I want to thank all the experts here, the posts here have been helpful in planning my room. But I wanted to run it by you all.
We are building an 11 by 14 family room. We plan to have a 5.1 system with in wall/ceiling speakers.

I was going to instruct my contractor to use a hat channel with resilient clips for the walls. This is a single story house. Do I need to treat the ceiling in a similar way?

If I didn't want to use the double 5/8 drywall green glue method, is there a good acoustically damping single sheet drywall that you would recommend?

What type of insulation should I use?

For best sound from the inwall speakers, do you recommend using any of the dynamat in wall speaker kits? Or should I put some type off mass loading behind where the speakers are going. I am using speakers that are enclosed in their own backing box.

Can someone explain how to seal around outlets and switchs?

Thanks,
Ian

Hi Ian,

Sound isolation construction and in-wall speakers are natural enemies! If you can lose the in-walls, it would be lots better. Otherwise, back boxes can help some.

Yes, you need to treat the ceiling the same, or you've got a flanking path by which sound just sneaks through the ceiling to the next room.

Insulation in wall cavity: Plain old fiberglass batt. Expensive "sound-rated" stuff performs no better.

Single sheet damped drywall: QuietRock and Supress. QuietRock works better, but you need to get into the higher/thicker model numbers, like the expensive QR-545.

Regards,
Terry

Thank you Terry.

Ian,

what in-ceiling speakers are you going to use? I was considering Noble Fidelity speakers for my family room http://www.noblefidelity.com, but I have not been able to find much comparative information

I haven't decided yet.But I think it is best to match the surrounds to the rest of the speakers for timber. So I probably will chose 1 brand for all 5 speakers.

Good luck,
Ian

I'm not sure what your budget is, but you may want to look at Triad speakers. They are very nice sounding and are built with a back box. Triad Dude is a posts fairly often here.

http://www.triadspeakers.com

CJ

I'd be curious about a pre-fab back box. If they are to do anything significant, they need to be massive.

Check out my theater build thread (link is in my signature) for some back boxes that I made to enclose my inwall speakers. I have no idea how well they work since I am still in the construction stage.

CJ

CJs boxes look good

CJs boxes look good

Thanks, Tedd. Hopefully they will work well too!

CJ