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NOISE

Robert Max receives a lot of calls from people whose neighbors play their stereos too loudly. Barring the obvious, telling them to turn it down, the president of M C S Contracting Co. in Lombard advises there really is no magic solution.

”I just tell them you have to fill the walls with concrete to keep it out,” he said. ”In most cases all that really stops sound is weight and mass.”

”It is not as if there is some special goop or glop or board to counteract it,” echoed George Middleton, an architect and technical market manager for U.S. Gypsum Co. in Chicago, a manufacturer of soundproofing panels used in many new buildings. ”The solution is to design to avoid it.”

Most new buildings are constructed with soundproofing intact, said Bill Herrero, president of Ace Acoustics Inc., in Franklin Park, but usually the emphasis is on soundproofing offices from each other, not from outside sources.

In the absence of sheer mass, there are few alternative ways to soundproof. One, said Middleton, is separating a wall into two halves with a channel in between. Vibrations coming from one side, he said, are prevented from carrying through to the other. Another is using paneling that contains fibers designed to absorb sound. Proper installation, he said, is imperative. ”Since sound is a variation in air pressure, every time you have an air leak, you have a sound leak,” he said, adding one leak can make a major difference in the amount of sound that penetrates a wall.

”We are not really at the point of having the technology to counteract it,” said Middleton. ”We are at the point of recognizing the problem.”

While many builders may be recognizing the problem, said Bob Brandys, president of Occupational and Environmental Health Consulting Services, many others, including municipal zoning boards, often do not.

”Communities that have been zoned properly do not have that (noise)

problem,” said Brandys. ”But we have not done a very good job of zoning in the Chicago area. It is classic.”

One entity that by regulation must soundproof is the Illinois Department of Transportation. Highway barriers are built by IDOT when the increase in noise resulting from lane additions is more than 10 or 12 decibels, according to Tony Osnacz, project and environmental studies section chief. Berms may still be deemed inappropriate, however, because of cost or geographic restraints.

”If you`re dealing with highway noise, the best you can do is (absorb or reflect) 10 decibels unless you erect an infinite barrier, which you can`t,” said Brandys. ”With industrial problems, they can engineer 40 or 50 decibels, but that is the maximum.”