John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

No - if you want any decent sound isolation AT ALL, your options are only ONE - the TOTAL construction must have only TWO places where any kind of mass is placed, and only ONE air gap. This INCLUDES whatever is already there. You can put as many LAYERS of wallboard in each of these two places as you need or want, but ALL of your mass needs to be in only TWO places, one of which is your outside wall. You can add layers inside that outer wall if they TOUCH the outer layer, and you could put 5 thicknesses of wallboard on the INNER wall mass, but "take E", which I forgot to label, is an example of how NOT to do it. That is a "triple leaf" wall, and it will COST you more in materials and LOSE you a LOT of sound proofing.

Only A,B,C or D are good ways of building sound walls. I'm not sure how else to put it, only DON'T have more than ONE air space TOTAL.

In order for that second air space between layers of mass NOT to matter, the air space would need to be about 100 FEET WIDE or more... Steve

done and done, sorry i just wasn't sure whether e was bad because it was touching or becauise there were three masses to it but now i do, that heaps better now that its cheaper and theres a heaps bigger air cavatiy
thanks for all your help man once i get it done i might post some pics
cheers
mike

Cool, pix are always welcome... Steve