What can we do?" asked the distraught
mother. "We live in an apartment
and our ninth-grader plays the
drums. We stapled egg cartons over the
entire ceiling and walls in his room, but
the neighbors still complain."
Just because egg cartons resemble
sound-absorbing wedges doesn't mean
they will endow your living room with
the acoustical properties of a recording
studio. Even though cardboard will
absorb more sound than plaster, and
the irregular shape will scatter the highfrequency
sound, the main attraction of
egg cartons is low price.
The egg-carton story illustrates two
common pitfalls in solving acoustical
problems. The first mistake was to use a
The keys are adding mass
and making resilient connections
by Timothy Foulkes
Wood framing is extremely