Soundproofing Your Home Theater or Media Room

Soundproofing Your Media Room

Your home theater or your media room is somewhere you can go to hang out watch movies or play games with family and friends. It’s nice when you’re in there, but when you’re watching movies on full blast it’s probably annoying to anyone who’s not in the room with you. If you’re interested in no longer annoying your spouse, kids or house guests every time you want to use your theater or media room, we have some quick and easy soundproofing tips for you

Soundproofing Media Room Walls

Is most of the noise from your media room exiting through the walls? Home theaters and media centers are often wood-framed, meaning that the wall soundproofing performance is worse than their commercial counterparts. Even with “sound batt” in the wall (read: fiberglass batting), the wall will generally not block an acceptable amount of noise to allow loud performance of media on the inside of the room.

If this is the case, consider using a product such as Mass Loaded Vinyl behind the drywall, or add it on to the existing drywall, in order to increase the STC of the partition. If you are pre-construction, your best bet is to stagger the wall studs, so that none of the studs are touching both sides of the dry wall. Doing this can easily gain you 10-12 STC points!

You shouldn’t have to deal with loud noises escaping from your media room into other parts of your home.

Soundproofing The Door to Your Home Theater

First, you should check to see if the door to your theater is hollow-core or solid-core.You can usually tell which it is when you knock on it after hearing what kind of sound it makes. A solid-core door will help some with blocking noise from escaping the room. If you see that it’s a hollow-core door then consider replacing it with a solid-core one.

The alternative to replacing your door is using our AcoustiDoor™ , which can be hung over the doorway into your media room to keep noise from seeping into the rest of the house. Hand-crafted, customizable to your door size, and available in a variety of colors and fabrics, this is a visually appealing, low-cost solution to noise problems. Door seals (placed around the perimeter of the door) or door sweeps (placed underneath the door) are other options available to keep noise from traveling through any gaps around the door.

While STC-rated doors in the 35-40 STC range may cost $1500-$5000 each, a Soundproofing Door Panel may cost only $200-$300.

Floor Blokker for Your Media Room

If your home theater or media room is in the basement then it’s likely that sound is entering and escaping through the ceiling of that space. In this case it would be a good idea to use our Floor Blokker which you can install on the floor above your media room. This will reduce noise from traveling down to your theater room or up into the other floors of the house.

We recommend treating the floor of a space if sound is entering into the room below. You also have the option to treat the ceiling, but that’s a much more involved process that would require tearing down the existing drywall.

The Benefits of Home Theater and Media Room Soundproofing

If you choose to use some our soundproofing techniques in your home theater, you’ll be helping out yourself and the other people in your home. They won’t get disturbed by you watching movies or playing games with the volume on high, and you won’t have anyone getting mad at you anymore for turning the volume up.