I just purchased a new home and I've noticed that sound travels from one room to another very easly. From the bedroom I can hear people talking in the other room. does anyone know of a way to reduce the noise travel. there is carpeting in all the rooms except for the kithen and bathrooms and the walls are covered with drywall.

It's very rare for there to be any type of sound insulation or barriers in standard residential construction. At the same time, usually a framed wall with layers of drywall on either side creates a muting effect so that only louder noises carry through. It's common for interior walls between bedrooms to be divided with closet space - really helps to keep the noise transfer between rooms down.

Do you have any shared ductwork? This would create a direct path for sound to travel between rooms. not an easy fix to remedy it, but that at least may point to your cause.

M68fast:

Really, this isn't a problem just in your house, it's a problem in all modern construction that uses light weight construction materials.

There is something called the "Mass Law" of accoustics. Imagine you have a wall with a source of noise on one side and a listener on the other side of that wall. The Mass Law basically says that for every doubling of either the mass of the wall between the source of noise and the listener, or, for every doubling of the frequency of the noise produced by the source, the sound pressure level on the opposite side of the wall will be reduced by 6 decibels, or to roughly to 1/4 of it's previous pressure level.

The problem is that modern construction methods of using drywall instead of plaster and metal studs instead of wooden studs results in walls of very low mass that sound carries through easily.

I wish there were something that I could tell you would fix the problem, but unfortunately, the only good fix here is to either replace your drywall with a drywall meant for noise reduction (like Owens Corning "Quiet Zone" drywall) or sell your house and buy an older house with plaster walls. Plaster, being very much heavier than drywall, provides for a quieter house.

Nowadays, it's COMMON for people paying $600 per night for a room in a NEW hotel to be able to hear the people in neighboring rooms arguing, talking, making love, and everything else just like there was a door open between the rooms, and it's entirely because of the light weight construction materials being used in modern construction. Older buildings, with much heavier plaster on both sides of their walls, on the other hand, are very much quieter (and much less expensive).

Sorry there are no good solutions to your problem. If there were, I would tell you what to do to make for a quieter home.

Maybe read this:

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/...und-tranmission.html

That's part of a building symposium put on for architects and engineers by the Canadian National Research Council back in 1985. If you read through it, it basically says that the most effective method of stopping noise is to put as much mass as possible between the source of the noise and the listener. The problem is that this runs diametrically opposite to modern construction methods which reduce construction costs by using light weight construction materials.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

Try to GOOGLE: SOUND SEAL: they're a company in Massachusetts that manufactures Sound- deadening dry wall and acoustic materials!! they're the greatest..and it would be worth your while to check into them; good luck! do it now!