Soundproofing Foam

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In this age of home entertainment where 50 inch plasma and LCD televisions are quite common and somewhat affordable, setting up a home theater is usually the way to go. If you have a spare room in your house that you are not using, and just ending up as another storage room, you can turn this room into your very own home theater. For this you would of course need a good wide screen TV. The good thing about brand competition is that there are tons of choices at affordable prices going around. You can already get a fairly high end model for about a thousand dollars. You would also need a surround sound system to go along your TV, with the higher end models going for roughly the same price as your TV and already comes with a blu-ray player. For reviews of TVs and sound systems, you can visit other sites, for I am going to talk more about the preparation of the room in this article.

So now you have your home theater equipment and a room to place them in. But you can’t just plug everything in and turn the volume up, your neighbors might seek the cops on you, unless you’re living alone in the wilderness, you really need a good soundproofing solution. Soundproofing foam is your best choice. You can line your walls with it which effectively insulates the sound from going out or into your home theater room. Soundproofing foam can be had for less than $10 per square foot. Lesser grades can be bought for $3 per square foot. The trick here is to balance the grade of the foam to the strength of the sound being produced by your speakers. You will not need the grade-A foam for the sound you need to trap is not that loud, not as loud as a generator or a ship engine at least. There is only so much sound your ears can take and you do not want to damage them.

The threshold for pain of the human ear is 135 decibels, higher than that then you would be irrevocably damaging your ears. So choose foam in the $3-5 range, this should be the optimal grade for our needs since you won’t really need to turn the volume to max. If you already have a room ready, all you need to do is line the walls with the foam and then upholster them, or you can simply cover them with thick cloth laid out carefully. Or if you are still building or renovating your home, you can opt for the spray kind of foam. This is the type that you spray inside the walls which would then expand and fill the spaces, this way is faster and tidier but can only be done if you are still building your room or already in the process of renovating it. But if you have the cash, then by all means go this route. This would apply to any room you need soundproofed like personal studios or simply a quiet room where you can relax with your favorite music.

Soundproofing foam is quite safe for the environment for they are biodegradable; this also means that you would need to replace them after a set amount of time depending on the specification of the foam you chose. But they will probably outlast your electronics anyway, no worries there. So if you’re a big movie fan or just an audiophile, go ahead and build yourself a home theater or a personal studio using soundproofing foam.