Member
· Västra Götaland
· 1 710 posts
I have skimmed through many threads about soundproofing in existing buildings but hardly any that address new constructions.
We will soon be erecting the structural frame and building our stick-built house. We still have the chance to design the interior walls and floor structures exactly as we want, and now the thoughts have turned to soundproofing.
The house has two floors. It's about standard soundproofing in a villa, i.e., both impact noise and voice noise, as well as washing machines and the like.
Proposed construction:
Floor structures: Parquet/Tiles - Felt paper - Floor chipboard 22 mm, Wooden joist 220 mm cc 60, with cellulose spray insulation - Batten - Ceiling gypsum board
Interior walls: Gypsum - OSB - stud 95 mm - OSB - Gypsum. Steel beams in floor/ceiling, wood in between. Cellulose as insulation, or alternative solution.
I am willing to make changes to improve it now, once everything is fully built, it will NOT happen...
What would you have done to make it quieter?
We will soon be erecting the structural frame and building our stick-built house. We still have the chance to design the interior walls and floor structures exactly as we want, and now the thoughts have turned to soundproofing.
The house has two floors. It's about standard soundproofing in a villa, i.e., both impact noise and voice noise, as well as washing machines and the like.
Proposed construction:
Floor structures: Parquet/Tiles - Felt paper - Floor chipboard 22 mm, Wooden joist 220 mm cc 60, with cellulose spray insulation - Batten - Ceiling gypsum board
Interior walls: Gypsum - OSB - stud 95 mm - OSB - Gypsum. Steel beams in floor/ceiling, wood in between. Cellulose as insulation, or alternative solution.
I am willing to make changes to improve it now, once everything is fully built, it will NOT happen...
What would you have done to make it quieter?
I think you've thought this through really well! One thing that many people forget is that doors generally let through a lot of noise. Consider investing in well-insulated interior doors for bathrooms and the laundry room. Another trick is to put up insulating canvas paintings or wall panels designed as modern art, expensive but good at dampening high-frequency sounds like children's play and such. 
In my new build, I went with an extra layer of drywall in the boiler room/laundry room, and the walls that go into the rest of the house have 95mm insulation. I imagine it is definitely quieter than many other places I've visited. At the same time, washing machines and other appliances get quieter with each new model that is released.
Member
· Västra Götaland
· 1 710 posts
I have tried to read through the Gyproc handbook before but unfortunately can't quite grasp it. So I would gladly welcome your valuable tips on this subject.
Heavy materials (rubber, tar, etc.) effectively dampen many frequencies, including low ones. It is also important to have many layers, preferably with air in between so that sound waves can bounce off the surfaces and thus be further dampened. Just like with thermal bridges, you should avoid sound bridges.
Differentiate between soundproofing and sound absorption. Soundproofing is about how it affects the other side of the wall, etc., while sound absorption is about how it affects the room. In a normally furnished house with standard ceiling height, there often isn't much need for more sound absorption—exceptions include sparsely furnished rooms, rooms with high ceilings, or rooms where you want the audio system to sound better. Photo-printed wall absorbers from companies like Akustikmiljö in Falkenberg or Akustiktryck, lamella curtains from Absoflex, or perforated gypsum boards with spackled edges like Danoline Designpanel 900 M2F are, in my opinion, solutions that work well as sound absorbers in a home environment.
However, what you are likely looking for is soundPROOFING. The question is how well you want it—ranging from not being bad to being fantastic!
Floor construction: Not bad - do as you planned, but make sure it's sealed. Very good - replace sparse paneling with acoustic profiles (note! follow the instructions!!!) and glue a layer of floor gypsum above the chipboard floor, and have two layers of gypsum on the ceiling. It will still be good even if you skip the floor gypsum, but it won't be as good for impact sound horizontally on the upper floor.
Walls: Not bad - ensure it's sealed. Place a 70 mm mineral wool board in the middle of each stud bay—you don't need to fill the wall with wool or eco-fiber. Very good - use steel acoustic studs, such as Gyproc XR, Europrofil SP, Danogips MR, and fill the wall to 70% with mineral wool board. If you can skip OSB and just use gypsum boards (2 layers on each side of the wall), you can achieve very good results even with wooden studs, but then you should have 600 mm stud spacing! In that case, mount the first layer horizontally to be able to screw into the studs. With OSB and wooden studs, you won't get very good soundproofing (the rigidity allows sound waves to effectively couple between the air and the wall).
Then you should consider whether to have soundproofing on the doors as well. Regular standard interior doors have about 10-15 dB soundproofing = poor. Very good - get sound-rated doors in class R'w 35 dB. However, think about ventilation = you usually need overhead air vents because a soundproof door is also airtight. A very good solution is to embed a small ventilation duct with a sound trap in the floor construction and a disc vent on either side of the wall. A suitable solution, though, is a class R'w 30 dB door and a sound-dampened overhead air vent - in my opinion, Casamja rectangular overhead air vent 50x500 mm works reasonably well in a residence for a bedroom, etc. In a passive house, you also likely have air supply vents in the rooms = sound trap between vents in different rooms on the same duct. Furthermore, don't forget to dimension air supply in the bedroom to a maximum of 20-24 dBA! Sound-rated doors aren't free, but maybe not all rooms need to be soundproofed? Used options are also available from demolition companies from offices, schools, and healthcare facilities.
Gyproc Handbook has many good tips and important details but may naturally be a bit too professional for a layperson.
Good luck with your house!
However, what you are likely looking for is soundPROOFING. The question is how well you want it—ranging from not being bad to being fantastic!
Floor construction: Not bad - do as you planned, but make sure it's sealed. Very good - replace sparse paneling with acoustic profiles (note! follow the instructions!!!) and glue a layer of floor gypsum above the chipboard floor, and have two layers of gypsum on the ceiling. It will still be good even if you skip the floor gypsum, but it won't be as good for impact sound horizontally on the upper floor.
Walls: Not bad - ensure it's sealed. Place a 70 mm mineral wool board in the middle of each stud bay—you don't need to fill the wall with wool or eco-fiber. Very good - use steel acoustic studs, such as Gyproc XR, Europrofil SP, Danogips MR, and fill the wall to 70% with mineral wool board. If you can skip OSB and just use gypsum boards (2 layers on each side of the wall), you can achieve very good results even with wooden studs, but then you should have 600 mm stud spacing! In that case, mount the first layer horizontally to be able to screw into the studs. With OSB and wooden studs, you won't get very good soundproofing (the rigidity allows sound waves to effectively couple between the air and the wall).
Then you should consider whether to have soundproofing on the doors as well. Regular standard interior doors have about 10-15 dB soundproofing = poor. Very good - get sound-rated doors in class R'w 35 dB. However, think about ventilation = you usually need overhead air vents because a soundproof door is also airtight. A very good solution is to embed a small ventilation duct with a sound trap in the floor construction and a disc vent on either side of the wall. A suitable solution, though, is a class R'w 30 dB door and a sound-dampened overhead air vent - in my opinion, Casamja rectangular overhead air vent 50x500 mm works reasonably well in a residence for a bedroom, etc. In a passive house, you also likely have air supply vents in the rooms = sound trap between vents in different rooms on the same duct. Furthermore, don't forget to dimension air supply in the bedroom to a maximum of 20-24 dBA! Sound-rated doors aren't free, but maybe not all rooms need to be soundproofed? Used options are also available from demolition companies from offices, schools, and healthcare facilities.
Gyproc Handbook has many good tips and important details but may naturally be a bit too professional for a layperson.
Good luck with your house!
Last edited:
Member
· Västra Götaland
· 1 710 posts
Wow, first post on the forum and such an amazingly detailed response. Big thanks to you for taking the time, I appreciate it more than you might think.
I really want OSB, but I can always add two layers of gypsum on particularly exposed spots.
I know that two separate interior walls with an air gap are the most ideal. When you write 70 mm insulation (or 70%) I assume that’s the effect you are aiming for. But at the same time, people talk a lot about mass/weight being important. That equation doesn’t really add up for me.
It will likely be quieter and more expensive doors in some places yes. However, I’ve thought a lot about this with the ventilation. Supply air in bedrooms, etc., and exhaust air in wet rooms+kitchen means you have to arrange for airflows between the rooms = difficult to soundproof. It might be, as you say, that you need to install transfer registers with soundproofing between the inside and outside of the door/room. It seems completely logical when you think about it. This would mean not only registers from the supply/extract ventilation but also these room-connecting registers where you want quiet. But it's probably worth it.
I’ll check what acoustic profiles cost, assume they are a form of corrugated metal profile. Extra gypsum both above and below is a good tip, plus it doesn’t affect all other choices at this stage and can be done and planned once I have a sealed house.
Regular steel studs probably end up somewhere between wood and specially made sound studs. Definitely worth looking into.
I really want OSB, but I can always add two layers of gypsum on particularly exposed spots.
I know that two separate interior walls with an air gap are the most ideal. When you write 70 mm insulation (or 70%) I assume that’s the effect you are aiming for. But at the same time, people talk a lot about mass/weight being important. That equation doesn’t really add up for me.
It will likely be quieter and more expensive doors in some places yes. However, I’ve thought a lot about this with the ventilation. Supply air in bedrooms, etc., and exhaust air in wet rooms+kitchen means you have to arrange for airflows between the rooms = difficult to soundproof. It might be, as you say, that you need to install transfer registers with soundproofing between the inside and outside of the door/room. It seems completely logical when you think about it. This would mean not only registers from the supply/extract ventilation but also these room-connecting registers where you want quiet. But it's probably worth it.
Good post by Bo Gärdhagen! Just adding a little clarification.
As previously mentioned, it's important to distinguish between acoustic regulation (the reverberation time inside the room) and sound insulation Rw, which refers to sound reduction between two rooms. Rw is a weighted value and works well in most cases, except when low-frequency noise from, for example, machines needs to be isolated. It was previously mentioned about adding sound-absorbing material to the room. If broadband sound absorption is added, the total sound level in the room will actually decrease by a few dB within the frequency range of speech (depending on how much is added). However, this is not where the focus should be if one wants to achieve good sound insulation.
The principle of soundproofing is based on building a completely airtight shell with the heaviest and stiffest materials possible so that the construction has a resonance frequency as low as possible (at and below the resonance frequency, almost all sound goes straight through). Another important principle is to decouple the building elements from each other so that there is no rigid mechanical contact between them. Simply put, one could say that a room's total Rw will never be higher than its weakest link. In practice, this means that all building elements must maintain the same reduction value; for example, if walls and floors are built for Rw 35, doors and vent solutions must also maintain the same Rw.
PARTITION WALLS
For a standard villa, if possible, build a double wall with 2x70 mm studs, c/c 600, and an air gap in between. The construction would then be 2 plasterboards / stud with loosely packed wall insulation in the cavities / air gap / stud with loosely packed wall insulation in the cavities / 2 plasterboards. Note that the insulation should be loosely packed (20 - 45 kg m3) as its function is to absorb the resonance formed between the plasterboards. Mount the boards staggered with overlap in the joints and leave a 5 mm gap around. Seal with flexible mastic! It's the mass of the boards that's crucial, so if you want to reduce thickness, you can use fire-resistant plasterboard, or even better, Fermacell plasterboard.
Another option, if you want to build more compactly, is as previously mentioned, resilient acoustic studs. The Z-profile has a decoupling effect, and the plaster acts as a membrane. See, for example, Gyproc's tables when you've decided which Rw you want to achieve.
FLOOR FRAMING
Strengthen and reinforce so that the floor is as rigid as possible. Lay Ceminwood instead of ordinary chipboard (CW has a much higher density vs. chipboard). This way, you can skip the floor plasterboard. Then place a step isolation mat before the floating surface layer.
CEILING FRAMING
Good tip by BO with resilient channels instead of sparse lath. 2 layers of plasterboard.
VENTILATION
The silencers available on the market are okay for dampening sound within the speech range. Install the longest silencers possible (= better sound reduction) in connection, flush against the wall or ceiling. As Bo mentioned, sound-rated doors require separate air transfer, and the most effective ones are those built of MDF or plasterboard, like a "periscope" with sound-absorbing material inside.
.As previously mentioned, it's important to distinguish between acoustic regulation (the reverberation time inside the room) and sound insulation Rw, which refers to sound reduction between two rooms. Rw is a weighted value and works well in most cases, except when low-frequency noise from, for example, machines needs to be isolated. It was previously mentioned about adding sound-absorbing material to the room. If broadband sound absorption is added, the total sound level in the room will actually decrease by a few dB within the frequency range of speech (depending on how much is added). However, this is not where the focus should be if one wants to achieve good sound insulation.
The principle of soundproofing is based on building a completely airtight shell with the heaviest and stiffest materials possible so that the construction has a resonance frequency as low as possible (at and below the resonance frequency, almost all sound goes straight through). Another important principle is to decouple the building elements from each other so that there is no rigid mechanical contact between them. Simply put, one could say that a room's total Rw will never be higher than its weakest link. In practice, this means that all building elements must maintain the same reduction value; for example, if walls and floors are built for Rw 35, doors and vent solutions must also maintain the same Rw.
PARTITION WALLS
For a standard villa, if possible, build a double wall with 2x70 mm studs, c/c 600, and an air gap in between. The construction would then be 2 plasterboards / stud with loosely packed wall insulation in the cavities / air gap / stud with loosely packed wall insulation in the cavities / 2 plasterboards. Note that the insulation should be loosely packed (20 - 45 kg m3) as its function is to absorb the resonance formed between the plasterboards. Mount the boards staggered with overlap in the joints and leave a 5 mm gap around. Seal with flexible mastic! It's the mass of the boards that's crucial, so if you want to reduce thickness, you can use fire-resistant plasterboard, or even better, Fermacell plasterboard.
Another option, if you want to build more compactly, is as previously mentioned, resilient acoustic studs. The Z-profile has a decoupling effect, and the plaster acts as a membrane. See, for example, Gyproc's tables when you've decided which Rw you want to achieve.
FLOOR FRAMING
Strengthen and reinforce so that the floor is as rigid as possible. Lay Ceminwood instead of ordinary chipboard (CW has a much higher density vs. chipboard). This way, you can skip the floor plasterboard. Then place a step isolation mat before the floating surface layer.
CEILING FRAMING
Good tip by BO with resilient channels instead of sparse lath. 2 layers of plasterboard.
VENTILATION
The silencers available on the market are okay for dampening sound within the speech range. Install the longest silencers possible (= better sound reduction) in connection, flush against the wall or ceiling. As Bo mentioned, sound-rated doors require separate air transfer, and the most effective ones are those built of MDF or plasterboard, like a "periscope" with sound-absorbing material inside.
Hello Hiltimannen. You've got a few things mixed up, although you're quite right about many:
- You write: "The principle of soundproofing is to build a completely airtight shell with the heaviest and stiffest materials possible so that the construction has the lowest possible resonance frequency (at and below the resonance frequency, almost all sound goes straight through). "
Yes, weight is good. But no, we do NOT want stiff materials (unless they are very rigid and heavy like concrete), it is the stiffness that makes OSB worsen. Soft materials connect less to the air = better soundproofing. Low resonance frequency, indeed, because at resonance there is a more or less substantial deterioration, but below it is not as bad. And above it gets up to 12 dB better per octave => 1 octave lower resonance gives in first-order theory 12 dB better wall.
- further: "... the total Rw of a room is never higher than its weakest link. This practically means that all building elements must maintain the same reduction value, for example, if walls and floors are built for Rw 35 then doors and ventilation solutions must also hold that Rw."
No. Rw is sound reduction per unit area, so a 35 dB door on 2 m2 in a 44 dB wall on 10 m2 is normally cost-effective because the door is much more expensive to improve than the wall, and in the wonderful mathematics of the decibel, the sum becomes 40 dB. But a 10 dB poor door in a 44 dB wall is no better than the same in a 25 dB wall. However, we shouldn't have an acoustics course, more than that walls should normally be chosen about 10 dB better than doors and windows.
- continues: double stud frames in walls in a house are normally very much over the top unless building a recording studio (or certain cases, see below), but then you should hire a construction acoustics consultant to get it right. That's hardly what martinradbo is after. Soundproof metal studs are effective and convenient. Double gypsum board is much easier to work with than the very expensive fireproof gypsum. Fermacell I have very limited experience with, but as I've understood it, it's not for the home builder.
- Ceminwood can be a solution, but is not fun to work with, and you should definitely not put Stepisol in a wooden joist as the effect is almost zero. It's good when you need to meet apartment-dividing values and pour leveling on it, or under a floating floor on a concrete joist. Hardly a solution for martinradbo.
Now to your questions martinradbo:
Regular metal studs are about 3-6 dB worse than soundproof studs, and for you, the price difference is hardly noticeable. Wooden studs you may need in load-bearing walls - then use c600 mm there if soundproofing is important and use 6 mm plywood + double gypsum board if you want easy screwing and good soundproofing.
Divide all panel materials that pass through the wall position to a soundproof wall; otherwise, you'll have flanking transmission that punctures the soundproofing. If possible, do the same with floors and ceilings.
More than about 70% filling degree of insulation in a wall does not provide noticeable improvement, but the budget version of just stuffing some mineral wool (1 pc 1200x450x70 mm in each stud bay) gives only a few dB less than 70%. Regular wall wool is best, like Paroc UNS37 or Isover Piano.
Great mass in the form of several layers of gypsum board on each side of a double stud frame is best, but it takes floor area and is often over the top. Unless you haven't got the floor plan together in any other way than you need to insulate a bedroom right next to a home theater room, a utility room with a ground source heat pump, or a wall-mounted kitchen cabinet - absolutely! But between most rooms in a house, it's overkill!
Cheers
Bo (construction acoustics consultant for 18 years)
- You write: "The principle of soundproofing is to build a completely airtight shell with the heaviest and stiffest materials possible so that the construction has the lowest possible resonance frequency (at and below the resonance frequency, almost all sound goes straight through). "
Yes, weight is good. But no, we do NOT want stiff materials (unless they are very rigid and heavy like concrete), it is the stiffness that makes OSB worsen. Soft materials connect less to the air = better soundproofing. Low resonance frequency, indeed, because at resonance there is a more or less substantial deterioration, but below it is not as bad. And above it gets up to 12 dB better per octave => 1 octave lower resonance gives in first-order theory 12 dB better wall.
- further: "... the total Rw of a room is never higher than its weakest link. This practically means that all building elements must maintain the same reduction value, for example, if walls and floors are built for Rw 35 then doors and ventilation solutions must also hold that Rw."
No. Rw is sound reduction per unit area, so a 35 dB door on 2 m2 in a 44 dB wall on 10 m2 is normally cost-effective because the door is much more expensive to improve than the wall, and in the wonderful mathematics of the decibel, the sum becomes 40 dB. But a 10 dB poor door in a 44 dB wall is no better than the same in a 25 dB wall. However, we shouldn't have an acoustics course, more than that walls should normally be chosen about 10 dB better than doors and windows.
- continues: double stud frames in walls in a house are normally very much over the top unless building a recording studio (or certain cases, see below), but then you should hire a construction acoustics consultant to get it right. That's hardly what martinradbo is after. Soundproof metal studs are effective and convenient. Double gypsum board is much easier to work with than the very expensive fireproof gypsum. Fermacell I have very limited experience with, but as I've understood it, it's not for the home builder.
- Ceminwood can be a solution, but is not fun to work with, and you should definitely not put Stepisol in a wooden joist as the effect is almost zero. It's good when you need to meet apartment-dividing values and pour leveling on it, or under a floating floor on a concrete joist. Hardly a solution for martinradbo.
Now to your questions martinradbo:
Regular metal studs are about 3-6 dB worse than soundproof studs, and for you, the price difference is hardly noticeable. Wooden studs you may need in load-bearing walls - then use c600 mm there if soundproofing is important and use 6 mm plywood + double gypsum board if you want easy screwing and good soundproofing.
Divide all panel materials that pass through the wall position to a soundproof wall; otherwise, you'll have flanking transmission that punctures the soundproofing. If possible, do the same with floors and ceilings.
More than about 70% filling degree of insulation in a wall does not provide noticeable improvement, but the budget version of just stuffing some mineral wool (1 pc 1200x450x70 mm in each stud bay) gives only a few dB less than 70%. Regular wall wool is best, like Paroc UNS37 or Isover Piano.
Great mass in the form of several layers of gypsum board on each side of a double stud frame is best, but it takes floor area and is often over the top. Unless you haven't got the floor plan together in any other way than you need to insulate a bedroom right next to a home theater room, a utility room with a ground source heat pump, or a wall-mounted kitchen cabinet - absolutely! But between most rooms in a house, it's overkill!
Cheers
Bo (construction acoustics consultant for 18 years)
Imagine if the moderators would be kind enough to pin or somehow preserve this type of post.
90% of the threads here on BH contain a lot of oddities that just go in circles. This is obviously because those who really know these things and work with them daily soon get tired of answering the same things all the time.
90% of the threads here on BH contain a lot of oddities that just go in circles. This is obviously because those who really know these things and work with them daily soon get tired of answering the same things all the time.
@ Bo Gärdhagen
I read the thread starter's first post and realize that your response is closer to what the thread starter is asking for (soundproofing of speech, etc.) compared to the suggestions I made. However, if it's about isolating air and flanking noise generated from, for example, a powerful sound system, I would probably stick to what I wrote. I work within the studio construction field and know the importance of a low resonance frequency in building elements. There are different schools and measurements, with or without damping adhesives, etc., but soundproofing for low frequencies is difficult and, as mentioned, requires mass, and if the construction is decoupled, rigid shells. As always, it is important to define which sound or sounds you want to dampen and by how much.
I read the thread starter's first post and realize that your response is closer to what the thread starter is asking for (soundproofing of speech, etc.) compared to the suggestions I made. However, if it's about isolating air and flanking noise generated from, for example, a powerful sound system, I would probably stick to what I wrote. I work within the studio construction field and know the importance of a low resonance frequency in building elements. There are different schools and measurements, with or without damping adhesives, etc., but soundproofing for low frequencies is difficult and, as mentioned, requires mass, and if the construction is decoupled, rigid shells. As always, it is important to define which sound or sounds you want to dampen and by how much.
Last edited:
Member
· Västra Götaland
· 1 710 posts
Thank you for your detailed responses.
We're not building a hard rock studio right next to a meditation room, but not all rooms can be far apart in a typical house...
For instance, an office room ends up under the bedroom, and you want to be able to type hard on the keyboard and talk loudly on the phone while someone is sleeping two meters above. TV room against a hallway upstairs; nice to be able to contain most of the TV sound. Laundry room quite close to the living room; nice not to hear those machines too much. A technical room with various FTX units, water pumps, etc., isn't close to any bedrooms but should still be reasonably soundproofed.
I will look for reasonable soundrails for the wall and instead of sparse panelling in the ceiling. Double gypsum boards (and OSB) will probably be used in some cases, easy to just slap up. Both on the walls and ceiling.
Overhead vents, completely passive, between two rooms, are you suggesting building square channels out of, for example, MDF and lining them with some form of sound-absorbing mat, like engine room insulation? For the active FTX ventilation, I'll need to consult the supplier, but surely there should be decent sound dampers and such on it. I hate the sound of hissing fans.
The only thing I still don't understand is the amount of insulation. I was convinced that it's better with heavy eco-fiber in the floor than to use light glass wool boards? It seems like it should be the same in the wall. But when you say I should use light airy boards, and even choose 70 mm for a 95 mm wall, it makes me uncertain. Sorry to ask again, but it's unfortunately not entirely clear to me.
We're not building a hard rock studio right next to a meditation room, but not all rooms can be far apart in a typical house...
For instance, an office room ends up under the bedroom, and you want to be able to type hard on the keyboard and talk loudly on the phone while someone is sleeping two meters above. TV room against a hallway upstairs; nice to be able to contain most of the TV sound. Laundry room quite close to the living room; nice not to hear those machines too much. A technical room with various FTX units, water pumps, etc., isn't close to any bedrooms but should still be reasonably soundproofed.
I will look for reasonable soundrails for the wall and instead of sparse panelling in the ceiling. Double gypsum boards (and OSB) will probably be used in some cases, easy to just slap up. Both on the walls and ceiling.
Overhead vents, completely passive, between two rooms, are you suggesting building square channels out of, for example, MDF and lining them with some form of sound-absorbing mat, like engine room insulation? For the active FTX ventilation, I'll need to consult the supplier, but surely there should be decent sound dampers and such on it. I hate the sound of hissing fans.
The only thing I still don't understand is the amount of insulation. I was convinced that it's better with heavy eco-fiber in the floor than to use light glass wool boards? It seems like it should be the same in the wall. But when you say I should use light airy boards, and even choose 70 mm for a 95 mm wall, it makes me uncertain. Sorry to ask again, but it's unfortunately not entirely clear to me.
Regarding your last paragraph, I quote what I wrote in another thread that also fits here.
There are two different types of wall constructions. Either you build a massive wall that is dense with high weight, or you build a double construction according to the mass-spring principle. The double construction is the common one with heavy surface layers of gypsum boards with as soft a spring as possible, i.e., absorbing mineral wool. You want a lightweight material that absorbs internal resonances and not something semi-heavy that transfers vibrations. Of course, you can fill the wall with concrete, but then it becomes too heavy. The usual solution is to increase the surface layer weight with more layers of gypsum and seal with acrylic sealant, EPDM strips, and possibly a different design of the studs.
You have to keep in mind that small changes/improvements in the construction can weaken it in other ways and ultimately may not give a desirable result. For example, a floating overlay reduces the stiffness of the floor compared to if the floor joists had been screwed.
Read here and it will probably become clearer: http://www.traguiden.se/TGtemplates/popup1spalt.aspx?id=1028
There are two different types of wall constructions. Either you build a massive wall that is dense with high weight, or you build a double construction according to the mass-spring principle. The double construction is the common one with heavy surface layers of gypsum boards with as soft a spring as possible, i.e., absorbing mineral wool. You want a lightweight material that absorbs internal resonances and not something semi-heavy that transfers vibrations. Of course, you can fill the wall with concrete, but then it becomes too heavy. The usual solution is to increase the surface layer weight with more layers of gypsum and seal with acrylic sealant, EPDM strips, and possibly a different design of the studs.
You have to keep in mind that small changes/improvements in the construction can weaken it in other ways and ultimately may not give a desirable result. For example, a floating overlay reduces the stiffness of the floor compared to if the floor joists had been screwed.
Read here and it will probably become clearer: http://www.traguiden.se/TGtemplates/popup1spalt.aspx?id=1028