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I rent, and looking to bump up the STC of my living room and bedroom walls a little bit with some nice looking panels stuffed with Rockwool. I figure that these would add a little bit soundproofing to my walls from neighbors sound and double as sound treatment.

Obviously I can't have the panels cover the entirety of my wall, but maybe something like this is achievable: enter image description here

I'm looking to get at least +5 STC from something like this, my walls are maybe 40STC, so I can still hear the occasional sounds.

Is this a reasonable plan? I understand that they will definitely help with sound absorption inside, but not confident it can help reduce sound transmission from neighbors, especially towards the bass spectrum.

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  • from neighbors you're SoL. to neighbors it will help. Some. Way less than what you want though. But if they can't hear you, then they don't know you can hear them. ... I'm sure they'd appreciate a monitor screwed to the wall.... I rent and I own two 1500 watt speakers. They're in storage because I'm not an ahole. - You can reduce reflections in the room, but you're not a microphone so I'm not sure you'd notice w/o $40k in real acoustical panels. Also the chance that reducing ambient in that room actually increases the perception of outside noise.
    – Mazura
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 8:19
  • Those panels in the picture are probably there for sound shaping in the room itself - looks like an amateur 5.1 home theatre attempt. A bit of rockwool plonked on the wall is going to do nothing noticeable for transmission through the structure. For that you need mass & suspended damping. Also note that STC measurements only go down to 125Hz, below which is where the problem really starts.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 9:44
  • If you can hang a rug (or heavy tapestry) that reaches floor to ceiling it might do a little - but bass, likely not much. As a renter, it's probably complicating your next move too much to suggest floor to ceiling bookcases stuffed with books, which might actually have enough mass to dent the bass a little.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 13:41

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I'm not sure what rock-wool does, but I tried to get rid of neighbor sounds with panels of two layers of egg trays with cheese cloth spanned over it. (very bottom dollar and very old school). The result looked great, but was otherwise disappointing to anyone except my neighbors. It proved to very effectively keep noise in, rather than out. Eventually I ended up giving the panels to my neighbor's kid, who was learning to play bongos at the other side of my bedroom wall. That worked a lot better.

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    Not sure how that worked. Egg boxes will do almost nothing for noise penetration. They will break up refections in the room they're in, but nothing else.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 14:47
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    IIUC, what you're saying is that you tried to soundproof your side of the wall to keep the neighbors sound out (like the OP wants to do), but found it didn't work. You then gave the soundproofing to the neighbor, who installed it on his side of the wall and that helped? This, then, sounds like it agrees with the comments on the question saying that the idea won't work.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 14:52

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