creature82 wrote:

Hey jamminji - I'll say this much... I tried staggered studs and was very disappointed. The top plate connects the inner and outer stud. If I had someone tap on an inner stud and went outside to listen, I could hear it coming from the common top plate. I ended up doing a second wall with a 1" air space. I'm sorry I ever bothered with staggerd studs... they are not even close to the isolation you get with a double wall. I have no experience with the RC channel. Creatch

Note that the added distance between leaves is another big advantage to having a standalone frame, and that distance is every bit as important as the amount of mass and the manner of decoupling. --Keith :mrgreen:

So would I correct in saying that the difference in interior sq footage between the staggard stud idea and a full inner wall would be the extra 2" for the 2x4 plates, (instead of a 2x2 placed next to existing 2x4 plate) and the 1" space between the two walls? So I would only be losing an additional 3 inches around the room given that all other building aspects are the same? I think I could live with that and the cost would be virtually the same as a staggard stud wall, from a material point of view. jam PS... I uodated my profile with my location... Sacramento CA

Cool -- a fellow Sack o' Tomato dude. :-) Whereabouts? I'm in North Natomas. --Keith :mrgreen:

You should read through Keith's thread, particularly the parts about adding "beef" between studs on outer walls - if you add a couple layers of drywall between each stud cavity on your existing frames, then leave an inch (or more, if you can) and put up a second frame with a couple layers of drywall on the INSIDE of that frame, and put strapped-in fiberglass insulation in all the stud cavities in both frames, you should be in good shape. In the stickies/reference section there are numerous threads on HOW to do this type construction - caulking, layer placement, joints, etc... Steve

He may become one the of the lucky few to see the Sharward Partial Garage Conversion live and in person, actually. 8) --Keith :mrgreen: