sound | Acoustical Engineer

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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9
MAR
2020

0

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acoustics, intuition, NIC, NIIC, sound, STC, testing

How loud is your neighborhood?—Community Noise

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

Nearly everyone has a story about annoying noises—the roommate who plays music at all hours of the night, the would-be dragsters on the freeway nearby, or the airplanes roaring past overhead. Obnoxious sounds can distract us and disrupt the normal balance of our lives. In severe cases, noise can contribute to increased aggression, hypertension, and stress. Long term effects of high levels of noise exposure include hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), sleep disturbance, and increased blood pressure. It ...

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12
SEP
2019

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acoustic, airplane, airport, at night, california, CNEL, community noise, consulting, DNL, help, noise ordinacne, noise pollution, sound, what to do about loud neighbor

Laser Hearing: The Cocktail Party Effect

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

The cocktail party effect is the ability to listen selectively despite a noisy environment. The term comes from the observation that even in a crowded cocktail party room, a person can carry on a conversation with one person by “tuning in” to them and “tuning out” everything else.

If you think about it, it’s amazing that we can direct our focus to parse a desired noise source—say, a television—over the voice of the person sitting next to you. Of course, it ...

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29
JUL
2019

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acoustics, age, aging, air traffic controller, attention, binaural, cocktail part, distracted, distraction, driving, ear, ears, effect, focus, laser hearing, listen, listening, penguin, psychoacoustic, sound

Superpowers of the Ear: The Inner Ear

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

While both the outer ear and middle ear (which were discussed previously) are amazing and complex, the inner ear is perhaps the most amazing and most complex. While the world of the outer ear and middle ear are full of air, the world of the inner ear is filled with watery fluids. So, are you ready to take a plunge into the aquatic world of the inner ear?

For the sake of simplicity today, we will divide the inner ...

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25
JUL
2019

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acoustics, balance, basilar membrane, cochlea, ear hair, education, engineering, hair, hear, hearing, inner ear, learn, listening, science, semicircular, sound, spiral, transducer

Superpowers of the Ear: The Middle Ear

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

In a previous article we learned about the superpowers of the outer ear and promised we would tell you more about the middle ear, as well as that little drumhead at the end of your ear canal—the tympanic membrane.

The middle ear is a pocket of air bounded by the ear drum on the outer side and the cochlea on the inner side. The middle ear is home to the three smallest named bones in the human body: the malleus, ...

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22
JUL
2019

1

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acoustic impedance, acoustics, anvil, education, hammer, hearing, impedance, impedance mismatch, incus, learn, malleus, middle ear, ossicle, oval window, popping ears, pressure, purpose, science, sound, stapes, stirrup

Anatomy of a Sound Wave

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

When most people hear the word wave, they immediately think of ocean waves. While there’s nothing wrong about thinking about a sunny day at the beach, in terms of acoustics, the kind of waves you see crashing on the sand are not like most sound waves. In fact, crashing ocean waves are like the complicated nonlinear waves you find in a sonic boom situation.

Sonic booms may be cool, but if you want to understand sound waves, it’s best to start ...

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11
JUL
2019

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acoustics, amplitude, animation, compression, cycle, easy, explanation, learn, longitudinal, part, rarefaction, simple, sine, sound, wave

Colors of Noise: Why is White Noise White?

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

You’ve probably heard people talk about white noise to describe a rushing, static-like sound. The term white noise seems like a paradox. How can a sound have a color? Isn’t sound invisible?

Yes, you are absolutely correct—sound waves traveling through air are just as invisible to the naked eye as are the air particles themselves. (In order to “see” sound, you would need to be able to see the locations and movement of the air particles.)

The origin of the term goes ...

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17
JUN
2019

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broadband, color of noise, explanation, light, sound, types, white noise

What is Acoustics?

Posted by: AcousticalEngineer

When most people hear the word acoustics they think of acoustic guitars or concert halls, but the field of acoustics is actually much larger than internet covers of radio songs and plush theatre seating. The word acoustics comes from a Greek word akoustikos which means “of or for hearing”. The contemporary definition of acoustics is broader than the original Greek. Today, acoustics is the science of sound and vibration, which includes topics like noise control, ear health, SONAR, speech, structural ...

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15
JUN
2019

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