I’m autistic with relatively high sound sensitivity. I’m wondering if another autistic person in this community used any soundproofing in an apartment that actually reduced noise coming from a busy street. There are a lot of different products out there and I don’t want to buy something that doesn’t work.
Lots of hanging cloth helps dampen noise too
At my old apartment with thin walls, we bought some cheap fleece blankets and hung them on the walls. It was janky, and they probably collected dust and needed to be washer more often than my 22 year old self realized. Wasn’t perfect acoustic isolation or anything, but it cut down on road noise and allowed us to feel like we could have conversations without the whole building knowing what we were saying. Also helped thermal insulation a lot.
“Lots” measured in mass. Buy your curtains by weight.
Leaving an air gap behind a cloth hanging on a wall extends its absorption frequency band lower because it makes it effectively as thick as the gap from the sound’s perspective. It also becomes a panel resonator with the air gap.
Oh wow, is this an area of expertise for you?
Hobby for 30 years.