soundproofing for urban people

You can add mass to your existing walls. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I successfully muted some neighbor noise in my apartment building when I added a second layer of drywall on top of the original 1/2" drywall, with a coating of Green Glue in-between. This produced better results than simply replacing the original wall with QuietRock 525. I made the double-drywall solution even more successful by using QuietRock 510 as the second layer of drywall, with Green Glue in-between the two. Here's a diagram from Trademark Soundproofing  that demonstrates the STC results between different wall assemblies, including those with Green Glue.  Why do I think the Green Glue + layer of QuietRock was better than just replacing the original wall with QuietRock, right on the studs? My theory is that when you add QuietRock directly onto the wood framing, you're still not decoupling it from the structure. And therefore, impact noise and lower frequencies might still come throu

Notes on Noise: THIS PAGE IS FROM MY PREVIOUS BLOG (it was originally published in a different blog in 2009-2009): I live in a fairly dense urban area. So it's more common than not to have shared walls, ceilings, and floors with your neighbors. But most of the old construction in my city is made from wood: wood framing, hardwood floors, and hollow walls--and everything is nailed on top of the joists or directly onto the studs. The result? All your neighbor has to do is walk back and forth, talk, or open and close doors and drawers, and it ricochets through the building into your apartment. So, I've spent a lot of time trying to find affordable ways to alleviate the noise. This is easier to do if you have a lot of money, or if your neighbors are amenable...and I had little money and my neighbors were not. I'm going to share some resources and some things I've learned about the products on the market today (2009) that can help alleviate some of these noise problems. If yo