Tyler Woodruff conducted a senior project to test different soundproofing materials. He built small speaker boxes to test acrylic, layered cardboard, and egg crate material. Through his testing, he found that the acrylic shell reduced sound levels the most, dropping decibels from 105 to 85. The cardboard and egg crate materials did not significantly reduce sound compared to the acrylic. Tyler learned that he enjoys sound engineering and wants to pursue it as a career, getting degrees in business and sound engineering.

1. Tyler Woodruff
Senior Project Speech
I have been playing assorted instruments for about eight to nine years now. These
instruments include Guitar, bass guitar, and drums. I normally practice every day and
work on all my skills as much as I possibly can. However, this is not always possible
because I always run into the same problem. This problem is that not everyone else
in my house and or other place that I may be playing or practicing my instruments
appreciates the noise that they make. This problem has perplexed me for many years
and I researched many ideas on how to stop this madness that my music ensues. I
found one idea that seemed like the ultimate do it all project to stop all the noise and
keep the family happy. This Idea was soundproofing. Soundproofing, unlike sound
absorbing or sound deadening, is the act of completely blocking out or keeping in all
sound that is emitted from a particular source. This is unlike sound absorbing, which
is the act of absorbing some sound in order to make it quieter yet not completely
gone. This is also nowhere close to sound deadening, which is the act of capturing
air pressure waves in order to take some of the noise out of the entire sound; sound
deadening can also be described as added more sound in order to overdue the original
sound and just make one white noise style sound. After learning about the different
types of procedures for making less noise I decided that I wanted to build a small room
for my drums and amps for my guitars that I could practice in, and when it came time
to decide on what I wanted to do for my senior project I jumped right on the idea of
building a soundproof room for my instruments. However, when I looked at the price
range for doing something like that, the idea was immediately thrown out. This whole
ordeal made me determined to find out which way of sound proofing is the best by
making a smaller model of what I was originally going to do so that I could test the
differences in decibel ranges.
Through my research in my research paper I found three test subjects; no
soundproofing as a control, an acrylic box, soundproofing layered cardboard material,
and egg crate material. With my research paper I decided that in order to fully
understand which material would work the best and why, I needed to know how sound
worked not just in nature but specifically how it worked when put up against different
soundproofing surfaces and materials. Through my research I found out how sound is
measured in decibels mostly. And I researched the specifics on how the human ear
perceives the change in sound level. The information that I found on this certain subject
matter particularly caught my attention. This information caught my attention when I
learned that a change in ten decibels up or down is a huge change in human
perception. A change in ten decibels up is equivalent to going from talking to yelling.
And in a soundproofing standpoint a change in ten decibels is going from hearing
people talk clearly from another room to hearing the faint bass noises in their voices
and not being able to make out words. Through my research I also found a ton of
information on the physics of how sound works. I found out that sound is a wave and
has to travel through a medium such as air or a material. I also found out that sound
can just travel through any medium; the medium its traveling though has to be thinner
than the wavelength of the sound wave. This is why the muffled sound that you hear

2. first is normally the lower notes when you’re getting closer to something that it loud.
That is because their wave length is longer. I chose in my project to challenge these
lower note frequency’s because these are the ones that are hardest to tackle and if you
can bloc them you can defiantly block the high frequency’s. This knowledge also helps
me get ahead on what I need to be doing to start training to be a sound engineer. The
physics of sound and the knowledge of sound proofing are directly related to sound
engineering. It is literally their job description. I plan on perusing this career later on in
life. Since I plan on pursuing this as a career later on in life I thought this would be a
great opportunity to do this project now to get a little taste of what I want to do for the
rest of my life.
In my project I tested three different materials in order to see which material
would work the best to help sound proof a small set of speakers. The materials I choose
to do this include; acrylic, cardboard soundproofing material, and egg crate. My
thoughts at the beginning of this experiment were that the cardboard would be the most
effective mainly because it was designed to be a soundproofing material. My project
facilitator, John Mercure, helped me decide on what thickness of the cardboard to use
and what types of acrylic and egg crate to use. My facilitator taught me a ton of
important things in dealing with sound proofing along with designing and building during
the whole process of my senior project. He owns his own specialty design company in
which they design and fabricate and build complicated architectural structures. This
makes his area of expertise just what I needed in order to help me build the perfect
model to test my experiment on. Through his area of work John Mercure has to deal
with a lot of jobs that require complex audio designs and certain specifications on
whether or not the area needs to be sound proof. With my facilitator we went through
the first step of any major project, intense planning. We started out drawing all the
possible designs for the smaller inner box that holds the speakers. We decided that
around 2 feet long 7 inches high and 10 inches wide was the perfect dimension for it.
This box was designed to hold two 8 inch sub woofers. After designing this box we then
worked for multiple days doing and redoing the design for the outer box which would be
actual box used for soundproofing. This box took a lot of work and caused a lot of
complications mainly because we needed to design a box that wouldn’t rattle too much
with the vibrations from the speakers and it still needed to be able to hold itself together
without being to heavy. We also ran into the problem of how to see what is going on
with the project if it is completely sealed off from view. We ending coming up with a
brilliant idea to use all high end acrylic which has a very high density content therefore it
does not vibrate that well thus keeping sound from coming through and it is extremely
sturdy. Once we designed both of these boxes we then spent a day and a half gathering
all the needed materials to finish the project. After that we spent two full days working
on the smaller speaker box. First we gathered the wood, which we used all zebra wood.
Zebra wood is a form of coated MDF or medium density fiberboard. We used zebra
wood for the speaker box mainly because it is a good solid wood that is very dense.
The density in the wood helps trap the vibrations and amplify them. Without the box for
the speakers, the speakers would barley work. After completely finishing the speaker
box we then moved on to the box outer soundproofing box. This box we made out of
high end acrylic. We used this high end acrylic because it’s clear for one so that you
can see the inside of the project. We also used this acrylic because it has a low

3. vibration rating. When we got all the pieces of the acrylic shell cut we then sanded
everything down to be very smooth so it will fit together extremely well. After fitting
everything together we then put it all together we some extremely adhesive silicon tape
that is used seal things together with an air tight seal. The reason we needed an air
tight seal is because if air gets out then the sound can leak and with that you have a
defective soundproofing device. After fitting everything together we then wired
everything us and tested everything out. Once every part of the experiment was set out
and tested we then began the actual experiment testing. The sound I used for the
testing was 4 different notes that all went on for about 4 seconds each. The control test
where to speaker box was by itself gave a reading of 105 decibels on the decibel
reader. This shows that with no soundproofing the speakers are pretty loud. When we
put the speakers in the outer box it immediately became quieter. The acrylic box
dropped the decibel rating to about 85 decibels. The cardboard and the egg crate did
not make any difference at all compared to the acrylic shell. This became a problem in
our results. Some of the other obstacles that we had to go through during this project
were how not to directly transfer vibrations to the outer box. The way we tackle this
challenge was to put Velcro on the bottom of two metal brackets and the mount them to
the speakers and float them in the middle of the soundproof box. Another problem we
ran into was not having enough time to do anything be we overcame this with really
good planning and time management skills. Even though we had many obstacles we
still overcame them all.
Through this whole project experience I learned that if I really put my mind to
something I can really succeed and do well with that topic. This project made me realize
that my own work ethic is a whole lot better than I thought it was. This project also made
me more aware of the importance of communication skills because I had so many times
where I would forget to call my facilitator and it would cost me a whole day of working
on my project and I would get behind. This project also made me realize that I really
enjoy the career path that this project happened to be on. This project made me open
my eyes more to the wonders of sound engineering and it showed me how much I
acutely like that certain field of study. This project has shown me that after high school I
still plan on going to Young Harris and getting a degree in business and then
transferring to an engineering college to get a degree in sound engineering.