Question for the acoustics guys

[tfarny]

I need to block the sound of the street noise in my new place. Oh, city life! I am planning to make a panel to fit over the window, would like to do it from inexpensive home depot materials. My understanding is that heavy / dense materials are best, but also that dead air space is good, and I'm a little confused as to the value of sound deadening (curtains) versus sound reflecting (hard wood etc) for this purpose.
Would you recommend a simple thick piece of particle board covered with cloth or felt, or something multi-layered, like two thin sheets of plywood with foam insulation or something in the middle? Simple / cheap is good, but effective is priority.

 

[ocguy106]

egg crate foam sandwiched between 2 pieces of drywall the thickness of a 2x4 (width wise) would do the job better then the surrounding walls. So that is what I would use

 

[-CB-]

I think you'll find that a thick piece of plywood, covered with eggcrate foam will do pretty well. 

Some considerations - low frequency high volume will vibrate the plywood - the egg crate dissipates the sound wave from the window in two ways .  First it deflects the sound sideways from its eggcrate surface, additionally the foam and varying thicknesses will present different amounts of time that the sounds must be attenuated, and varying amounts and frequency, before it hits the plywood.    So a single layer of heavy wood, but foam toward the window.  The other thing is - depending on the noise, you may also find that you'll need to stiffen the plywood with braces or runners on its back surface.  Thats why I suggest using 3/4 or maybe even 2 sections of 5/8 stuff glued and screwed together to make one laminated thick sheet.

Walls will still pass a lot of noise... its amazing but they do - especially low frequency and "impact" type noises (house and car doors slamming, boom boxes, exhaust noise...etc).

Hope that helps!

 

[tangent]

Magic erasers are excellent at soundproofing (this is what the melamine foam was originally developed for, before people discovered their usefulness as an abrasive).  Obviously its not cost effective to cover your whole wall in magic erasers, but if you have just one window thats not too big you can cover it pretty cheaply in the off brand magic erasers from Target, backed with plywood or acrylic.  For larger windows it'd be cheaper to order stuff online.

Another thing that works well is roofing repair stuff, it has thick black adhesive on one side and aluminum on the other side I think, its very similar to dynamat which they use to deaden sound in cars, etc.. you can buy it at home depot/lowes

edit: this is the roof stuff I am referring to:  http://www.cofair.com/roof.aspx

 

[tfarny]

Cool, thanks guys. I'm probably going to go with CB's suggestion, sounds easy to make a removable panel that way. It doesn't need to be perfect, just needs to be a good improvement from now, and not permanent.

 

[swarfrat]

Anyone tried the green glue stuff? It looks like magic.