by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: June 16, 2008   Last Updated: May 20, 2009

With the availability of so many movies these days for home use, many home owners are creating hi-tech home theaters and the aspect of soundproofing is quite an important one since this adds to the enjoyment. The noise which a family makes elsewhere in the home can take away all the enjoyment of home theater, making the whole set up amateur at best, though with current methods available to home owners, it really isn't hard to think of what they can do to help the travel of sound in a home theater.

*Planning
*Escape points.
*Walls.
*Flooring
*Speaker vibration.

The planning stages of making a home theater into a place of calm where the family can tuck themselves away from the world should include the provision of soundproofing measure before the theater equipment is installed. This will make a difference to the whole concept since you will lose a certain amount of the space allotted to the theater and knowing what this will be is vital to the success of the layout.

In the planning stages, imagine the room you have chosen with walls of extra thickness. Effectively this makes the room smaller, and your plans should allow for this.

*Escape points.

Now look at where sound escapes from rooms. Modern doors are often hollow, and this doesn't hold back the sound very well. Replacing these with solid doors will cut down the travel of sound. Similarly windows with single glazing will not be very good at holding back sound, and should be changed to those with a double pane with a space between them.

One element which can be taken into consideration when replacing doors is that the added thickness of the door frame will be increased and it may be possible to add two doors, one opening inwards and one opening outwards to increase sound proofing quality. Metallic doors are available for home theaters, though many people do not have the resources to pay for these expensive items.

Air gaps in walls allow sound to pass, so in the process of building any stud walls, these escape points should be addressed as described below.

*Walls.

The traditional way of lining a wall is with stud-work. Although stud-work and drywall help in soundproofing, a different method of stud-work works more effectively, in that placing the studs in a manner where they are staggered, one to one side of the wall and one to the other means that vibration is cut down to a minimum. Having a base and ceiling board of adequate width, the alternate studs are placed against existing walls, and studs

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