My old listening room was in a condo and my primary concern was isolation so as not to bother the neighbors. Now that I'm trying to make an existing home theater room in our new house sound good, I realize how good my old room was. Here's what I did:
The listening room was in a concrete basement with about 7'6" from floor to ceiling. I ran felt strips across all of the floor joists and put R13 insulation between them. Then I used 5/8" MDF panels cut in 4' x 4' sections. In each of the panels, I drilled five 5/16" holes - one near each corner and one near the center. These holes were large enough that the mounting screw would not touch the MDF. Then for each hole, I used a self drilling screw, a large metal washer and two large rubber washers. The panels were put up so that the felt isolated it from the floor joists and the rubber washers isolated them from the mounting screws. After they were all up, I sealed the whole thing with silicon RTV. Then I ran furring strips and put up acoustic tiles. I used track lighting to avoid leakage from recessed lights.
Off the subject a little, the rest of the room was standard room within a room studs and sheetrock with staggered studs on the one set of support beams. In the upper corners where the walls were shared with adjacent condo units, I put in some rubberized sound deadening material that is normally used to sound insulate ducts in large buildings.
The room might be considered somewhat dead to many people but it stepped right out of the way of my system and I wish I could reproduce it's qualities in my new home.
The listening room was in a concrete basement with about 7'6" from floor to ceiling. I ran felt strips across all of the floor joists and put R13 insulation between them. Then I used 5/8" MDF panels cut in 4' x 4' sections. In each of the panels, I drilled five 5/16" holes - one near each corner and one near the center. These holes were large enough that the mounting screw would not touch the MDF. Then for each hole, I used a self drilling screw, a large metal washer and two large rubber washers. The panels were put up so that the felt isolated it from the floor joists and the rubber washers isolated them from the mounting screws. After they were all up, I sealed the whole thing with silicon RTV. Then I ran furring strips and put up acoustic tiles. I used track lighting to avoid leakage from recessed lights.
Off the subject a little, the rest of the room was standard room within a room studs and sheetrock with staggered studs on the one set of support beams. In the upper corners where the walls were shared with adjacent condo units, I put in some rubberized sound deadening material that is normally used to sound insulate ducts in large buildings.
The room might be considered somewhat dead to many people but it stepped right out of the way of my system and I wish I could reproduce it's qualities in my new home.