Thin Walls, Would Sound Absorbing / Acoustic Panels Help?

[TTesla]

The hallway leading to my apartment is relatively busy, and I can clearly hear people coming in and out and anything they're saying, so I assume the same is true the other way around.

 

I am wondering what I can do to fix this? Would sound absorbing / acoustic panels help? If so, what do you recommend, assuming I'm not made of money?

 

EDIT: If it would work, do I need 1 in or 2in?

[Slottr]

Imo they cost wayyyy to much per panel

 

What you can do is find some thick blankets and hang them on the walls

[TTesla]

2 minutes ago, Slottr said:

Imo they cost wayyyy to much per panel

 

What you can do is find some thick blankets and hang them on the walls

Yeah I saw this video where a guy does this with towels, and they even look good on the wall and do better than anything else. Any recommendations on how to execute the blanket idea without making my place look disgusting? I don't really have the woodworking tools to make frames like the video did

 

[Slottr]

Just now, TeenTesla said:

 

There's two ways to go about it,

 

1. Do what my roommate and I did: we can't put nails in the walls so we got those 3m adhesive picture hooks, cut small holes in each corner of the blanket, placed the blankets on the hooks and tied them down with some elastic twine

 

2. Just throw a nail or 4 in each corner on the wall

[TTesla]

Just now, Slottr said:

There's two ways to go about it,

 

1. Do what my roommate and I did: we can't put nails in the walls so we got those 3m adhesive picture hooks, cut small holes in each corner of the blanket, placed the blankets on the hooks and tied them down with some elastic twine

 

2. Just throw a nail or 4 in each corner on the wall

Ok that's exactly what I imagined when I thought of "disgusting"

maybe I'm overreacting though, what does your setup look like?

I don't really care about nails in the wall I guess.

[Slottr]

Just now, TeenTesla said:

Ok that's exactly what I imagined when I thought of "disgusting"

maybe I'm overreacting though, what does your setup look like?

I don't really care about nails in the wall I guess.

Hahaha that's fair

If I were home tonight I throw a pic, but I'm not

 

It doesn't look too bad though, just find a blanket or towel or whatever with a pattern or colour you like, maybe one to match your wall colour < which is what we did

Grey on grey

[TTesla]

Just now, Slottr said:

Hahaha that's fair

If I were home tonight I throw a pic, but I'm not

 

It doesn't look too bad though, just find a blanket or towel or whatever with a pattern or colour you like, maybe one to match your wall colour < which is what we did

Grey on grey

I feel like the frame in the video is the only thing that redeems it, and makes a world of difference. I don't mind a cool blanket on the wall or whatever, I'm really just concerned about the edges. I want sharp, straight edges like you'd get from a frame, and not like you'd get from a folded blanket haha. But maybe there is another solution I haven't thought of?

Any ideas there?

[Slottr]

Just now, TeenTesla said:

I feel like the frame in the video is the only thing that redeems it, and makes a world of difference. I don't mind a cool blanket on the wall or whatever, I'm really just concerned about the edges. I want sharp, straight edges like you'd get from a frame, and not like you'd get from a folded blanket haha. But maybe there is another solution I haven't thought of?

Any ideas there?

If you really want that frame look, if you go to a large hardware store that cuts wood, you can give them the dimensions of the pieces you need cut and they'll do it for you- then you just put it together

[TTesla]

1 minute ago, Slottr said:

If you really want that frame look, if you go to a large hardware store that cuts wood, you can give them the dimensions of the pieces you need cut and they'll do it for you- then you just put it together

Great idea! Then I can actually just straight up follow the video, mix towels & blankets / whatever is cheap, and cover it with a cool print! This seems like a fun project too!

[Spuriae]

Thin room treatment panels are for dispersing reflected sound internally; they won't do much to isolate you from external noise sources. It takes a massive amount of material to truly absorb sound energy. Generally to keep sound in free air from moving in or out of an area, you want reflective isolation (dense, solid walls). Foam and soft panels are used either to treat a room for recording (reduce the unwanted reflections from the walls) or in large anecholic chambers which have enough space for foam to properly absorb sound (you need several feet of foam to attenuate effectively at low frequencies).

 

The only practical way to decouple sound I can think of for an apartment is to use rubber liners to seal any open air space (beneath doors and the like) giving air free passage between the spaces. Mass loading or mechanically isolating walls and windows so they resonate less would be ideal, but it's not something I imagine you could reasonably do in an apartment.

[TTesla]

20 minutes ago, Nimrodor said:

Thin room treatment panels are for dispersing reflected sound internally; they won't do much to isolate you from external noise sources. It takes a massive amount of material to truly absorb sound energy. Generally to keep sound in free air from moving in or out of an area, you want reflective isolation (dense, solid walls). Foam and soft panels are used either to treat a room for recording (reduce the unwanted reflections from the walls) or in large anecholic chambers which have enough space for foam to properly absorb sound (you need several feet of foam to attenuate effectively at low frequencies).

 

The only practical way to decouple sound I can think of for an apartment is to use rubber liners to seal any open air space (beneath doors and the like) giving air free passage between the spaces. Mass loading or mechanically isolating walls and windows so they resonate less would be ideal, but it's not something I imagine you could reasonably do in an apartment.

Wait, so what do the towel panels do then? If they reduce unwanted reflections from the wall, how do they do that if not by absorbing the sound?

I feel like the video demonstrated that towels would absorb a good amount of sound going through them, as the test was based on X material in between speaker at various freq. and microphone.

[Spuriae]

31 minutes ago, TeenTesla said:

Wait, so what do the towel panels do then? If they reduce unwanted reflections from the wall, how do they do that if not by absorbing the sound?

I feel like the video demonstrated that towels would absorb a good amount of sound going through them, as the test was based on X material in between speaker at various freq. and microphone.

Repeating the same test with a solid piece of plywood would give an even better result than the DIY panel for the same reason that the panel gave better results than the acoustic foam.

[TTesla]

20 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

Repeating the same test with a solid piece of plywood would give an even better result than the DIY panel for the same reason that the panel gave better results than the acoustic foam.

So why shouldn't I hang up these things if they help significantly, even if having thicker walls would help more? It's not like I can change the latter...

[Spuriae]

20 hours ago, TeenTesla said:

So why shouldn't I hang up these things if they help significantly, even if having thicker walls would help more? It's not like I can change the latter...

The key is that the DIY panel won the comparison because a thick towel is significantly higher density and thus better isolating than the foam. The effects of true sound absorption are miniscule at this scale (in fact, it's a physical impossibility). Hanging heavy blankets helps more due to the mass loading and additional solid barrier they represent than because they innately disperse energy.

 

The panels will deaden reverb within your room, but that's not the effect you're looking for. As for why the towels work, they still reflect less sound, less coherently than the solid walls. There's a reason professional studio panels are made of foam despite them being the "worst" material in the video's tests; the video's methods do not test for absorption at all.

 

 

[TTesla]

2 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

The key is that the DIY panel won the comparison because a thick towel is significantly higher density and thus better isolating than the foam. The effects of true sound absorption are miniscule at this scale (in fact, it's a physical impossibility). Hanging heavy blankets helps more due to the mass loading and additional solid barrier they represent than because they innately disperse energy.

 

The panels will deaden reverb within your room, but that's not the effect you're looking for. As for why the towels work, they still reflect less sound, less coherently than the solid walls. There's a reason professional studio panels are made of foam despite them being the "worst" material in the video's tests; the video's methods do not test for absorption at all.

 

 

So what should I do?

[dev1234567890]

Build another wall with a 1 or 2 inch gap in front of the wall in question. Insulate it with acoustic batts and double sheet it with 13mm acoustic plasterboard. If you can mechanically fix it off inside the apartment and seal all sides it will work very well for medium cost. If you can't mechanically fix it then use fittings that decouple it from the floor ceiling and walls completely and seal around the gaps with rubber seals.

 

Do you have budget in mind for this?

[TTesla]

On 4/7/2019 at 9:39 PM, dev1234567890 said:

Build another wall with a 1 or 2 inch gap in front of the wall in question. Insulate it with acoustic batts and double sheet it with 13mm acoustic plasterboard. If you can mechanically fix it off inside the apartment and seal all sides it will work very well for medium cost. If you can't mechanically fix it then use fittings that decouple it from the floor ceiling and walls completely and seal around the gaps with rubber seals.

 

Do you have budget in mind for this?

Do you know what an apartment is?

I am renting this place, and I'm not even supposed to make a hole in the wall... nevermind make a whole new wall damn