Temporary sound transmission mitigation

[GPx86]

I will be renting an apartment which shares walls with another unit. It's a commercial building so the sound mitigation is not great. I would like to install some temporary measures to isolate the shared walls as best as possible. Does anyone have any suggestions for sources and selection of materials that could help me build a temporary sound barrier?

My first thought was some sort of sound dampening blankets. However, they are extremely expensive if I am to cover the entire wall. Source for sound sheets. Is anyone aware of any similar and more affordable options? The second option is neoprene foam sheets. I may use these in combination with the sound blankets, but the cost is getting pretty high already.

Would placing mineral wool or other type of home improvement store insulation on the wall have any affect? I had considered this and just covering the whole thing in a cheap tapestry to make it look less terrible.

I understand that I cannot completely eliminate noise transmission, but these seem like reasonable options that I can implement with minimal trouble. The other thing I will do is put large metal shelves that are mostly filled in front of each wall. So the sandwich of materials will be WALL --> neoprene foam sheets --> Acoustical blanket ---> Shelving of stuff. The foam sheets or blankets will basically be hanging. As this is not a permanent installation, I'm not sure what more I can do.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[AnalogSteph]

From another thread that was sugested below yours:

To soundproof you essentially need to have another wall with treated space between it and the original wall.

A bunch of plywood / drywall (or similar) and mineral wool in big packs is probably the way to go.

This is building acoustics we are talking about, and what you want to keep out is sound that has already traveled through walls, so you need something a little (or rather a lot) more substantial than some blankets.

 

[Curvature]

Using foam, blankets, etc. will have very little effect.

Most of the transmitted sound will travel through ventilation and air leaks between units. The component that passes directly through walls will be quiet compared to other sources. Edit: The other big, but hard to fix source, will be direct coupling through joists, etc.

First find out how much sound is being transmitted, at what frequency, by measuring on your side when your neighbour is noisy. Then search for the sources of the noise on your side and try to address each. Edit: "Searching for sources" means identifying which hole or which piece of infrastructure is loudest.

Buildings that are not designed from the start to have good isolation between units will have many sources of noise. Depending on what frequencies or sources it may be impossible to fix without significant renovation.

Usual techniques are to seal the unit as much as possible by using caulk or putty, install noise dampeners inside vents, install vibration dampeners for parts of the unit that are picking up sound from nearby movements or machines. In any case all of these techniques rely on knowing the source and magnitude of transmitted sound. They should not be applied randomly.