Posts Tagged ‘Acoustical Foam’
Soundproof Flooring And Acoustical Foam – The Secrets To Get A Great Home Theater Experience
Even if there is no one living below your home theater room, it is still important to have soundproof flooring or acoustic flooring in your media room or home theater. The reason is not so much for preventing the sound to come in or go out through the floor but to prevent the sound reflections from the floor. The reflections are especially strong with tiled floor, or hard wood floor, or in general any hard floor. You will be able to reduce reflections significantly by carpeting your floor with a thick, heavy carpet. The other option is to use underlayment, below the carpet, such as cork underlayment, or special acoustic plastic underlayment.
You can place acoustic foam on the walls, and on the ceiling of your media room. Acoustical foam is a specially designed foam, made of just the right size bubbles, and the right materials to maximally absorb the range of frequencies from the lowest bass to the highest audible pitch. The best of foams are shaped with outwards protruding spikes or acoustic foam pyramids which increases the surface area of the foam, and thereby increase the absorption of the sound.
Two reasons, first, prevent the sound to escape the room. Why is that important? Well not so much for the sake of your experience but rather for the experience of others. You will want to have loud sound in your home theater for a better immersive experience, at least in some films. But then, without soundproofing, the sound will leak out and will adversely affect the people who are not watching the film at the time. So you want to prevent that.
Second, you want to prevent the sound to be reflected off the walls, the ceiling and the floor. Why is it important to prevent as many sound reflections in your home theater room as possible? Think about your HDTV screen. Think about your large screen projector. Think about why you are putting money into them. The reason is accurate reproduction of the experience that was intended by the director, the actors, and the whole crew.