Monday, September 9, 2013

How Does Sound-Deadening Work?

How Does Sound-Deadening Work?

What is Sound Deadening?

    Sound deadening is the process by which a home, building or other structure is made less able to carry sounds. This is done as a privacy measure during the structure's construction, so that sounds generated within one room will not carry to another room. To effectively understand how sound deadening works, one must first understand how sound travels.

How Does Sound Travel?

    Sound exists as an energy wave, emitting from the source and travelling outward in all directions until the energy of the wave has dissipated over the space it has traveled. This is why one must yell to be heard by another person over a distance. By yelling one generates greater energy in the sound wave, causing it to travel further. Sound can be redirected and manipulated as well. If one were to make a loud noise in an empty room containing nothing but hard surfaces, you would make an echo. Also the sound you made would be much more easily heard from adjacent rooms as well. The echo is created because the majority of the sound wave bounced back toward you once it impacted against the hard surfaces of the room. Also, some of that sound energy was transferred into the wall upon impact, causing something called sympathetic vibrations. Essentially the wall vibrates at a frequency or frequencies identical to the sound waves that passed into it, becoming a secondary source of sound energy. This vibration acts like an amplifier, transferring the sound through the wall to any adjacent rooms. However, sound is muffled by soft, yielding, porous surfaces. Such surfaces absorb the sound energy without transferring it.

How Does Sound Deadening Work?

    Sound deadening works by heavily insulating the interior of a structure's walls with soft, porous, foam-like or cottony material. This prevents the wall from creating sympathetic vibrations and transferring the sound out of the structure's individual spaces. In homes or buildings where you don't want echoes to bounce within rooms, the easiest way to soundproof that building is to install thick carpeting, drapes and other soft pieces of furniture where the sound will be absorbed. Specially designed foam wall panels are made to be placed on the walls of recording studios in order to completely soak up unwanted echoes. However for residential purposes this is an incredibly expensive and unsightly option.

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