I am looking for some serious advice on soundproofing a shared wall in my condominium unit. I love my place, but the wall between my living room and my neighbor’s unit is incredibly thin. I can literally hear their TV shows, their muffled conversations, and their dog barking like they are sitting right in the room with me. It is completely ruining my privacy and keeping me up at night.
Since I obviously cannot alter the inside of their wall, I need to figure out the most effective way to soundproof my side of the drywall without losing too much square footage.
I’ve been reading up on a few different methods online. One option is to add a second layer of 5/8-inch drywall using a special sound-dampening glue like Green Glue between the sheets. Another option I saw is to install mass-loaded vinyl (MLV) directly onto the existing wall before adding new drywall on top.
Has anyone here actually tried these methods in a condo or apartment setting? Does adding a second layer of drywall actually block low-frequency noises like TV bass, or do you really need to tear out the old drywall completely and put in resilient channels to decouple the wall entirely? I don’t mind spending some money to fix this, but I want to make sure the method I choose actually works before I hire a crew.