Soundproof rooms

Treatment changes how a room sounds inside. Isolation changes what gets in and out. They are different problems with different solutions, and almost every complaint about a “soundproof” room comes from solving the first when the job needed the second.

We build isolated rooms as room-within-room construction: an inner shell carried on isolators, structurally separated from the building, with every penetration detailed so it does not bridge the two. The isolation target is set from a noise survey at the start, and measured again at handover.

• Recording studios — live rooms, booths and control rooms, isolated and then tuned.
• Home theatres — cinema sound at real levels without it reaching the rest of the house.
• Conference rooms — confidential speech kept in, corridor and services noise kept out.
• Banquet halls — amplified music held inside a building that has other occupants.
• Hotel rooms — guest-to-guest and corridor isolation, built into the fit-out.
• Anechoic and echo chambers — test spaces where the room must add nothing of its own.

• The isolation figure you actually need, which follows from what is on the other side of each surface.
• Whether the floor can carry a floated slab, and how much height is available to lose.
• The number of doors, windows and service penetrations through the shell.
• How much of the work has to happen while the rest of the building stays in use.

The room is modelled before it is built and measured before it is handed over.

1. Noise survey in the existing shell, at the times the room will be used.
2. Isolation target agreed, and the construction designed to meet it.
3. Simulation of the finished room against its intended use.
4. Build and installation by our own crews.
5. Commissioning — isolation and reverberation measured, and reported.