Mass, decoupling and absorption explained in plain English — plus the products that get sold as soundproofing and simply are not.
Egg boxes and foam tiles change how a room sounds. They do nothing at all about what comes through the wall.
Two different problems
Airborne noise is voices, television, music, barking. It travels as pressure waves through air and through the material of the wall.
Impact noise is footsteps, chair legs, doors, a dropped phone. It is vibration travelling through the structure itself.
They need different treatments, which is why a job that only addresses one of them often disappoints. Almost every noise complaint we survey in Basingstoke turns out to be a mixture.
The three things that genuinely work
Mass. Heavy things are harder to vibrate. Layered acoustic plasterboard, dense boards, high-density mineral wool.
Decoupling. If the new surface never touches the old one, vibration cannot cross. Independent frames, resilient bars, acoustic hangers. This is the part people skip, and it is usually the part that matters most.
Absorption. Dense mineral wool in the cavity kills the resonance inside the void. It supports mass and decoupling; on its own it does very little.
Get all three and you get a wall that works. Get one and you get a wall that is slightly better.
What does not work
Egg boxes and foam tiles change how a room sounds to someone standing inside it. They do nothing at all about what comes through the wall from next door. The same goes for thin self-adhesive "acoustic" rolls, heavy curtains over a party wall, and filling a cavity with standard loft insulation and hoping.
The detail that ruins good work
Sound behaves like water: it finds the gap. A perfectly built acoustic wall with an unsealed socket box, a skirting screwed hard through to the original wall, or an untreated perimeter joint will leak, and the difference is audible. Flanking — sound going round your new wall via the floor and ceiling — is the other common reason a job underperforms.
Being realistic
Nothing removes 100% of sound. What a properly designed treatment does is drop the noise below the level at which your brain keeps noticing it. That is the honest target, and at survey we tell you whether your particular construction can reach it.
Related service
Soundproofing Basingstoke
Acoustic insulation for walls, floors & ceilings
See Soundproofing Basingstoke
