JW Mooney's Practical Architectural Acoustics Notebook

Introduction

This notebook is a compilation of my best published articles on the subject of practical architectural acoustics. These articles appeared in Walls & Ceilings magazine in the United States and in SoundDesign magazine in India between 1998 and 2012. Not an exact reprint of the published and edited versions, this compilation is of the complete and unedited final drafts of these articles. Also included are questions from readers and miscellaneous notes and information relating to each article.

This notebook is a practical resource for architects, building committees, contractors and related professionals, and may also serve as a study in trade magazine writing.

Jon W. Mooney, 2012

http://www.jwmooney.com

Acoustic Theory and Practice

The $64,000 question: How does sound pass through walls?

In the 1950's, a popular quiz show titled The $64,000 Question placed contestants in isolation booths and had them wear headphones so they could only hear the emcee's questions and not any helpful answers blurted out by the audience. To reassure the viewers that the show was not rigged, especially after the scandal that had shown shows had been rigged, the phrase sound-proof booth was coined.

Sound-proof suggests a structure that is capable of filtering out all sound from the outside. The need of viewers to believe in such a structure was largely responsible for this phrase being quickly adopted into the general vocabulary, where it remains today. In fact, not a week goes by in which someone doesn't ask me how to construct a sound-proof structure. Unfortunately, the sound-proof booth exists only in the imaginations of television viewers. In reality, structures are sound-proof in a similar way that dams are water-proof. As long as the level on one side is below the structure's capacity, everything is fine. But as soon as the level rises above the structure's capacity, both water and sound spill over to the other side.

How sound passes through solid walls and, more importantly, how to keep sound from passing through solid walls, was one of the last mysteries of basic architectural acoustics to be understood. The first attempts at sound insulation were the same methods and materials used for thermal insulation. These efforts were largely unsuccessful because heat and sound do not travel by the same processes. Consequently, materials which serve as efficient thermal insulators do not necessarily possess the properties needed to be good sound insulators.

Acoustics 101: What is Sound?

Before we can say how to build a good sound barrier, we first need to understand what it is we are constructing a barrier against. So what exactly is sound? Sound is a bulk effect just like temperature and pressure are bulk effects. That means you need billions of molecules (a bulk) of air or gypsum or other material before you can measure that material's temperature, pressure or sound passing through the material. Both temperature and pressure are related to the intensity of random motions of a bulk of molecules while sound is related to the intensity of a pressure wave passing through a bulk of molecules.

Sound travels through different materials at different speeds. The speed of sound through air is about 348 meters per second (1142 feet per second) while the speed of sound through gypsum wall board is about 3530 meters per second (11,583 feet per second). The speed of sound in a particular material depends on the material's density. This is because the energy used to create sound is converted into momentum of the molecules just like the energy in your arm gets converted into the momentum of a baseball when you throw it. Since momentum equals mass times velocity, lighter molecules go faster (you can throw a baseball faster than you can throw a bowling ball). Therefore, the speed of sound goes down as the density of a material goes up. Every time you increase the density of a material by four times, the speed of sound reduces by half.

The other property of matter which affects the speed of sound is it's stiffness (not a technical term). For air, stiffness is measured as the added pressure needed to reduce the volume of the air and is called a bulk modulus. For solids, stiffness is measured as the added pressure needed to reduce the length of the solid and is called Young's modulus. The stiffer the material, the faster the speed of sound through the material. Specifically, every time you increase the stiffness of the material by four times, the speed of sound doubles.

Gypsum is about 74,000 times more stiff than air which would cause a 272 fold increase in sound speed but it is also 714 times more dense than air which causes a 27 fold decrease in sound speed. The final result is that the speed of sound in gypsum is 272/27 = 10 times faster than that in air.

So, how does sound pass through walls?

Sound passes through walls by three paths; 1) through air passages, 2) by shaking the whole wall, 3) by shaking the molecules in the wall. A good sound barrier is designed to impair all three sound paths.

Path #1: Air passages

Just like Sun Tzu's army, sound will take the easiest path through a barrier; and the easiest paths through most walls are created by construction gaps. The most common construction gaps are the cutouts for electrical outlet boxes, the air gap at the bottom of a wall and the air gap around the edges of a door. Although these gaps appear to be small, they can significantly reduce the sound isolation rating of a wall. To illustrate, let's take a typical 10 x 8 foot framed wall, insulated with 2 inch thick glass fiber batting with one layer of 5/8" thick gypsum on each side. This wall has a Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating of STC38 (i.e. it cuts the level of a 500 Hz tone by 38 dB). If we add a duplex outlet to the wall, sound will now freely pass into the cutout and out of the gaps in the cover plate reducing the rating of the wall to STC37. That's not much, but if there is an opposing outlet or other construction gap on the other side of the wall then the rating of the entire wall falls to STC19. The gap between the bottom plate and the floor, along with the gap at the bottom of the drywall is only hundredths of an inch wide but it alone is sufficient to reduce the rating of the wall to STC22. The gap around the edges of a door are even bigger, and therefore reduce the rating of the wall to STC12. By putting a door and an outlet in a wall, and by leaving the bottom gap, our STC38 rating plummets to only STC10!

The solution to the air gap problem is simply to seal all your construction gaps. Cutouts for boxes and other penetrating items can be sealed with a fire shield compound such as National Gypsum's Sta-Smooth FS 90. The electrical boxes themselves can be heavily coated with silicone acoustical sealant. A bead of silicone caulk between the plate and floor and under the bottom edge of gypsum board is effective at sealing the bottom gap. Doors can be sealed with weather stripping. Construct your walls as though you were trying to make them water tight and you will close up all of the easy air passages which ruin the sound ratings of most jobs. If your walls include an internal construction board such as a fiber insulating board, make sure that the plumber and electrician don't poke access holes through it; an insulating board with an access hole is just about equivalent to having no insulating board at all.

Path #2: Shaking the Wall

The next path that sound takes through a wall is by shaking the wall. A sound wave on one side simply shakes the whole wall panel, which produces a carbon-copy of the sound wave on the other side of the wall panel. For the typical framed, gypsum board wall the original sound wave shakes the gypsum board on one side of the frame which produces a copy of the sound wave inside the wall cavity. This copy then shakes the gypsum board on the other side of the frame which produces another copy of the sound wave on the other side of the wall. Common insulation materials do help to absorb some of the sound wave inside the wall cavity.

Try this experiment. Thump on a finished frame wall. Hear the drum tone? This is the frequency at which the wall panel vibrates (like a drum head). The ease at which sound below this natural frequency passes through the wall panel depends primarily on the stiffness of the wall structure. Therefore, when constructing a wall as a low frequency sound barrier, make the board and structure as stiff as possible. In practice, this is done by using laminated wall board.

The ease at which sound above the natural frequency passes through the wall depends primarily on the mass of the wall. Generally speaking, if you double the weight of the wall, only half as much sound will get through the wall. You can easily double the mass of a wall by using two layers of gypsum instead of only one. To prevent the two layers from rattling together and also to increase the stiffness of the wall, the boards should be glued together using construction adhesive or a double-backed adhesive system such as dB-Rock from Omni Products, Inc.

Path #3: Shaking the Molecules

The final path which sound takes through walls is by traveling through the materials which make up the wall. Airborne sound turns into vibrations in the gypsum and frame. Traveling through the structure at ten times the normal speed of sound, the vibrations ring at frequencies that depend on the dimensions of the wall components. Since the sound is inside the structure, common insulation is not effective in reducing this noise. The path is diverted by using staggered stud frames or totally separate frames so that the wall boards on either side of the wall do not share common studs. In this way, there is no direct path for vibrations to travel from one side of the structure to the other.

Conclusion: There's a whole lotta shakin goin on.

To complicate things, sound may travel half way through the wall using one path and then switch over to another path to complete the journey. Whichever is the easiest path is the one that sound will take. Therefore, the most efficient sound insulating wall will be the one in which it is equally difficult for sound to travel through air gaps, shake the wall and shake the molecules. Of these, removing construction gaps is certainly the most cost effective way to improve the STC rating of the wall.

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EMAIL From a reader...

Thank you for an enlightening article. I have learned quite a bit from it. But it brings to mind a question. It is common practice here in Dallas for architects to detail a sound attenuated wall with one of two specifications. Type 1: One layer 5/8 in. gyp.board on each side of a 3-5/8 in. steel stud on 16 in. centers. Extend both the studs and the sound batts full height to the bottom of the deck. Seal gyp board tight to the deck. Type 2: One layer 5/8 in. gyp.board on each side of a 3-5/8 in. steel stud on 16 in. centers. Infill stud cavity with full sound attenuation batts from floor to 6 inches above finish ceiling. Above the ceiling, install continuous sound attenuation batts over the partition and extending min. 4 ft. on both sides of the wall for the full length of the wall. The intent here is to limit how the sound can travel and to absorb it as it passes from one room to another over the top of the partition. From reading your article, I'm thinking that this second detail makes little sense. The first detail also seems to need help. Your comments? - Dwight

Thank you for your letter. It's always nice to know people read these things. Although the two constructions that you detail could be improved upon, they are more sound attenuating than common construction. The use of light gage metal studs does tend to decouple the two sides from each other, and the use of sound batts in the cavities is appropriate for absorbing some of the sound waves traveling in the cavity between gyp boards. Running the studs all the way up to the bottom of the deck and sealing construction gaps hinders the sound from jumping over the wall or going through gaps. When the wall only goes up to a common ceiling, then you should try to insulate the entire ceiling to hinder sound from jumping over the wall. Using sound batt for this purpose is common but not the most efficient way to do this. - Jon

But, what does it do?

Its fun to watch your kids exploring the treasures that you keep locked up in your tool box. Their imaginations run wild as to how each new contraption works. (I've also found it to be necessary to watch my kids, to make sure my tools don't grow legs.) On a recent treasure hunt, my oldest son opened a wooden case to discover what was certainly the same thing that Obi-Wan Kenobi gave Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. What is it? he asked with wild-eyed enthusiasm. It's your father's pistonphone, I answered in my best Alec Guiness impression. You could see the sense of power welling up in him as he took the heavy stainless instrument in his hands. But, what does it do? Flip the switch, I instructed. He raised the device and, half-expecting a plasma saber to extend from the end, activated the unit. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz went the pistonphone. This month we go on a treasure hunt through the acoustician's tool box.

The Reverberation Meter

The very first architectural acoustics tool was designed and built by Wallace C. Sabine in 1886. He used the device to measure the liveliness of various rooms at Harvard University where he was a professor. The device consists of an organ pipe which is fed by a compressed air supply which can be turned on and off with an electric valve. The compressed air supply was a weighted piston-in-cylinder made from two barrels and a rolling seal. Although the device was massive and awkward, it simply served as a source of sound at a known frequency and constant level which could be instantly turned on and off. In use, Sabine would turn on the valve and the organ pipe would sound. When sound had filled the room, he would simultaneously stop the air flow and start his stopwatch. After the sound could no longer be heard in the room, he would stop his stopwatch. Using this time measurement and his theoretical equations on how materials absorb sound, he was able to find and catalog the sound absorption coefficients of a number of building materials.

Unfortunately, these measurements were dependent on the loudness of the organ pipe and the hearing and stopwatch abilities of Professor Sabine. Consequently, they could not be accurately repeated by anyone else. As new devices were constructed, the same measurements could be made without these human inaccuracies. Because it was desired to make the new measurements coincide with Sabine's original measurements, it was mathematically determined and agreed upon that the difference in sound levels from when the professor's organ pipe was sounding to when he could no longer hear the sound was about 60 decibels. Therefore, just as the foot is based upon the length of the king's foot, reverberation time (RT60) is based upon the sensitivity of Sabine's ears.

Today, the reverberation meter fits in the palm of your hand and can simultaneously measure the reverberation time at several frequencies.

The Sound Level Meter (SLM)

Two basic questions in acoustics are, 'How loud is too loud?' and 'How quiet is quiet enough?' Since 'loudness' is a human perception of the power level of a sound wave, our measurements are based on human perception. The faintest sound which a person having normal hearing can perceive has a power level of about 0.000000000001 watts. Normal background noise in a house has a power level of about 0.000001 watts. Street noise has a power level of 0.001 watts and rock concerts generate sound power levels of 10 watts.

Although we could certainly measure sound level in watts, we quickly run into problems due to the large difference between the loudest and quietest sound levels. It is somewhat like trying to measure the thickness of a sheet of paper with a yardstick, or measuring the length of a football field with a micrometer. To get around this problem, scientists came up with a mathematical trick called the decibel. Although the math may look confusing, what it all boils down to is that a sound with a level which is equal to the faintest sound which you can hear has a sound level of 0 dB. One with a level which is ten times the faintest sound has a level of 10 dB. A sound level one hundred times the faintest sound equals 20 dB; one thousand times equals 30 dB; and so on and so forth. Using this trick, the range of 0.000000000001 to 10 watts simplifies to 0 to 130 dB.

Present sound level meters not only measure the total sound power level, but can also 1) measure the levels at different frequencies, 2) measure the sound level as a normal human ear would perceive it,