Is Soundbreak Good For Soundproofing
Oct 10, 2022When soundproofing there are a few companies selling specialty drywall to help with acoustic sound isolation. One of those products is Soundbreak XP sold by National Gypsum. In this article we are going to look at what Soundbreak is, how is compares to regular drywall in terms of its acoustical properties and the cost compared to regular drywall.
What Is Soundbreak?
Soundbreak is a form of gypsum board or drywall with a viscoelastic polymer in the middle to help with sound damping. It comes in several different product lines.
1/2" Soundbreak
5/8" Soundbreak
3/4" Ceiling Soundbreak
Soundbreak XP Retrofit Board
For this article we will focus on the 5/8" product since it most closely resembles 5/8" regular drywall. Note that the viscoelastic polymer is achieving the same goal as green glue or mass loaded vinyl.
How Does Soundbreak Compare To Drywall For Isolation?
Let's take a look at this chart from Rod Gervais's book Home Recording Studio: Build It Like the Pros. Notice that the far right wall design achieves an STC of 63 using 4 layers total of 5/8" drywall.
Now if we look at a similar wall design using Soundbreak this is the design you will use.
With this wall design you will use one 5/8" layer on the outside wall and then another 5/8" drywall layer on the inside wall. Lastly, you will add a layer of 5/8" Soundbreak to the inside wall to achieve an STC of 64. One difference in STC is not much and for our purposes these two wall designs essentially achieve the same amount of isolation.
How Much Does Soundbreak Cost Compared to 5/8" Drywall?
To answer this question let's look at the two wall designs from above and the two costs associated with each. First, let's look at Gervais's design using four layers of 5/8" gypsum board.
The cost of Gypsum board is about $14 per 4'x8' piece. For Gervais's wall design we would need $56 worth of gypsum board.
Now the Soundbreak design requires 2 layers of 5/8" gypsum board and 1 5/8" layer of Soundbreak XP. The cost of Soundbreak is hard to find since you need to call your local supplier for a quote. I called a retailer here in Nashville and got a quote for $100.56 for a 4'x8' layer. Now I also found a website online from medium.com that quoted the range for 5/8" Soundbreak at $50-100. For the purposes of this exercise let's say one panel costs an average of $75 per panel.
The total cost to achieve a wall of STC 64 would be:
2 Layers of 5/8" Drywall = $28
1 Layer of 5/8" Soundbreak = $75
Total Cost Of Drywall = $103
Now it is is easy to see that the cost of achieving the same results with Soundbreak is almost double that of traditional drywall.
Should you use Soundbreak?
I would say not to spend the extra money for Soundbreak. Now it does offer extra mold protection, but that won't help with soundproofing. It also is harder to source and extremely costly. For these reasons I would stick with using the Rod Gervais approach. If you add Green Glue to the middle of your two layers of 5/8" drywall you will get even higher STC ratings.
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