French Doors

We just added false walls on a duplex. The noise to/from the attached house was tremendous. It worked amazingly well. Very simple 2 day job and you would never be able to tell that it was done at all. We just lost 6 inches of space. 1 inch air gap, 4 inch framed wall with insulation and 1/2 inch drywall on each side. gave us a chance to upgrade the wiring too. Cost was minimal.

On an inside wall, packing 6" of insulation in a 2" by 4" stud wall makes a good difference too. Double the 1/2" or 5/8" sheetrock helps a lot. The wall has a thud type of sound (knocking on it), instead of that hollow sound. It's not the best, but works wonders vs. standard, and fairly cheap. They have a sheetrock that is made for this (sound dampening), but I can't remember the name or never heard it work. It might be QuietRock. [http://www.quietrock.com/drywall.html]

How did it all work out?

Lars,
I will be getting the french-doors installed in the next week. Frankly I do not know how it will work out, since this room is kind of small (13 X 12). I envy all the people with big/medium rooms. But I will have to look at some good room treatments, since this is my home and not an apartment, where it was not an option. My wife seems to be fine with me spending on room treatments. So once the door is done, I will focus on room treatments.

Seems to me you've got some great options. Small, high quality front ported monitors might be just the ticket. I'd love to hear a pair of Totem Model Ones set up in your room. A small subwoofer would be fun to play with, especially if you plan to listen with the door open as well as closed. The smaller size of your room will also allow you to experiment with much lower powered amplification, perhaps single ended triodes, etc. depending on your speakers. Anyway, nice talking with you.