Music room is above FR. Need to dampen sound.


My music room is located above my Family room. Does anyone know of a sound damping carpet pad or something like that to help keep the sound out of the Family room? I don't want to do anything too drastic because I will be using a different room in a year or two.
bryans
The best (not easy) way is to hang dry wall on resilient channels for the family room ceiling & insulate the joist cavity with fiber glass. I did this years ago in my previous home and it works well. You have to decouple the sound transmission path thru the joists to be effective and its best to eliminate any cutouts in the ceiling such as jucntion boxes. The fiberglass only controls the air transmission path. A suspended acoustic ceiling may help some but will not be as effective for the bass frequencies.
This approach also works with walls.
good luck!
A less intrusive approach is to install the thickest underpadding and carpet you can find on the floor of the listening room. Probably not as effective as Rph's suggestion and some thumping from the bass drivers will still be heard or felt. In my experience this will reduce noise by about 60%. Happy listening, Jeff
I presume your speakers are on the floor, whether they are floorstanders or stand mounted monitors. I am also assuming the room is carpeted.
You could place the speakers on concrete paving slabs .... this would reduce transmission of bass to the floor and probably help with the low frequency thump, which is likely the main problem. Choose large surface area blocks for stability.
Not very attractive, but cheap, and somewhat effective.
www.auralex.com had some sheets for studio's that served this purpose I believe. They have a nice site to browse.