Sound construction.

January 7, 2016 8:57 AM

Dear Architects: Sound Matters. Put your headphones on. Why Architects Need to Use their Ears

Inside the bizarre science of concert hall design.
A Proposal For the World's Quietest Metro Station

Soundproofing for New York Noise.
When renting an apartment, how can I tell how sound-proof the walls are?

It's all part of the Search for Silence

posted by the man of twists and turns (33 comments total)

I don't understand the business card check in the 'apartment' link and what he means by the floor being compromised.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:04 AM on January 7, 2016

There's a lot I like about the house we live in (which is very old), but the soundproofing is atrocious. The first week we lived there I was woken up by the sound of people playing football in the street, not talking or yelling, just the sound of the ball hitting their hands, which made it inside the house loud enough to be clearly audible. I'm a light sleeper, but still. Parties in the yard next door sound like they're taking place inside our dining room.

We're moving to a "luxury" apartment soon, and I've got my fingers crossed that it'll be better, it has to be.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:07 AM on January 7, 2016

Bulgaroktonos - I'm like you, I prefer my house to insulate me from the noise outside, but TFA seems to be saying the opposite (ie the penthouse can only be alive when the window is open, because when it's closed, it's stifling, not letting air/sound from outside in)
posted by k5.user at 9:09 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't understand the business card check in the 'apartment' link and what he means by the floor being compromised.

If the hardwood has a resiliency layer underneath it and the gap between the baseboard and the hardwood exists, then the resiliency layer isn't 'bouncing back' (i.e. resilient) and thereby absorbing the sound from footfalls... So it's "compromised" and more walking sounds will permeate.
posted by Jacob G at 9:11 AM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I currently live in a very quiet apartment situated in what was originally an office building built in 1891 out of tons of brick and stone and steel. What I've learned is that there is no such thing as silence. I just get annoyed by progressively quieter noises.

Last week I had to unplug my fully powered-down PS4 because I could hear some part of the power supply ticking.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:13 AM on January 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

I just get annoyed by progressively quieter noises.

I think of this as the Zeno's paradox of misery; I can never be happy because I get halfway there and halfway there and smaller and smaller distances become increasingly insurmountable.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 9:29 AM on January 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

I remember reading a rant about fuller dome houses and how everyone in the house could hear whoever was going to the bathroom or having sex. Thinking about sound in design seems critical. When I put a washer and dryer in my apartment I considered lining the nook with eggcrate foam.

I just get annoyed by progressively quieter noises.

Some intelligent system that pumps in white noise when it is too quiet would help a lot with things like clocks ticking, refrigerators humming, and CFL ballasts whining. OTOH, it'd be nice if energy star labels also included average and peak decibels for appliances.

I think the holy grail of restaurant design would be a relatively quiet restaurant that pipes in just a bit of kitchen noise when there are so few patrons that it's too quiet.
posted by BrotherCaine at 9:40 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Silence doesn't sell. Acoustics designers are an "add" to an already expensive project. Your contractor will make the budget look better by "value engineering" the separations and pull out your acoustic detailing. Also: balconies and courtyards are not part of the rentable square footage. Bike racks are an amenity. Developer driven projects are always about compromise for profitability. You need an owner/tenant who is invested in a high quality space with long-term plans. Architects know about this stuff but they aren't in charge. And, yeah, there's plenty in the profession who ignore or scoff at the "softer" side of human habitation.
posted by amanda at 9:42 AM on January 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

Along the same lines, I'm eagerly awaiting the release of In Pursuit of Silence (trailer) - it's an idea whose time has come.
posted by pahalial at 9:44 AM on January 7, 2016

The first episode of 99% Invisible: 99% Noise. (Transcript).
posted by maudlin at 9:51 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

On a lighter note regarding obnoxious noise, I hate it that movie theaters have given up the old cardboard boxes for popcorn and have switched to those super noisy little paper bags. Ugh!
Seems whenever I get all comfy in a theater some one will plop down right near me and wait til the movie begins to start scrunching and snuffling in that damn bag.
posted by Tullyogallaghan at 9:52 AM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Architects know about this stuff but they aren't in charge.

This can't be emphasised enough.

I'm sorted though, I have tinnitus and haven't heard silence since I was 16 or so. I am my own personal white noise generator.
posted by deadwax at 9:54 AM on January 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

That Metro station is going to be impossible to clean...
posted by schmod at 9:55 AM on January 7, 2016

I don't understand the business card check in the 'apartment' link and what he means by the floor being compromised.

He's simply wrong. There are many contributing factors to the fit between baseboard and wood flooring, and "compromised" subflooring is not one of them. The subflooring is almost never compressed or otherwise stressed right along the walls.

Baseboard's functions are almost exclusively cosmetic, not structural.
posted by yesster at 10:00 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

What looks good does not necessarily sound good. Like a combined kitchen/living area designed for TV watching with hardwood floors and ceiling-mounted speakers in a 12" ceiling. You'd be better off in a carpeted walk-in closet with a single mono speaker 3 feet from your face.

But concert halls are an odd beast, as you are trying to add just the right amount of reverberation in just the right places. I knew an computational acoustics guy who worked on this, he then went on to brain surgery. I think he might have thought it easier.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:10 AM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's a bar/brewery near us that was built in the last year or so and it has possibly the worst sound construction I have ever heard. The whole place is concrete with a flat metal ceiling and zero sound dampening materials on the wall. Two small groups in that place can make it so cacophonous that it's impossible to hold a conversation without being withing half a foot of the person talking. Also the kitchen is open to the front of house so there's no mystery about what is happening there.

It makes me never go there because I can't bear that shit.
posted by Ferreous at 10:12 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tin ceilings are all the rage in coffee shops and other such twee establishments. They may look pretty, but they are from Satan.
posted by BrashTech at 10:40 AM on January 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

The first week we lived there I was woken up by the sound of people playing football in the street, not talking or yelling, just the sound of the ball hitting their hands, which made it inside the house loud enough to be clearly audible.

My first house was a brick structure built in 1905, and so were the windows it came with. They may as well have not been there at all. We gutted and renovated the whole thing (all 750 sqft of it) and the biggest improvement from a comfort perspective was replacing the windows and exterior doors - they not only improved insulation with regards to temperature, but the reduction in sound transfer from the street was incredibly dramatic. I kind of wish we'd done it earlier.
posted by Leviathant at 10:48 AM on January 7, 2016

Just last night, I was testing active noise cancellation headphones at home. I could barely tell a difference. Then I realized that is a very large part of why I love the new place.
posted by ethidda at 10:51 AM on January 7, 2016

At least none of you are living in the Inchindown storage tank, with its 112 second echo.
posted by scruss at 11:35 AM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

eggcrate foam.

This is pretty useless for sound insulation, by the way. You need to spring for real acoustic insulation foam, which is also going to be much much safer in a fire (remember the horror of The Station fire? I saw a demo on 60 minutes of how the foam that the cheapskate owners had installed burns compared to what they should have used. The real thing wouldn't even really ignite, it was just smoldering and wilting).
posted by thelonius at 1:14 PM on January 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

In Pittsburgh there's a big old decommissioned church that was converted into a brewery and restaurant. Put a few hundred diners and drinkers into a room that was designed to help a single person's voice carry, and it's just nightmarish. You have to yell for the person across the table to hear you, which only compounds the problem. Absent some social or professional obligation, I will not be going back no matter how good the food or beer might be.

That's not to say I'm a fan of absolute silence, though. I live in a brick house now, with double-glazed windows, and I miss the crickets and the voices of pedestrians that used to filter into the wood house I used to live in, long ago and far away...
posted by jon1270 at 2:18 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's really hard to convince developers to spring up for good sound insulation; I think for new construction the minimum insulation requirement should be mandated by the building code (or, if it is already mandated, made higher), with proper testing (same for airtightness).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:46 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

There was an article in the Austin Chronicle a while back about how one of the new hotels near Sixth Street had failed to consider sound mitigation in construction and the problems it was causing. Whoops.
posted by immlass at 2:59 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Worked in a health center for several years. They spent over four million to renovate an old furniture store in a downtown area. The architect had exposed all the HVAC ducting, leading to a work environment in which it was hard to hear someone on the phone. The only time we had a respite was the (frequent) breakdowns of the HVAC system.
posted by fgdmorr at 3:10 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am clearly more sensitive to ambient noises than most people, because I seem to spend more time being annoyed by things nobody else notices, but I honestly can't understand how people tolerate so much noise. I actually like muffled city sounds, and train and coyote sounds are sleepin' music to my ears. But there's something about the sound of directed distress signals like vocal outbursts and electronic alerts that just makes me want to peel my skin off.

This is probably because there always seems to be someone in my house playing video games or watching anime or some bombastic sounding action movie or one of those TV shows about screaming. I know it's partly because they are background noises to me as opposed to someone who is actively engaging with the source of the noise, but the sheer amount of yelling and sound effects and over the top emoting is absolutely horrific and impossible to ignore. I've spent way too much time trying to figure out some escape from noise. (My current plan is to set up a housewide speaker system so I can play that song on a loop until people get the hint.)

But I don't have that level of control in the outside world, and my worst example is also a brew pub. This one was a new-built chain place, I think, with concrete floors, really high ceilings with glass and metal beams, and the whole thing was open plan, so all the sounds carried, totally unmuffled. You had to order by pointing at the menu. The first and only time I was there, someone had what looked like a heart attack or other serious medical emergency, and I couldn't imagine how much more difficult and stressful that was for the patient and the EMTs with that dull background roar.

And also, the types of sounds seem to get worse and worse. I curse the people who invented car alarms and remote lock indicators and all those other goddamned emergency sounds for non-emergent situations, and the people who leave all their audible alerts on their cell phones on. I've (not seriously) considered carrying around a ball peen hammer so I can smash out windows to 'rescue' whoever is inside of blaring vehicles, based on the perfectly reasonable assumption that you wouldn't make a noise like that unless it were really urgent.

If we get inured to constant distress signals, it seems like it's a) just creating an atmosphere of constant, low-level stress, and b) possibly dulling our response to genuine distress signals.

PS That first article is laid out really nicely, and could not have been done effectively in any other medium.
posted by ernielundquist at 3:21 PM on January 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Too many reflective surfaces (hardwood, tiled or concrete floors, glass windows, tabletops) and there's too much reverb. A sound reaches the ear from several different sources at different times and the result is "muddy" sound. Listening to a band playing in a typical indoor "arena" can be a nightmare ... sound flying between hard floors and cavernous spaces filled with structural steel. Direct sound under an open sky (no reflections) is much preferable. (There's much to be learned from ancient open-air ampitheatres.)

Another problem is selective absorbtion of some frequencies. One old concert hall I frequented (which an orchestra had already used for decades) had a 'retrofit' consisting of horizontal glass panels suspended over the stage. The ceiling, and probably the audience, had been too absorbtive.

The physics of the question are fairly well understood - but many spaces are not designed to take them into account. When sound has to reach thousands of ears in an enclosed space ... and all those people fundamentally modify the space !! ... the calculations are a nightmare. Spaces can be modelled by computer (as airplane wing design has been), but because acoustics are often an afterthought, there's only so much such models can do.
posted by Twang at 3:21 PM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Deadwax, my tinnitus doesn't solve the misery of environmental noise pollution. Loud "background" music bouncing off industrial hard, flat, undampered surfaces frequently leaves me in agony. I live in Los Angeles, and it's getting harder and harder to avoid being caught up in those trendy environments.

It seems like restaurants are intentionally being designed so their baseline ambient noise level is too loud for people like me. And people like you. And people like all of us.

I am so, so, SO tired of not being able to comfortably enjoy a meal with friends without having to -- often, repeatably -- ask for the music to be turned down.

And it's not just restaurants. The noise level in the atrium of the new Broad Museum started to give me a killer headache after just a few minutes. I asked one of the staff if it bothered him, and he said yes. The Westfield shopping malls seem to be on a mission to give me measurable hearing loss and a migraine within the first 20 minutes of my visit. Even their outdoor shopping centers. (I'm looking at you, Century City.)

On preview, I sound like a cranky old fuddy duddy. I'm not. Promise. I just want to socialize and shop without endangering my health. I pity the poor employees who are subjected to those conditions day in and day out. Hearing loss is a real danger for some of them.

Given the developers' financial considerations mentioned above, and the general antiregulatory environment, I despair. Is there any chance of getting protections in building codes or OSHA regulations, since the free market clearly doesn't care about protecting us from hearing loss.
posted by LeftMyHeartInSanFrancisco at 1:10 AM on January 8, 2016

I was being flippant. I think my tinnitus makes cacophonous environments harder to cope with, there seems to be some interaction between sounds with a lot of intermodulation and the tinnitus whine, I can't be sure though, because I can't exactly turn off the tinnitus to find out. So I totally agree with you regarding environments like that, I was more commenting on other people's need for silence, I just don't have that. I think that is half down to habituation (why do you think I have tinnitus?) and half because total silence is a mostly foreign concept at this point, which is something that no longer bothers me.

There are requirements in some building codes, the Danish one which I am working with at the moment is very strict, but even it largely only considers noise from external sources. I'm yet to come across a building requirement that limits the ability of a building's occupants to make themselves and their guests uncomfortable. I've certainly come across OH&S law that does so, but that's not always integrated super well into the design process of a building or fit out, it's often considered later and doesn't apply in non-workplaces anyway.
posted by deadwax at 1:29 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Extremely annoyed. First the article is full of animated crap while I'm trying to read and my eye kept getting sucked away from the words.

Then I remembered how my house used to have a gravity hot-air furnace as I heard the fan of the new forced-air furnace kick in.

GRAR!
posted by DaveP at 4:06 AM on January 8, 2016

This thread reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a while until I visited my family in Colorado last year. See, the central branch of the Denver Public Library got remodeled back in the 90s, and it was long overdue. The facilities got modernized and expanded to several times their original size. All that was great...however.

Take a look at the main entrance. A three-story-high atrium with hard stone floors and walls and wood paneling. It looks gorgeous, but is loud as shit when you walk in there, even on slower days. On weekends with all the kids, it's a little slice of acoustic hell.

Not that I'd begrudge the kids their library time at all. It's important. It's just terrible, terrible acoustic design.

Also, Mrs. Example who still won't pony up five friggin' bucks for an account and makes me comment on every other thread for her mentions that for a library, it's very weird that when you first walk in, you don't see any books.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:16 AM on January 8, 2016

Thanks, deadwax. I did understand your first remark in the way you intended. Good point about the possibility that our tinnitus combined with the external cacophony exacerbates things for us. Grrrrrrr.

I am really worried about hearing loss for the workers in those noisy environments -- it's an invisible injury and comes on so slowly and imperceptibly -- and irrevocably. Hoping and waiting for a Surgeon General and health establishment which will publicize and issue warnings (regulations would be wonderful but I'm not holding my breath) about the dangers of second hand noise.
posted by LeftMyHeartInSanFrancisco at 6:18 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

How Buildings Sound
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:46 AM on January 21, 2016