I finally got my building permit! The contractor (a very good friend of mine) convinced me to go with stick construction instead of metal because of the additional cost. I was also told that heavier gauge metal studs are no better in sound insulation than standard wood studs. Not sure if there is much truth to that. Currently, our exterior walls will consist of 5/8" QuietRock (model 525) drywall on 2 x 4 wood studs, 1/2" plywood w/waterproof membrane (Tyvek or similar) and standard fiberglass insulation in between. Attached to the exterior plywood are 1 x 4 wood furring strips and I plan to attach 1/4" thick 4 x 8 foot HardiPanels to the wood furring strips. The HardiPanels will not be placed butt to each other but will rather have a space of approx 5/8". This is to create a "grid" pattern to the exterior wall. My goal is to build a modern, minimalist home. So essentially, (from the outside in) I have 1/4" HardiPanel concrete board, 1/2" plywood sheet, 2 x 4 stud and 5/8" QuietRock on one wall. Would anyone have any idea what the STC rating of such an assembly would be? I've been told by a local dealer of QuietRock that I should look into the "triple leaf" effect and that spacing the HardiPanel away from the plywood could cause the STC rating of the wall assembly to drop as a result of this phenomena. My reasoning would be that placing the 1/4" HardiPanel 3/4" away from the plywood would increase the STC rating since we are adding a third but very small airgap. Keep in mind, however, that the HardiPanel assembly is not completely sealed and air/sound tight because I am spacing each panel away from each other by roughly 5/8". The other options I was looking at was going with 2 sheets of standard 5/8" drywall and GreenGlue between. I have heard that this assembly would reduce low frequency penetration into the home much better than one sheet of QuietRock 525. Is this true? And another facade option would be to go with stucco so instead of a 1/4" sheet of HardiPanel and 5/8" "air space", I would have densglass, a cementitious coat and the stucco coat on top. I'm not sure if this would provide a better STC than spacing 1/4" HardiPanel away from the plywood but I'm assuming it would. If anyone can chime in on this I'd really appreciate it. For the windows, I am looking closely at Migard's Quietline product. I may just use these windows for the bedroom windows (because of cost) and other windows in the home where people are not so sensitive to noise would likely be a standard double pane windows with thicker laminated (one pane) panes of glass (to achieve at least a 35 STC). Is this a good idea? And is it true that vinyl windows are a better sound insulator than aluminum? Everyone I talked to here says that vinyl is superior to aluminum for soundproofing but I've found some information online to the contrary. My concern with the vinyl is that it is only available in white and an off-white "tan" color, both of which won't match the modern exterior of my building. What would my options be if I went with vinyl but didn't want those frame colors? Regarding flooring, the building is 3 stories high (garage at bottom, kitchen/living second and bedrooms third) I am looking at standard TJI for the floor between the bedroom and kitchen/living area but standard 12" joists for the kitchen/living floor (garage below) and the roof (nobody above). I'm trying to achieve the best "STC per buck". The QuietRock product is NOT cheap - about $60 per 4 x 8 sheet. I'm willing to incorporate other sound proofing techniques/materials as long as the price is reasonable. Heavier insulation may be one of those options. Any advice is much appreciated!

That should work well. The clips and channels do help. I'm far from an expert, so I don't know if it would be enough difference to warrant losing a layer of drywall, or the labor of tearing it out. Maybe. Thing is, green glue is great stuff, but expensive. You need 3 tubes per 4x8 drywall sheet, at about $17 each, for a total of over $50 plus your drywall. Sound damping drywall is $50-something per sheet, at least last time I looked, so it's a little cheaper, and less installation labor to boot. A layer of 1/8" MLV instead of the green glue would give you an STC 26 barrier at around $35 per 4x8 sheet plus the drywall. I might be inclined to use one layer of green glue, for the isolation, and one layer of MLV. You can also get MLV with a closed cell foam back to add at least some of the isolation you'd otherwise get from green glue. It's more expensive, but not MLV-plus-green-glue more expensive. The most economical fix of all is to stop the hum at its source, either by replacing the humming component with a quiet one, or by isolating it with resilient mounting. But that might require more cooperation from the condo association.

Sawdust, old news papers, straw...it was all in play during the Victorian era. And the amount of DANGEROUS materials in a Victorian home is TRULY GRUESOME! If you want your hair to curl (or straighten...) go ahead and watch the BBC's "Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home". I'm not kidding. You will want to watch EVERY SECOND of that program. The amount of things in a Victorian age home that CAN kill you is blood curdling. OK.. back to the basics. I would say the sawdust is more for THERMAL insulation than acoustic but it will do a bit of both. You will probably want to leave it alone. If you remove it, you remove the insulation it provides...and it brings about the question of what have you released into the air? What is it that you want to do with the flooring that caused you to remove the floor?

In their shoes, I might try some heavy duty, velvet type curtaining, like a theatre. There is a good chance the sound is travelling through the floors, some old homes had framing that connected a whole block of development. When we lived in a more commercial area, we could hear the music from the veterans hall 2 or 3 doors down, through the floor, esp at night as our bed was close to the floor. Our windows were also ancient, single pane, double hungs, they were about as effective against sound as a piece of paper. Another possibility is where a fireplace might be or any other place where the walls will be thinner. I don’t think the neighbours are bad, it is an unfortunate situation though. If it wasn’t music, it could be screaming kids, howling dogs, fighting adults, I personally prefer music. Have they invited them over to hear how much sound carries over? Maybe the neighbours could try soundproofing a music area.