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> all steel framing and drywall I have never heard of a steel framed / drywall house before. I looked it up and appear they are offered in my country. How does

> all steel framing and drywall I have never heard of a steel framed / drywall house before. I looked it up and appear they are offered in my country. How does steel make it quieter? I would think steel would transmit more noise than wood.

Scalestein 5y ago
Steel vs wood doesn't really matter. The key to soundproofing is having sound absorbing mass in between walls. As long as you fill the gaps between drywall with a decent amount of insulation it should be reasonably sound proof. In fact many professional "sound absorbing panels" you might see in a recording studio or on the walls of movie theaters are made from insulation.
Spooky23 5y ago
It’s illegal in many jurisdictions. Wood is fine. Soundproofing is about insulation materials, quality doors and building above the minimum. A lot of midrise condos are built to a pretty shitty standard to make the numbers work. Sometimes they do stuff like glue wall panels instead of fastening, so you get things starting to loosen quickly as the building shifts. If you stay in a decent midrange hotel (Hampton Inn, Marriott, etc) the sound is pretty good. They are prefabricated concrete, but look at the details, surfaces are carpeted, textured ceilings, there are rubber gaskets everywhere, etc. You usually don’t hear the nighttime adventures of your neighbors, but you can smell a bag of popcorn from 50 yards away because ventilation sucks.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
Steel framing tends to be correlated with higher wall mass, which means better sound isolation. The original discussion was about noise in multi-family homes e.g. apartment buildings and high-rises, which tend to be steel beyond a certain height. While there are single-family homes built with steel framing in the US, they are less common; they have some advantages but cost more to build and are more difficult to thermally insulate than wood. Every multi-family high-rise I've lived in used steel construction and drywall and had excellent sound isolation -- I never hear my neighbors and vice versa.

Scalestein 5y ago

Steel vs wood doesn't really matter. The key to soundproofing is having sound absorbing mass in between walls. As long as you fill the gaps between drywall with a decent amount of insulation it should be reasonably sound proof. In fact many professional "sound absorbing panels" you might see in a recording studio or on the walls of movie theaters are made from insulation.

Spooky23 5y ago

It’s illegal in many jurisdictions. Wood is fine. Soundproofing is about insulation materials, quality doors and building above the minimum. A lot of midrise condos are built to a pretty shitty standard to make the numbers work. Sometimes they do stuff like glue wall panels instead of fastening, so you get things starting to loosen quickly as the building shifts. If you stay in a decent midrange hotel (Hampton Inn, Marriott, etc) the sound is pretty good. They are prefabricated concrete, but look at the details, surfaces are carpeted, textured ceilings, there are rubber gaskets everywhere, etc. You usually don’t hear the nighttime adventures of your neighbors, but you can smell a bag of popcorn from 50 yards away because ventilation sucks.

jandrewrogers 5y ago

Steel framing tends to be correlated with higher wall mass, which means better sound isolation. The original discussion was about noise in multi-family homes e.g. apartment buildings and high-rises, which tend to be steel beyond a certain height. While there are single-family homes built with steel framing in the US, they are less common; they have some advantages but cost more to build and are more difficult to thermally insulate than wood. Every multi-family high-rise I've lived in used steel construction and drywall and had excellent sound isolation -- I never hear my neighbors and vice versa.