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RE: Unfinished basement ceiling ideas please

Posted by David Aiken (A) on March 7, 2010 at 12:37:07

In Reply to: Unfinished basement ceiling ideas please posted by dmzwizard@yahoo.com on March 7, 2010 at 07:10:19:

What are you trying to achieve?

If you're trying to stop transmission of sound to the room above the basement, what you're suggesting won't achieve that goal.

If you're trying to modify the sound within the basement, then placing insulation between alternate joists in the ceiling isn't the usual approach. Normally you would treat areas of the wall and/or ceiling which are causing issues of some kind. Usually that is the first reflection points on the room surfaces and placing bass traps in the corners where they are most effective. If those points are the only areas treated, and absorption which operates over a broad frequency range is used,then the room should not end up sounding dead. The reason for rooms sounding dead after acoustic treatment is often because the absorption used was too narrow band, absorbing highs only or highs and the upper mids, which results in the reflected sound having a very different frequency spectrum to the direct sound.

If you're only going to treat the ceiling, you don't want to treat the whole ceiling, and you aren't concerned about sound travelling through to the room above. then treat the first reflection area which will be on the ceiling probably mid-way between you and the speakers. Leave an air space between the insulation and the ceiling since that will improve the effectiveness of the absorption and help it cover a wider frequency bandwidth than placing the insulation directly in contact with the ceiling. A 4" gap is a good space to aim for if you can achieve it.

Ideally though, I think you need to consider what kind of result you're aiming for and then design the treatment to achieve that aim. If you're running into problems at high volume, probably the best starting point is turning the volume down. Small spaces don't handle high sound levels as well as larger spaces and your basement is a small space. Acoustic treatment can help achieve the sense of a bigger space in some ways but if what you're chasing is high sound levels it may not help you achieve what you want since absorption lowers the sound level in the room and that means you're simply going to turn things up again in order to get the sound levels you want. You may get closer to what you want by adding bass traps and treating the first reflection points on the walls as well, and possibly the floor depending on what kind of floor it is and what your floor coverings are, but there is a limit to how loud you can play things in a small space without running into issues because of the limited size of the space, even if the space is acoustically treated.




David Aiken

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