Perceived Loudness of Sound Transmitted through Light Weight and Heavy Weight Walls

Abstract

When assessing the sound insulation quality of buildings constructions, policy makers and investors typically demand for single number ratings and sound insulation classes that allow for easy ranking of building products. Converting the full frequency content of a precisely measured or calculated structure into a single number, which takes into account all aspects of the insulation performance in a balanced way, is a challenging task. The recently proposed draft standard 717 proposes to take into account also frequencies below 100 Hz. This makes the single value rating even more complicated, since the transmission spectra R (dB) of walls can be qualitatively very different above and below 100 Hz, and even more, since, particularly at low frequencies, human hearing depends not only on frequency but also on the absolute sound level. This article presents a comparison between masonry and light-weight walls with different R value, in terms of the perception of loudness of typical living room, traffic noise and machinery noise transmitted through the walls. The effect of temporal and spectral features of the presented stimuli on loudness perception is analyzed.

Review of acoustic comfort evaluation in dwellings: Part III—airborne sound data associated with subjective responses in laboratory tests

“…In Rychtáriková et al, [3][4][5][6] a group of studies regarding the subjective perception of loudness in living environments are presented. The studies are based on rating noise types transmitted through lightweight and heavyweight wall structures, from now on denoted as LW and HW, respectively.…”

“…In some cases, the participants reported that they would probably reply differently if the question of the test was to address the most annoying sound instead of the loudest one. 4 Specifically, in Rychtáriková et al, 3,4 a small sample of eight people rated 15 different sound stimuli of typical neighbor noise types (5 s each) filtered through a heavyweight wall (masonry) spectrum and a lightweight wall spectrum (gypsum boards on metal studs). 52 dB but different airborne SRI curves.…”

“…Several publications were subsequently found as references of the first selected papers. This review article includes 11 studies: eight European studies, [3][4][5][6][7][8]12,13 one Asian study, 9 and two Canadian studies. 10,11 In overall, 37 papers were found during the search in databases or relevant references and were evaluated by title name, abstract reading, and full reading.…”

“…For instance, there are different types of building components, such as walls that offer various insulation and acoustic conditions in residencies. [3][4][5][6] In some other cases the characteristics of noise types might influence in various ways the perception of subjects: thus different standardized descriptors work better for various sound sources. [10][11][12][13] Therefore, the relation of the measured acoustic data to self-reported responses is important to study.…”

“…Temporal amplitude modulations in the test sounds are stressed as important as well. Summing up, it is indicated in all the above studies [3][4][5][6]…”