Home Theater

We know that the constant improvement in TV and audio equipment, along with the demand for theater-like quality in your home entertainment system, has created a rush to build the perfect home theater system in every residence.

Along with this incredible technology come incredible sound levels and a potential for some soundproofing complications. If you are creating your entertainment room in an existing basement or living room, you will probably find out that the existing walls, floors and ceilings were not designed to handle the new sound levels.

The biggest complaint from new home theater owners is that they cannot turn it up the way they intended without shaking the walls of the entire house.

Relief is available, and it will be much easier than you might think. We can help you to soundproof your new or existing home theater room so that you can really use the equipment you bought. We offer several options for you to improve the performance of your walls, floors and ceilings, and some will work without your having to tear anything down to start over. We also provide the sound absorbing products you need to create a high-quality listening environment.

The popularity of dedicated home theater rooms in single and multi-family homes has created some very unique challenges in controlling sound levels to adjacent rooms. Soundproofing the walls, floors, and ceilings of your home theater to handle these high-intensity audio/video sounds requires much more than standard construction.

The design of your home theater usually starts and ends with the selection of audio and video equipment. What a surprise when your theater is completed and the first thing you hear is "turn that down" from neighbors or even your own family.

The careful consideration of noise control, if made before the room is completed, can save you considerable money when compared to trying to fix the room later. West Coast Sound Solutions can help you to afford-ably prevent the problem before it occurs.

Three important elements will ensure your success: sound isolation of the walls and ceilings from the structure, the addition of mass to all surfaces and finally, using sound absorbing products to treat the reverberation, or reflection, of sound within the home theater.

For a dedicated home theater room, or even a simple surround-sound system for your den, floating the walls and possibly the ceiling is the most important part of the plan. The use of ISOMAX Clips and standard, locally available, hat channel will both outperform and cost less than any other proposed solution. Ordinary drywall is then screwed to the hat channel, completely floated in the ISOMAX Clips, eliminating the direct screw attachment that undermines every other available method.

Low Frequency noise, caused by home theater speakers, will actually vibrate through the studs, ceiling joists or drywall, and will pass through the most expensive insulation as if it is not even there. Even quiet sheetrock or sound-suppressing drywall are extremely poor performers at low frequencies.

Staggered stud walls still share the same bottom and top plate; they do not provide enough sound isolation. With single-stud construction and a single layer of drywall on each side, standard walls have a maximum STC of 34; the addition of ISOMAX Clips on one side raises the STC to 57.

The addition of mass after sound isolation has been completed will easily block most of the mid- and high-frequency sounds. This is accomplished at a very low cost by simply adding one more layer of drywall. If sound isolation is not possible, adding mass becomes critical. Packing the wall with insulation or just adding more drywall is not a solution for home theater walls and ceilings.

Mass loaded vinyl, standard fiberglass insulation, and ordinary drywall have been assembled to create soundproof walls longer, and more successfully, than all other products combined. STC values from 47-50 are easily obtained with our Soundproof Barrier.

Do not use Soundproof Barrier between layers of drywall; the product must remain flexible to work. It is only effective when attached to the studs or ceiling joists before drywall. For existing walls and ceilings Green Glue makes more sense.

A tight acoustical room is designed to create privacy in the adjacent rooms. The need for good Sound Absorbing Products is paramount to insure a great listening experience in your Home Theater. Fabric covered wall panels, Acoustical Foam Panels, and high NRC Ceiling Tiles will put the finishing touches on your media room. We also can provide Bass Traps, floated floor products, isolation mounts and more to finish your job.

To be clear, we are not acoustical engineers and cannot provide room tuning absorption, diffusion analysis, or any other scientific analysis of your dedicated home theater room. Many times this pay for design service is not needed; for such cases we are here!

What we can provide is proven, effective and affordable products, many times included in your professional design. We have many years of experience that make us a valuable partner in solving the noise absorbing challenges in your room.