Guide to the best products for soundproofing a piano room

The piano is an instrument with enough sound power, especially if it is a grand piano. Although wall pianos are also very noisy.

It is normal for a piano student, especially if he is a conservatory student, to invest many hours in his practice. And this unfortunately often leads to problems with neighbors and sometimes quite serious. Added to this is the difficulty that renting a study room is very expensive and few can afford it.

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To avoid these problems or alleviate them to a level tolerable with neighbors there are some options. Soundproofing a room professionally is also expensive but there are wall and floor panels that can suffice in several cases.

Many of us at Spain remember the bizarre case of Laia, a girl whom the prosecutor asked for 7 years in prison for a complaint about noise. Her neighbor accused her of piscological torture. It must be said that the case was filed and the judge in the final order harshly criticized that the process had been admitted for processing and that it was so lengthy in time. It was a bit of an extreme case…

The sound of the piano is transmitted through the air and through the floor. That is why it is sometimes felt in the adjoining floors and certain materials can help in the damping of these sound waves. So we’ve prepared a guide to these materials for you, and we’ll give you tips on how to place them correctly.

Acoustic Foam Plate

A classic of the local rehearsal and in the home music studio. It is one of the materials most used by individuals at very affordable prices. It’s a very effective and cheap option, it’s usually the first thing we have to try to see if we get results.

We always advise to place these panels and show them to the neighbor who is complaining, that way he will see that we are trying to alleviate the problem and his attitude towards us will probably be much more positive.

These panels are placed on the wall, a little above the floor, about 50 cm above the floor. And they can reach the ceiling but they do not put the ceiling exactly, but at most up to where it joins ceiling and wall, this improves the acoustics and partially muffles the noise.

It is important to protect the wall that is closest to the piano, in a similar way as the wall of this Home Studio is being protected from the photo with similar plates:

The sound that travels through the air will go in quantity to that wall, this way it will bounce towards us and we will also improve the acoustics of the room.

You must also protect the rear wall of the piano and the side walls. The least important is the wall farthest from the piano.You can buy small panels, but we are going to recommend you a very effective one that has a lot of surface, with one of these behind the piano you already do a lot and if you put them on the side walls better.

Foam sheets or Bass Trap

If you can afford it these plates are a perfect complement to cushion the bass, which are the sound waves that create more problems with neighbors. They’re plates that are placed right in the corners of the room. A little attached to the ceiling in a similar way to the image:

Above all they are placed in the corners formed by the wall behind the piano and the side walls.

Acoustic insulation cork – 2 mm, 5 X 1 meter

Very interesting product. As we told you before, sound waves are also transmitted through the ground and this is one of the biggest sources of annoyance for neighbors. The piano is an instrument that when in contact with the ground its basses feel a lot.

It is a product designed to be placed under the parquet. But we can use it in a variety of ways. We can put it under the piano and over it a carpet, between the piano and the cork. Being in the lower part of the piano this will help us to palliate the sound that travels on the floor. And this mixed with the previous bass traps may be enough for neighbors not to complain.

If you don’t like how the cork looks aesthetically with a carpet or similar you can always put parquet on top as you will see in the original image of the product.

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