Acoustic Quality and Sound Insulation between Dwellings

Abstract

During the years, there have been several large field investigations in different countries with the aim to find a relationship between sound insulation between dwellings and the subjective degree of annoyance. This paper presents an overview of the results, and the difficulties in comparing the different findings are discussed. An attempt is made to establish dose-response relationships between airborne sound insulation or impact sound pressure level according to ISO 717 and the percentage of people being annoyed by noise from neighbours. The slopes of the dose-response curves vary from one investigation to another, however, several of the results show a slope around 4 % per dB. The results may be used to evaluate the acoustic quality level of a certain set of sound insulation requirements, or they may be used as a basis for specifying the desired acoustic quality of future buildings.