Soundproofing the floors

Audio Systems
21

I have heard great feedback on the Dutch HTforum about these, one guy bought them and doesn’t have his nextdoor neighbour complaining about his music anymore. I’m sure you could get them on loan from a nearby dealer.

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22

Thanks @PAR @jandersonhill @August

I will give it a try, once my new speakers are in for a home demo.

23

Did not like them at all when I tried them under my previous speakers (Magico V3)

24

It is trial and error, I have to see.

But I have good hope out of experience. I have IsoAcoustics Apertas under my desktop monitors, and the desktop is completely vibration free.

25

In my system it seemed to slow the music down and the transients rounded off. (Less sharp)

And I like the speakers to stand as stable as possible, with the gaia’s it gets a bit wobbly.

Have to say I sold the Gaia’s to another Magico V3 owner, and he let me know that he was happy with the result.

26

IsoAcoustics has a scientific report in which they compare results between IsoAcoustics isolation and spikes:

27

For sure the Gaia’s will influence the way vibrations are being transfered to the floor, but I did not like what it did to the sound of my system.

Most of the demo’s that I have listened too were with Focal speakers. I bought them because I liked the difference observed during the demo’s.

Just try them yourself and see if you like the results SQ wise.

28

Two small contributions on this:

  1. In the past I had my system in a basement and had the ceiling soundproofed professionally. It did reduce the sound in the room above but certainly didn’t eliminate it. I found sound to be a bit like water … it finds the slightest gap to seep through.
  2. Don’t make the mistake a builder made for me when working in a different house. I requested he used ‘sound absorbing’ material for a new ceiling in my music room. He thought I wanted to stop sound getting through to the room above. In fact I wasn’t bothered about that at all. I wanted to reduce the ‘echo’ in the music room. He fitted sound reflecting material which increased the echo. Very disappointing!
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29

Good points, Nick.

One consultant insisted on applying a heavy top layer onto our wooden floor. When I made the maths… it would have made our floor collapsing, way too heavy (1300 kg/ sq m.)

The second one came up with the solution to change the ceiling of our downstairs neighbours, at our expense.

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30

Everyone outside of my audio circles who have asked about the sound absorbing panels to treat early reflections has re-interpreted that as ‘noise insulation’, so I know where you’re coming from!

31

Wow, that’s the equivalent of stacking several parked cars side-by-side on a wooden floor and hoping for the best!

32

Anyway, he guaranteed us there would be no more micro vibrations. Indeed, just one mega :upside_down_face:

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33

The outcome would crush you (in more ways than one).

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34

So, I think the outcome is that one ideally wants a floating floor with some really dense fire-retardant insulation between the floors and not to expect it to eliminate all noise.

I suspect the family could live with this, as long as the noise levels are curtailed to a point the children can sleep! It will likely help in my case that there is a dividing wall between my study and the children’s room. The snag may come later when they want their own rooms and one (unlucky chap) will end up directly above my study!

Thanks for all the feedback :smile:

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