Building a Home Theater or a Recording Studio with our Sound Barrier Products, Has Never Been Easier or More Affordable

Goal: You have an interest in building a recording studio or home theater that maximizes the sound quality within your room, while minimizing the amount of noise bleeding in or out.

Solution: Treat the walls of the recording studio or the home theater first with sound barrier material to contain and isolate your room's noise. Then mount our acoustical panels and/or ceiling tiles as an exposed finished surface to help balance and condition your recording studio or home theater for maximum sound quality.

The first step in building a recording studio is to determine whether the common walls will need to be treated with sound transmission loss ceiling tiles products. Will noise be leaking into or out of the room? If so, review our section on how to block recording studio sound from bleeding through common walls, and refer to our dB-Bloc acoustical barrier material. Call the consultants at NetWell and ask about layering this material into wall surfaces for a recording studio.

Next, treat the walls with surface mounted acoustical panels or ceiling mounted ceiling tiles. NetWell's array of high-quality acoustical panels and ceiling tiles are designed to attenuate unwanted sound reverberations within the room, and maximize the quality and condition of the sounds you produce in your recording studio.

Do not apply acoustical panels to your inner wall surfaces if your only goal is to prevent noise bleeding into or out of the room. These products absorb echo, they don't block original sound. The acoustical panels and ceiling tiles discussed below will attenuate reverberation and maximize the quality of your home theater or recording studio sound.

The following sound absorption products are ideal for maximizing sound quality within a home theater, music studio, or recording studio setting:

1. Pyramids . These acoustical panels are 2'x2' squares of open cell polyurethane foam.

Measure the overall wall space in your home theater and divide by 8. The corresponding number is the total number you need to install when building a home recording studio. The coverage will total 50% of your wall space. Place the tiles as you wish around the room; do what you like cosmetically and don't worry about placement. Remember, noise travels like a pebble wave in a pond, every direction at 700 miles per hour.

Coverage is key, not location. It might be wise to cover concrete block walls before drywall. Remember, concrete absorbs less than 3% of your noise. Drywall absorbs about 8%. The Pyramids will absorb up to 85%. Keep in mind that LOW BASS tones are always the primary culprit, and the 3" Pyramids are four times as absorptive as the 2" Pyramids at the low 125 hertz range.

2. Bass Trap Contours compliment the Pyramids. These are 12"x12" triangular cuts of 4' tall foam with a 14" wide fluted front. Cut from the same foam as the Pyramids and designed to enhance extreme low bass tones, these pieces stack in corners and attack bass energy.

3. Fabric Panels . The alternative product for home theater absorption is a fiberglass-based product called Fabric Panels. These are cloth wrapped, compressed fiberglass boards cut to any size and mounted around the perimeter of your room. You can install full wall coverage if you wish, but it's not necessary. Opt for the 2" thickness to maximize low bass tones. Again, you'll quadruple low bass absorption by opting for the 2" thickness over the 1" thickness. The advantage with this product over the Pyramids is that the Fabric Panels are rigid, decorative, available in 48 colors, and don't have the "foam" look. The disadvantage is that they are twice the price of the Pyramids. These Fabric Panels are comparable to what you see on side walls at your local movie theater. The difference is you do NOT need full wall coverage, and theater settings tend to go wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

4. Ceiling Tiles . These 2'x2' square cuts of open cell melamine foam ceiling tiles are designed for either a drop in grid system installed in your ceiling, or as a glue on tiles to be applied directly to a flat finished ceiling. In either case, these ceiling tiles are ideal for combating unwanted sound reflection within your home theater surround sound room. Call our consultants and inquire about the ability to paint ceiling tiles any color you seek. Their natural color is white

Check out all these products and let us know if you have any questions.

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