Is sound isolation important? How much?

Sound isolation has become an increasing important role in our designs. I think there are several reasons for this. One is many people like listening or watching a movie late at night and don't want to disturb other family members. Some people may live in busy / highly populated areas that are inherently noisy. And some dwellings share commonalities, such condos and high rise apartments.

Because of this many people ask us about sound isolation and what can be done. There are various levels of sound isolation. Our group has designed recording studios which require the ultimate in sound isolation. A ribbon microphone can pick up just about any noise including the air flow from an HVAC system that wasn't designed perfectly. However, this level is typically overkill for residential environments.

It's important when dealing with sound isolation that you always examine the "weak link". Here's an article we wrote for Positive Feedback that can help explain this.

Most importantly, once you know the weak link, don't try spending money to isolate other areas. It's just a waste of money because the weak link is just that. It is the limiting factor to how good your sound isolation can be.

At Rives Audio, we do not sell sound isolation products or any acoustical material. Our goal is to design a room that's right for our client. We have no incentive to specify anything that won't yeild positive, cost effective results. Utilizing a design firm can often save considerable costs and unnecessary expenses that don't yeild positive results.

How Can Rives Help?

While we can work with you through all the design phases including isolation, we also offer many free resources on our website.

In addition to the sound isolation article, we have published many papers on the web, such as this paper: "Designing a Media Room" on the Audioholics website. This is just one of the many free resources.

In fact there is a whole section on the Rives Audio website devoted to those that want to "do it yourself" with many free resources.

The most important thing is getting started. Rives can even help you for free there too. By just filling out the application form and faxing it in you will be contacted by one of our engineers to discuss what direction you might take. There is no obligation to hiring us from this form. You may decide to, or you may use the preliminary information we provde to design the space yourself. You have nothing to lose.

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What do you listen to?

Part 20
Soundtracks

Recently I was at a trade show and one of our clients came to our demo. He came with his own demo material. It was all soundtracks. He said he changes the themes of his demo material, but for that show it was soundtracks.

I thought about this for a while and realized, there really are some great ones out there--I'm sure to miss a few, but here are some of my favorites.

1. American Beauty - Thomas Newman. Deep bass and incredible articulation through the mids and highs. This is a great demo peice and one of my favorites to just listen to.

2. Gladiator - Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard. The building throughout many scenes is captured extremely well. Very good recording, but better composition.

3. Danny Elfman - Music for a Darkened Theater Vol 2. I think Elfman is one of the greatest theater composers. He captures the mood--particularly when it's a dark mood. From Batman to Edward Scissors hands to Mission Impossible, this compilation is really great (Vol 1 isn't bad either)

4. Steiner - great film music. A compilation of large scale symphonic film music. Probably one of the best of this genres.

I hope you enjoy these recommendations. As always please write me and share. I like finding out about great music as much as you do. And if you have suggestions for future topics, please let me know.

Richard Rives Bird
President, Rives Audio