Which Type Of Glass Is Best For Soundproofing 

FREE Soundproofing Workshop: www.soundproofyourstudio.com/workshop

Rock solid presentation!

Wonderfully informative video. Really appreciate it I learnt quite a bit!

NAILED IT! I've been soundproofing for a bit over 10 years and this is CORRECT info. I have actually come to Nashville from Houston to do it.

Nice one... Resonant frequency of the pain of glass, use 2 different thicknesses.. excellnt ideas here. I know the CSIRO in Sydney recomended 3 different thicknesses when I built a studio on Willoughby rd... you'd look out the window at the bus stop below... silent. Also an angle is helpful if the window is large,,,, standing waves and all that

Watching vids like this it really reminds me how the building styles in North west Europe are the best in the world. I'm from Holland. Thick sand lime double outer walls with 10 cm of rockwool in between or thick concrete walls in apartment buildings. Also the inner walls are often concrete or sand lime or brick. The glass is mandatory double insulated pane. In scandanavia often even triple pane. Still in older building sound can still leak through unfortuneately. Need to airtight it.

Heya Wilson, another great vid! I especially like how you accounted for the weight of the glass. I've been ringing around to get myself some glass, and so far, all the window dudes are telling me that nothing beats double-glazed windows for sound purposes. I was gonna do your method (and probably still will), but I'm just curious as to your thoughts on this? I'm thinking about maybe doing double-glazing just on the outside wall (I have the double-wall system too) if I can get away with it without it being to expensive...

Curious if using mostly glass (2 layers) for the walls in a, room inside of an existing room, scenario? would be a worthwhile build?

Coincidence effect - very interesting thanks for that. Quick question (not sure what the special lingo is for it), is there any benefit to lining the sides of the inner part (between the two panes of glass) with some sort of foam or other soft soundproofing materials? My theory is that it could absorb vibrations from/on the glass and therefore prevent even more sound transmission, but I'm honestly just making it up and have no idea if that makes scientific sense.

Would like to ask. Thinking of installing laminated glass over the exterior outside of 2 windows. Would this work as well to soundproof, I would think?

Can i use laminated glass which have thickness 2.5” + 2.5” to make soundproof vocal booth ?

Great info. I can't find 1/2" laminate glass locally. Will the combination of 3/8" tempered & 9/16" laminate be OK for a 24' x 36" window?

So are clearsonic products trash for reducing sound substantially? Anyone? Particularly their vocal booths?

Is laminate glass same as “double glazing”? Or is double glazing better using two separate laminate glasses?

Very much enjoyed your video, and you presented some really good information, but since the three areas that need to address when sound blocking is mass, stiffness, and damping, and tempering glass does not change any of those characteristics, so why would tempered glass be a sound blocking improvement over annealed? Also, while laminated glass using PVB interlayer is the gold standard for blocking sound, another popular interlayer material is called SG or SentryGlas and it does not improve acoustic performance. Anyone looking for laminated glass for sound performance must be careful to specify PVB when ordering laminated glass. The formula for calculating the coincidence dip of glass is: frequency = 12500/glass thickness (mm). Although thicker glass is better at sound attenuation because of mass law, the coincidence dip frequency drops as glass gets thicker. While thicker glass is better at blocking sound, the coincidence dip frequency of thicker glass tends to move into the best frequencies for human audible response. This is where the advantage of using two different glass thicknesses of glass with different coincidence dip frequencies really makes a difference. Also very much agree that plastics, acrylic or polycarbonate, are really poor at blocking sound and are barely better than nothing at the cost.

Is polycarbonate glass able to be used as soundproof?

Ok so as a glass professional I need to correct you on a few things. Tempered is the STRONGEST of all the mentioned glasses, it’s not weak at all, it has a weak point on the edge of the glass, and yes if you tap its Achilles heel it will break, but I can slap a piece of 1/4 tempered with a hammer and it will not break. So really the only downside to tempered is it blows up when it does break. Next Plexi glass (plastic) is much more expensive than annealed glass, about the same as tempered. Essentially Plexi glass is a horrible product, looks like shit, it flexes, it breaks, and it’s expensive. Otherwise pretty good video.

Here my very basic but broken down input. You have to consider the next when it comes to soundproof: Mass Critical frequency or ressonance frequency Air space De-coupling of srructures. So. Mass is always your friend and air space is always your friend. Think about it this way: if you talk to someone across an empty field the sound of your voice becomes more and more muted as the distance (air space) increases. It has a reason, but we will leave it there. Mass and a fisical barrier always helps. It is not the same to talk to someone 6 ft away with no obstruction than it is to do it with a car in between (even in perfect conditions, it creates a reflection barrier). The frequency thing is too complex to say it in some other way, we will leave it as it is just sayin that in fact, different materials have differen frequencies and that combination helps. Now, de coupling is the last and final one... a conected structure is able to transfer energy along its mass. It doesn't matter if it is acoustic energy, kinetic energy, caloric energy or electrical energy, it can and will transfer some of it. So, the very basic, arcaic (and complex) idea of building a room inside a room is to decouple most of the structure and leave the floor as the only conection point because it cant be effectively decoupled, but it also has direct contact to the earth, which has a lot of mass, materials and ways to disipate the energy. So, if you build a heavy structure of certain materials inside a heavy structure of different materials, with no direct air conections between the interior and the exterior and you leave a significant air gap between both structures with the floor being the only point of conection, you are on the right direction. The material selection and characteristics is other thing. It depends on the ability to block and or absorb and retain acoustic energy of each one. Wood, cardboard, polimers, glass, stone, steel, aluminium, textiles, leather, paper, plastics... they all have different acoustic properties. Glass resonates quite easily with sound, so it needs to compensate with mass. Soft plastics like rubber are amazing, but they retain a lot of heat and don't function well for structural purposes. Finally think about reflexions. You want to reflect sound from the outside but you want to disipate sound on the inside in a studio. And... I didn't hear a thing about policarbonate. I guess it is way to expensive and way to bad if you didn't mention it, but I would like to know if you have something to say about it.