Wrong forum. But to sum it up, you can't. You need a couple miles of woods and even then.... This is why you dont move beside a busy street. Been there done that. A 30' wall may help some and could be ready w/in 5 yrs

Goodness! Was so busy with the move, I missed part of the Pogrom! Anyhoo...we were in Mississippi for a board meeting, and got a look at our old garden, which is looking GREAT. Thought I'd do an update. As I'd stated, we were worried that we'd lose a ton, selling in this market, and with the ongoing noise problem just outside our neighborhood. But the garden gave the house immense 'curb appeal', our Decorator had the interiors whipped into a seductive frenzy, and our Mayor...well...has worked for two decades, to give the town enough cachet to keep property values high, even in this Depression. Too, Kismet smiled upon us, in the form of two young surgeons, who had lived in problem neighborhoods, before. Living in slums until they'd completed residency, they had been assaulted with noise from neighbors' sound systems, too. In order to get much-needed sleep, they had developed an acoustic isolation chamber disguised as a curtained bed. Amazingly similar to what our Decorator had done for our windows, but isolated on all sides, the structure sits on several inches of special foam. So there's no chance of infrasonic vibrations making their way up from the ground. GENIUS! Those whose accounting is more optimistic than mine would say we made a couple hundred grand. I'd say we just broke even, once the move was factored-in. Anyway, we got the (rather high) asking price. Our friends who had moved out here ahead of us found a distressed estate home for us, up the mountain from them. Too artsy-craftsy-early-nineties-lodge-look for me. But our decorator is bringing the house into the new Millennium with only a few tweaks, here and there. Anyway, we got a genuine estate, in one of the most desired neighborhoods in the Northwest, for only a bit more than we'd gotten for our spec-grade McMansion in Madison. Our friends out here also bought an "architecturally-important estate home" at a distressed price, and (once the decorator we share had worked his magic) have been getting offers that would advance their position by over a million. Hope that happens here. Nice as this is, I have my heart set on something smaller and more formal...French cut Limestone, with brick herringbone floors, to be specific. Back in Madison, the Clumping Bamboo we added is thriving, and the young surgeons have found an improved cultivar of variegated Arundo (Peppermint Stick) at Madison Lawn & Garden, to plug up the accoustic 'holes'. This is their first real home, and they are turning into gardening fiends! Wonderful! The CVS urns lynch-mob travesty got us thinking about giant urns for the ends of the pool. So our decorator had Hayles & Howe cast a couple of eight-footers from the parapet of a house in England. They arrived a month back, and we got to see them, newly-installed. Brought tears to my eyes....tears of joy, to see my garden looking so lovely. If the new owners allow the house to be photographed, maybe you'll see it in a magazine. I doubt it, though. Aside from the plantings and the decorating, it's still just a spec house. Based on what I planted that's looking great, here's a list of triumphs: Muskogee Crape Myrtle Peach Drift Rose (quite shade tolerant) Cherokee Rose Lady Banks Rose (all four forms...single white, double white, single yellow, double yellow...as well as the hybrid 'Fortunaiana') Dr. W. VanFleet Rose (the more vigorous parent of New Dawn) Southern Wood Fern Crocosmia Hymenocallis 'Sparkling Burgundy' Camellia Sasanqua Oops!...just opened the gates for my Trainer. Gotta go... Thanks, everybody, for those notes of encouragement!

Cork underlay with 3mm or 6mm = awesome sound deadening properties. It can be used with a glue down install or a floating wood floor install. Do NOT nail through. QuietWalk has the ability to be NAILED down. This is SUPER important if you are looking at a nail-in-place hardwood. Yes acoustic underlayments are 'expensive'. The acoustic value is HARD to achieve. It takes TONS of engineering to get it right. Quietwalk, once pierced should become a vapour retarder = acceptable over wood. I know it 'feels' expensive ($1/sf = $1400 more) but NEVER go cheap on flooring. Ever. The biggest complaints people have with wood floors on a second floor = noise transfer from up-to-down. And the second biggest complain = noise transfer down hallways and underneath doors. If I told you, for a mere $1400, you could get rid of BOTH issues would you think it a great insurance plan? Probably. I counsel my clients to think of their floors as if they were a roof. How much did you spend on the roof? Did you go cheap with the insulation or the water protection (eaves, downspouts, etc)? Probably not. A floor INSIDE takes the SAME ABUSE as a roof on the outside. It is the SINGLE MOST abused 'finish' in your home. Everything touches the floors. Gravity means anything that goes up must come down...and when it comes down it makes noise. A good acoustic insulation will make you happier than a floor without. Go ahead and get people to turn on a stereo upstairs on the wooden subfloor. Now get them to talk on their phones or talk to one another in the same room (as the stereo). Stand down stairs and see how much you can hear. Now move to a room on the same LEVEL as the stereo and close the door. How much do you hear? A wooden subfloor has roughly the same acoustic value as wooden floors. What you hear today is what you can expect to hear TOMORROW. How happy will you be with that level of noise transfer? Roughly 90% of people can't stand it. The other 10% couldn't care less. The question becomes are you part of the 90% (I know I am) or are you in the 10% camp?

Since you're gluing there will be no mechanical fasteners to transmit sound to the structure below. This allows you to use a standard sound deadening product like cork, rubber or composite sheet like WhisperMat, SuperSam, Proflex 90, or the like. The makers of the last three products tout superior results, but I'm skeptical. Jason has the right idea. Adding mass between the two will reduce the transfer of airborne sound. That makes a heavier option like rubber ideal for airborne transmission. That probably matters less in a house than in a condo because you already have an opening to the upstairs. To reduce transmission of impact sound you want to isolate the upper wear surface from the subfloor. If your material can be floated, that helps isolation and you can use a less expensive product like QuietWalk, but pay attention to how it would affect sound upstairs. Some floating underlayments result in a tapping sound, like walking on loose tile, especially with hard shoes.