Anyone use acoustic foam to help with noises?

[Roxy_9_2011]

I really would appreciate feedback on whether anyone has used acoustic foam to help absorb sound in their bird room? Or does anyone have a better idea than that to absorb our lovely birds' calls?

Thank you!

 

[weco]

I don't recall ever hearing of foam being used for squawking/screeching suppression, but because that stuff has to be glued to the wall, if you go that route, but change your mind or need to remove it later on, you'd be best to just scrape the wall as best you can, then use a 1/4 inch sheetrock overlay and finish that rather trying to patch all the dings & dents you'll have after removing all that glued on foam.....don't forget, you'll need to remove & shim window, door & base moldings too.....

Good luck.....

 

[Roxy_9_2011]

Thanks for that advice! Didn't realize it would require all that, but luckily a fellow bird owner told me about sound absorption sheets by Audiomute

Audimute Sound Absorption Sheets | Materials That Absorb Sound | Soundproofing Blankets - Audimute Soundproofing

All you need to do is hang them up and also there isn't risk of particles coming off them into the air

 

[Jayyj]

It's important to understand there is a difference between sound treatment and sound reduction. The former is making a room sound appropriate for critically listening to sounds and is achieved with foam, bass traps, diffusers etc; and the latter is reducing volume levels, which can only really be achieved by isolating the sound (I.e boxing it in without any airgaps) then adding mass and decoupling from elsewhere in the building. Trying to achieve the latter with techniques designed for the former just doesn't work.

The problem with acoustic foam is that its purpose is not to sound proof but to control certain frequencies, making it easier to hear an honest representation of what is coming out of the speakers without cluttered, erratic sonic reflections from nearby reflective surfaces. Even then it's generally used by amateur enthusiasts rather than in pro studios as even the dense stuff marketed for acoustic purposes is pretty ineffective at reducing anything but the highest frequencies. But the main point is acoustic foam is a way of treating sound, not decreasing it per se.

If your bird has a very high pitched screech, then foam around the cage might have a small effect in taking the edge off it. If you're thinking it's going to have any effect on a large macaw or a U2/M2, afraid not! It's expensive stuff too, so I wouldn't recommend trying it anyway justyo see. Oh, and I would imagine the average bird would spare no time setting about the foam with its beak, and I can't believe it's safe to ingest.

A heavy rug suspended an inch or two away from the wall behind the cage will do easily as much in terms of sound reduction as any foam treatment, look nicer and less risky for the bird.

Who would have thought a sound engineering degree would come in useful on a parrot forum!

 

[Scott]

Oh yes, and with disastrous results!

Six years ago I moved from a rural home to a more densely packed locale and was acutely worried the pleasant noises would ruffle neighbor's feathers. Two large cockatoo flight cages were placed in the garage with the others residing in a bedroom. The latter was deemed acceptable with dual-pane windows and abundant insulation. Both garage doors were replaced with heavily insulated "winterized" units with thick glass windows, and 2 inch thick styrofoam blocks were glued to the walls. It turned out to be a very pet-friendly neighborhood with no complaints thus far. However.....

Within 3 years the local rodent community discovered the delights of edible parrot pellets/seed/veggies/fruits our fids toss to the floor. They were insidious at first and I should have been far more aggressive with control. Very long story short, they took residence in the walls behind the styrofoam, using it as a gnawed substrate for nesting. Realizing I was in over my head, I engaged a professional exterminator to eradicate the pests and completely seal all aspects of the home. Removal of the blocks revealed about a dozen entry holes at ground level AND near the ceiling! FTR the invaders were not cute little mice but huge Roof Rats. Thankfully the 'toos were never bothered and are free of disease.

 

[weco]

It is interesting where some threads take us ! ! !

And the interesting people you meet along the way.....



In the late 60s I was stationed in Alaska on part of our early warning "Dew Line." We were there for a year at a time, some of us had it rougher than others, but the hardest thing I found was the silence, others couldn't handle the isolation and some had to be medically evacuated. We were a couple hundred Air Force personnel guarding against sneak attacks from Comrade Brezhnev's ICBMs and Tupolev bombers, at least at our site.....

We had a two lane bowling alley, an NCO club for various libations, a 50 watt radio station that just relayed/re-broadcast AFRN & AFN radio programs, but like Adrian Cronauer, some of us wanted something other than the canned programs coming out of studios at Elmendorf AFB & Fort Greely, so we started writing to commercial DJs from back home, requesting any duplicate LPs they might have laying around and soon amassed over 500 albums for our own sound library, oh, and we got a free 20 minute call back home once a month.....while I'm pretty sure we didn't have any sound engineers with us, we had enough electronic, communications and cryptographic personnel around that we were able to build our own 5 watt AM radio station and got permission to re-purpose a two man room in the enlisted quarters for a studio...we ended up with some 20 or so guys that wanted to be DJs.....that was my first introduction to sound reduction, gluing sound deadening tiles (similar to holy, dropped ceiling tiles) to the walls & ceiling, but since the buildings up there were steam heated, we had crawl spaces about 4 foot high under them, so we didn't have to worry about frozen pipes or the like, but being wooden buildings, with our crypto room being the only concrete room at our lower site facility, we talked our engineering officer into notifying whoever was running the WEAK-Radio station whenever either of our bulldozers needed to plow snow or move any equipment around the site or up the mountain, to or from top camp, because we could not figure out how to dampen our studio enough to stop our two turntable needles from dancing across records to the rumble of Caterpillar engines when they drove by.....

 

[Roxy_9_2011]

Thank for you the responses! And happy to peak interest into others topics too lol. I did do my research about sound absorption vs. sound treatment. I just simply want to lower the echoing in the bird room. Love the idea of hanging a rug up. And I will definitely stay away from foam too lol

 

[Delfin]

Egg cartons make a really good and cheap sounding proofing.
I had a friend who built a recording studio in his house. And he used egg cartons on the walls. Nothing else came close.

 

[Jayyj]

Egg cartons are about half as effective in terms of sound absorbsion coefficient as acoustic foam - although you can take that with a pinch of salt because the only people who seem to have bothered testing them are acoustic foam manufacturers! Before people started manufacturing cheap acoustic foam egg cartons were found in pretty much every home studio, but again they deal with reflections rather than isolating sound, so their effect is limited where reducing the impact of loud noises is the goal, and they only effect certain high frequencies with no effect on low frequencies. On the plus side it doesn't cost anything to experiment and it might make a very small difference so I can understand why people try it. I built a studio a few years ago, literally from the ground up with new walls that 'floated' inside the original building to decouple the inner room from the outside structure, and our live room absorbsion panels were 8-12" deep rockwool based contraptions covering about a 5th of the wall area - very effective but not hugely practical in the average front room!

A good way to demonstrate sound absorbsion as opposed to sound proofing is simply to stand in the middle of your living room and clap your hands, then stand in your bathroom and do the same thing. In the bathroom the soundwaves bounce off the tiles etc straight back at you and you hear a ring or short echo to the clap - in the living room the reflections will be absorbed by sofas, carpets, book cases etc that might diffuse sound waves a little, and the clap sounds drier and softer. Treating the area around the cage would further improve the job the sofas and carpet are doing and I guess this is what you're trying to do. The heavy rug / air gap solution I suggested is almost certainly your best bet for this.

A comparible example of soundproofing or isolation would be to stand in the bathroom, seal any gaps around the doors and windows, and see if anyone can hear you clapping from the other side of the door.

 

[Delfin]

A lot of wall foam is actually egg carton shaped. But maybe acoustic diffuser is what you are after this link might help


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHTmNyo_0O0"]How to build an acoustic diffuser - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Jayyj]

I've made a few of those in my time!

Diffusers are something different again: untreated rooms tend to emphasise particular frequencies eminating from a particular point depending on where the listener is sitting, and diffusers help to reduce this - so if you're listening to music you will get a clearer idea what is coming out of the speakers if you have diffusers on the walls in the correct places. Studio control rooms generally mix diffusers with bass traps to produce an aoustically neutral environment.

Egg cartons (and similar shaped foam products) have some diffusional qualities and some absorbsion qualities, but are limited as diffusers in that low frequencies tend to pass straight through them rather than reflect.