Thread: Accoustic Insulation for roller doors?

Originally Posted by Graziano

Buy a cheap sound level meter from Dick Smith or Ebay and experiment with different materials.

If only noise level measurements were that simple. A few years ago I visited the basement of RMIT on Swanston St and saw the gear that is needed to test practical sound absorbance. The tests take place inside a massively thick walled walk in concrete bunker divided in half by a wall made from the sound absorber - the sound source goes on one side and the detector on the other and a full frequency scan in made at different sound pressure levels.

As others have said - in most cases in the end it comes down to sheer mass of the wall used. Either a really really, thick wall of softer stuff like wood, a thick solid double brick wall or a thinner lead wall. This is why single layers of foils, bubble wrap or home insulation are not every worth trying.

Originally Posted by BobL

If only noise level measurements were that simple. A few years ago I visited the basement of RMIT on Swanston St and saw the gear that is needed to test practical sound absorbance. The tests take place inside a massively thick walled walk in concrete bunker divided in half by a wall made from the sound absorber - the sound source goes on one side and the detector on the other and a full frequency scan in made at different sound pressure levels.

As others have said - in most cases in the end it comes down to sheer mass of the wall used. Either a really really, thick wall of softer stuff like wood, a thick solid double brick wall or a thinner lead wall. This is why single layers of foils, bubble wrap or home insulation are not every worth trying.

Ahh well, time for active noise cancelling then....or large conductive diaphragms in a vertical magnetic field connected to generate power from noise . I'm always fascinated with the field of thermoacoustics and generating power from sound, unfortunately these are tuned devices. If you wanted to take actual spectral sound measurements outside a shed then a soundcard laptop with the right freeware and a microphone would be enough to do the job. You're right about lead sheeting it's used for noise reduction, it's dense and not stiff enough to vibrate as a panel: http://www.midlandlead.co.uk/products/sheet.html