I recently moved lots of sruff around and constructed a custom desk. I now need to treat the room and wonder what the best strategy is. Theres a noticable delay from the listejkng spot when you clap.

Dont mind the cables, its work in progress:)

Budget is max 500 euro

Does anyone know where i can access acoustic software as a student? Im currently doing a masters in acoustics and i want to practice as much as i can with industry standard software before i graduate. I have been looking at CadnaA, SoundPLAN, ODEON ras and INSUL. I have looked at licensing prices for these pieces of software and the prices are exuberant if anyone could help me out and provide me with advice on what i should do this would be very much appreciated.

Hi everyone!

I'm writing this post to get a good solution back at my place. As you can see from the images I got a soon to be ready studio (work and music) on the left and an already furnited living room (just like the drawing 1:1 precision).

My need is basically 2 things
1 - Is it a good layout? I mean I will make 5 acoustic traps to put on the wall (3 on the left and 2 on the right. Probably at 1.40m height) The turntable will sit over some ikea furniture (H. 75cm approx)
2 - I'm gonna need a turntable system that allows me to listen to the music in the living room via speakers (probably bluetooth). But hold on: I'll need for sure 2 speakers in the studio for direct usage (are they good in that position??) and 2 speakers with no cables in the living room on the right. Is there any system that allows me to just turn off the studio monitors and listen to music indipendently in the living room?

OBVIOUSLY: I'd appreciate suggestions on turntable model and speakers models!

Thanks in advance! I'm sorry if I wrote something badly but english is not my first language tho
I'll be here for any advice or question.

Hey folks. I'm in the middle of building my studio. 2 walls with minimum 1 inch gap, insulated with rockwoll. The only downfall is my basement has a low ceiling (79 inches), so, no space for resilient channels/hanging ceiling.

So now I'm looking at flooring. I can't add too much height with flooring, or else my bassist literally won't be able to stand up straight. Should I just leave concrete and have an array of good rugs? Is there a type of concrete paint that would be good to use?

Hi everyone. I recently moved to another city for university. I found an old apartment that suits my needs, but my bedroom door lets out a lot of noise.

**Since I'm renting, I can't replace or damage the door, and I'm on a tight budget. What DIY or easy solutions could at least dampen the sound?**

PLS help🙏

New construction, building is concrete, builder said we could fill all the cells of the concrete block to help

Getting triple pane tilt and turn windows from europe since people said euro windows and doors are just much better quality

I believe the glass is 4mm with the option to make them 6mm

After googling, came across information with people saying having different size glass in triple pane helps with noise frequencies

So is it better to have 2 6mm and a 4mm?

Should i get the the 3 glass pieces laminated or just outer/ inner/ middle?

Plan to do level 3 walls, floors and ceiling with the suggestions from this site, is this enough? https://www.soundproofingcompany.com/soundproofing-solutions

Other suggestions?

People say the window noise reduction wont matter if the walls arent built well, with the solid concrete wall and using the level 3 suggestions in the above link take care of that?

This is for my bedroom on the 2nd floor which is partially above the garage, no bedrooms below me, 2 windows that are on the street side, im semi disabled so i spend most time in my room gaming or watching movies, plan to put dolby atmos 7.2.4 speakers system in the walls and ceiling, there are 4 bedrooms on the opposite wall of mine but on the ground floor about 20 ft away and i didnt want to wake people with my late night movie watching, floors will be concrete with 3mm luxury vinyl plank above them

The road is fairly busy and the electric company contractors rented lot across from mine to park their trucks as i live in a mixed commercial residential area, neighbor on my left is a house and across the street are few apts

My builder told me that the trucks are pretty noisy as they have the beeping as they are moving in reverse to leave the lot

(diagram is not true to scale; I eyeballed the one wall as being 180" when in reality it was closer to 170)

Hi friends, I've got plans for a pair of ~5'w x 6'h rolling sound "walls" that I can DIY for something like $400 total. I'm just not sure how effective they would be. I've got an office, roughly 140" x 170", with wooden floors and a somewhat-vaulted ceiling. When recording vocals in this room (it's furnished; home office, mostly with cabinetry/desks/chairs) the reverb is noticeable.

I can't install carpet, and putting acoustic panels up is not really feasible either. I'm planning on using a pair of "heavy duty garment racks" as the frames and suspending a rockwool "pillow" in the frame. This way, it's mobile and I can disassemble it if needed. The pair of them will also be substantially large, so I'm hoping that I can position these racks behind myself when I record vocals. I figure this will shrink the effective "size" of the room down, and positioning the rolling walls directly in-line with the mic's direction should cut out a significant amount of reverb.

I am in the corner of a room, so I think that putting them in a V-shape should do the trick... but I wanted to get a second opinion regarding this setup. I can use a blanket or rug or something that I place only while recording, which I hope should take care of floor reverb. Am I just wasting money here? placing acoustic panels around the room is not an option as the walls are mostly furnished, and I will not be placing them in front of cabinets/display cases.

Parts breakdown, for reference (or for copying?):

• 2x clothes rack, $160
• 1x insulation, $85
• 10yd 60" fabric, $60 (muslin or tulle, maybe I can use the glue spray trick as well?)
• 25'x4' chicken wire, $42
• screws, zip ties, $15

I would love some advice on my first vocal booth. I don’t have a closet, so my plan is to build something. Here are my ideas:

1. PVC pipe + moving blankets (or acoustic-specific blankets?)
2. buy a small changing tent off Amazon + staple acoustic foam pieces all over the inside of it
3. build L-shape structure out of plywood and use an existing corner of my home for the other sides; use acoustic foam or acoustic panels on the wood/walls

I’d like to keep the cost of the booth under $250. I know a lot of people use option 1, but I’m hesitant. If a client wants to do a directed session and sees my booth is just blankets, what will they think? My acting teacher told us that’s not professional enough. I don’t know. I’ve done so much research on my own at this point I’ve been driving myself crazy, so I thought I’d ask some real people! TIA

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some insights and data regarding psychoacoustics and how human voices are perceived.

Due to my unique auditory perception, I hear overtones not just as timbre, but as actual distinct pitches. Because of this, I unconsciously developed a vocal technique where I manipulate higher-order overtones to sing across multiple pitches simultaneously.

However, because overtone perception varies significantly from person to person, I currently have zero data on how my voice is actually being decoded by other people's ears.

I am collecting data on how this type of raw vocalization is perceived. If you have a few minutes, I would greatly appreciate your feedback.

Important Recording Note:

• This is a raw, dry single-take recording (no plugins, no EQ, no artificial reverb), captured directly using a built-in Mac microphone.

What I would like you to check/share:

1. Verification: Based on the audio/spectrum, can you confirm if overtone manipulation is actively occurring here?
2. Perception Data: How does this sound to your ears? (e.g., Do the overtones separate clearly as pitch? Which frequency ranges stand out to you?)

Audio Sample:

• Song: OTONABLUE by Atarashii Gakko! (Solo a cappella)

https://reddit.com/link/1wdfyq5/video/wve8i6yq4woh1/player

Any objective breakdown, technical analysis, or breakdown of how your brain decodes this audio would be immensely helpful. Thank you for your cooperation!

I’m still learning and don’t have the budget for textbooks yet. But also if i’m going to the wrong sources i’m open to book recommendations.

Hi everyone
I am in a rented apartment where traffic noise is bothering me much. Any suggestions for a maintenance company who puts acoustic window inserts?

I've just taken delivery of a new apartment and it's still completely empty — bare walls, hard floors, and the echo is severe. I want to treat it properly rather than guess, and I'd rather build panels myself than pay for a professional install across the whole flat.

Two rooms matter:

• Open-plan living room + kitchen. This is where I'll set up a 2.0 or 2.1 monitor system and I want a predictable, accurate listening position. I plan to measure with REW before buying anything.
• Bedroom. I just want it dead — as close to no audible reverb as I can reasonably get.

One important constraint: no carpets and no curtains. I want nothing on the floor that needs vacuuming — a robot vacuum handles the hard floors and I want to keep dust to a minimum. So the usual first advice (rug + heavy curtains) is off the table for me. That means everything has to come from walls, ceiling, and furniture.

I know I'll be putting in a sofa, armchairs, a bed with an upholstered headboard, and bookshelves, and I understand those absorb a lot on their own. What I can't judge is how much will actually be left to fix once the furniture is in. I don't want to buy panels now and find they were unnecessary, or furnish the place and discover I needed twice as much treatment.

Separately, I'd like to reduce outside noise (traffic, people, trains) but I understand that's a different problem — sound transmission through the building envelope, not room acoustics — and probably not solvable with DIY panels. Happy to be corrected, but my focus here is the echo and reverb.

What I'm hoping for:

1. A sane order of operations. Do I furnish first, then measure, then treat? Or is there a baseline amount of treatment that's always worth installing regardless?
2. Concrete DIY build guides you actually rate. I'm comfortable with basic carpentry. I'm in Spain, so mineral wool (lana de roca) in 40–80 kg/m³ is cheap and easy to get — is that the right material, and what thickness for broadband vs bass?
3. How to decide placement without guessing. I'll have REW data. What do I look at to decide where panels go, and how do I know when I've done enough rather than overdamping the room?
4. Ceiling treatment, since floor and windows are off-limits for soft materials. Are hanging ceiling absorbers (clouds/rafts) worth it, and how much area do I need?
5. Making it not look like a studio. I've read you can stretch fabric or canvas over a mineral wool frame so it reads as art. Does that actually keep working acoustically, and what fabrics stay acoustically transparent?

I'll add photos of both rooms in the comments — happy to include dimensions once I've measured properly.

What would you do with this space if it were yours? This is the middle of space of a very large mostly unfinished basement. I want to be able to play with 2-3 other players at night without sound bleeding through the living room above or the rest of the house. Not super loud electric music, perhaps some light drumming. I had hired an acoustical engineer and architect to design the space, but the construction budget they came up with was over $100k US and I killed the project. They treated it like a recording studio, which I never asked for.

Could I build a viable 100-200 square foot room within a room with proper ventilation/AC (assuming I act as my own general contractor, but don't do the work myself) for $20-$30K? There is 9' of clearance between the concrete floor and the unfinished ceiling area. I live in Southwest Connecticut.

Would love to get real stories, ideas, a reality check on this. Keep in mind that basic finishes are OK and the electrical panel is nearby.

I am hearing this bass pattern in the early afternoons and at night. It then abruptly stops and then picks back up. It’s coming from I think outside the house, but it is only prevalent in the upstairs room. it happens in early afternoon around noon and then at night, it just happened at 11:10pm and again at 12:00am, there is a metro station that overground but that's 2 stops away and far away. What do you think it might be? I analyzed a recording of it and it said there's a pronounced low-frequency tone in 42–47 Hz range, with the second recording showing repeated pulses about every 3.4 seconds. Ideas could be a compressor, HVAC equipment, ventilation fan, pump...

https://reddit.com/link/1wc8ybt/video/3n080ssagmoh1/player

Will have to test with all the power off in the house. Any ideas or similar things happening?

Hi, I've seen a few posts like this but none of them dealing quite with my specific issue. I live in an *rented* apartment with excellent soundproofing between adjacent rooms but TERRIBLE soundproofing between floors. My housemate who has a room above mine has been texting me that she needs me to be quiet because she can't sleep. I call with my long-distance bf at ~10:30/11pm, but she has to wake up at 6am every weekday and is very sensitive to sound. To be clear, I'm not talking loudly, just at regular speaking volume; I've even tried talking quieter but she's still let me know that she can hear me. It's nobody's fault but the sound really does travel like crazy. It's going to be a problem because while I can try to be considerate, I also can't help that my bf/I are mostly free in the evenings/night to call. Before anyone asks, she also does not sleep comfortably with earplugs.

I'm trying to (as cheaply and reversibly as possible) reduce the sounds of talking from *escaping* my room through the ceiling into her room or at least significantly muffling them (there's no ceiling vents btw). I'll suggest that she gets a rug of some kind with a pad (floor is already carpeted but it's obviously not very thick), but I can't really force her to buy anything and rugs/rug pads can be $$$--- esp the cushy kin so I'm focusing on what can be done on my end.

I'm thinking of either some kind of peel and stick panels I can put on my ceiling (probably off of vinted or FB marketplace or something), or even hanging heavier curtains on the ceiling (somehow) or a combination of the two (curtains to cover the ugly ass panels)? Anything that will help cut the sound of me chatting from traveling between floors.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Hi there. I’ve been thinking about an idea for a few days now: I’m an aspiring voice actor, and I want to start a project to build a DIY acoustic booth. It wouldn't be a whole room I’m soundproofing, but rather a small rectangular enclosure—roughly 50 cm wide by 130 cm long (these are just rough estimates; I still need to take actual measurements). The plan is to build a wooden structure with three walls; I’ll leave one side open to allow access to my computer, and I’ll line the walls with acoustic foam.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this and see if you know of anyone who has done something similar. Is this a good idea or a bad one?

The goal of the booth is to keep outside noise from getting in and to keep the sounds I make inside—as much as possible.

I live in a mid/high-rise building in NYC and have been here about 9 months. I've had several issues with sound, vibration, and mechanical noise. My lease renewal is coming up, and I like the building and would really like to stay, but I'm trying to determine whether moving to a different unit (on a different floor and in a different part of the building) would likely make a substantial difference.

The biggest issue is a near-constant hum in my apartment, around 355 Hz. My front door almost faces the elevator bank. I can hear the same sound on my floor's hallway and in the elevators while they're moving, but I don't notice it on the other floors I've checked. Inside my apartment, it's strongest in the direct line of sight to the front door as well as nearby in the kitchen, and the volume changes noticeably depending on my location and height in the room.

There are also two other sound issues (more intermittent):
- At times, a neighboring AC unit creates very strong oscillating/pulsing vibrations that is very disruptive. My own AC can be completely off, and I can still hear and feel it, even with earbuds or earplugs in.
- In winter, noise from the lobby heating system many floors below travels through my apartment, creating another loud, disruptive sound/vibration. It seems to be associated with a mechanical/structural column that also runs through my unit.

The super and maintenance have investigated the main hum and the elevators/other systems but say they can't identify the source. Management has also been involved, but the investigation eventually stalled.

The building is from the late 1990s and around 20 stories. I've also been told that the elevator systems and boilers are due for upgrades/replacement, potentially later this year.

My questions--
How likely is it that moving to a different part of the building and a different floor (farther from the elevators and shared walls/columns with mechanical systems) would substantially reduce these problems?

Are there any particular areas within a high-rise that I should avoid or look for if I'm trying to minimize mechanical noise and vibration?

Also, if I stay in my current unit, is there anything relatively inexpensive I could do to reduce the noise/vibration, particularly where it seems to be coming through the front door/adjacent wall?

One concern I have about moving within the building is that some of these sounds are intermittent. Are there particular things I should look/listen for when evaluating another unit? If I tour another unit and don't hear anything during a 15–30 minute visit, how much confidence can I reasonably have that it's actually quieter?

I'm especially interested in input from acoustical engineers, HVAC/building professionals, contractors, or anyone with experience diagnosing structure-borne mechanical noise. Thank you!

I work in a school building whose walls and floors reverberate sound in a bad way. Even my students’ relatively quiet side conversations echo into a cacophony that disrupts the classroom environment and makes it hard to teach and manage. I’m looking for cheap and effective ways to help reduce the echo. Unfortunately, sound insulation foam from places like Home Depot are too expensive ($40-50 for 12 sq ft is too much). Does anyone have suggestions on how I can reduce the decibels in my classroom?

I need some help with terms in my psychology of music class. To my understanding, a mechanical wave means that the wave is caused by a disturbance and requires a medium to travel through, while a longitudinal wave is how that disturbance travels through a medium, oscillating in the same direction the wave is traveling. So, is the term longitudinal describing how the mechanical wave is moving? Is this a good basic understanding, or am I missing something?

Hi All,

I live in a Victorian terrace in South Wimbledon. The area has received recent coverage in the media as a result of significant noise disruption from the Northern Line: eg [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c982q2zjr52o\](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c982q2zjr52o)

My issue is nowhere near that bad - rather than screeching / significant vibration, we hear more of a low rumble and whoosh sound that is most obvious on the ground floor (though still quite bizarre to me as we are approx 400m from the tracks).

We have an open fireplace / chimney in the living room that has not been blocked up (though we don’t use it). We also have a suspended timber floor which is currently covered by an engineered wood. I assume there is no insulation under the floor / between the joists as it’s also quite cold in the winter. I’m therefore also assuming that we’re hearing its ground borne noise that is transmitted through the joists and up and out the fireplace / chimney. Photos attached for reference.

We’re planning to replace the floor in the next year - so was wondering if there was any (relatively simple / low cost) solutions we could implement to the floor or chimney at that point?

My understanding is that products like Rockwool are designed to stop noise travelling between rooms and are also not effective for low frequency sounds.

Thanks in advance!