Everything You Need to Know about Tap Testing

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Everything You Need to Know about Tap Testing

If you’ve ever lived in an apartment, then you know that sometimes you can hear sound from the upstairs neighbors: kid feet pounding on your ceiling as they run back and forth, furniture legs scraping against the floor overhead, or boots pacing back and forth late into the night. Much of the sound that passes between floors in a building is impact noise, that is, noise caused by the impact of an object against the floor or ceiling.

To characterize and ...

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What do STC ratings mean?

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What do STC ratings mean?

Sound Transmission Class is derived from other sound metrics like NIC and NIIC. You can read more about NIC and NNIC here. 

The NIC and NNIC don’t attempt to describe how sound gets from one room to another. Does the sound go through cracks or around corners (called flanking paths) or does it go straight through walls or other partitions (called direct transmission)?  By taking care to block flanking paths, the noise reduction between two rooms can reasonably be assumed ...

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Finding STC and all his friends – NR, NNR, NIC, & NNIC

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Finding STC and all his friends – NR, NNR, NIC, & NNIC

STC tests start by setting up speakers in a room, called the source room. The speakers play pink noise, a noise that sounds like white noise TV static but contains equal energy across frequency bands.  Microphones are used to measure the sound pressure level in the source room as well as the sound pressure level in the room on the other side of a wall or similar partition. This room is called the receiving room.

By comparing the sound pressure levels ...

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Let’s Talk about STC – Sound Transmission Class

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Let’s Talk about STC – Sound Transmission Class

STC stands for Sound Transmission Class. It’s a way to rank how much sound a building partition—like a wall or ceiling—blocks sound traveling through the air. STC is used in the United States while it’s cousin, the SRI (Sound Reduction Index), is used elsewhere. You can think of the STC rating as representing approximately how many decibels the partition can drop the noise. So, a higher STC number means more sound blocked. Although this is a rule of thumb, it ...

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Guide to Soundproofing & Room Acoustics

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Guide to Soundproofing & Room Acoustics

It can be difficult to compare the acoustics of one room against another room. Not only do the size and shape of a room change its acoustic feeling, but the materials of the ceiling, walls, and floor and their construction, as well as furniture, décor, and other objects in the room can change the way sound moves throughout a space. Couple that with the subjective opinions of individuals concerning what is annoying, too echo-y, too quiet, or too noisy, and ...

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