13 ms·

Dear Architects: Sound Matters

363 points by tysone 11y ago

JumpCrisscross 11y ago
The New York Times recently ran an article detailing the attention, expertise and cost it takes to properly sound-proof an apartment: "The engineer tested the penthouse to find the problematic noise frequencies, then used accelerometers to measure the shaking. She determined which noises were airborne and which were from vibration. With that information she was able to specify materials and construction methods that would hush the rattle and hum. Throughout the 3,500-square-foot apartment, pipes and ducts were wrapped in acoustic barrier insulation, walls and ceilings were hung on vibration-absorbing rails and floating floors were installed, at a total cost of about $200,000. ... The solution is seldom as simple as adding insulation. Noise is insidious. No two room hums are exactly alike, and what silences one might make another worse. 'What a contractor did across town that worked 99 percent of the time might not work for you,' said Alan Fierstein, an acoustical consultant who owns a 39-year-old New York firm called Acoustilog." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-for-new-york-noise.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-f...
TheAceOfHearts 11y ago
I wish people spoke more about noise insulation in apartments. If I don't have a baby, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by crying babies. If I don't have any children, I don't want to hear them yelling all day long.
- xenophonf 11y ago
  It cuts both ways. If you had a baby, you wouldn't want them woken up in the middle of their nap by someone coming home and turning on a TV, closing a door, or something else equally normal. If you had children, you'd want them to have a quiet place to study and rest, even when the twenty-something neighbors are throwing a raucous party. I think most people, including parents, both don't want to be disturbed and don't want to disturb others.
  - at-fates-hands 11y ago
    When my sister had her first baby, I was tip-toeing around their house when her baby was sleeping and was told not to. Apparently if you go about your normal day, babies will get used to falling asleep in a semi-noisy environment. However, you go out of your way to create an ultra quiet place when they sleep, any slight disturbance will wake them up.
    - Avenger42 11y ago
      True, but there's a difference between "don't bother keeping your voice down when talking in the next room" and "my baby wakes up when the neighbor three apartments down the hall slams his door". I don't necessarily want noise insulation within a dwelling, but I sure want it insulated from my neighbors.
      - protomyth 11y ago
        > I don't necessarily want noise insulation within a dwelling, but I sure want it insulated from my neighbors. For me, this would be the goal. Being able to hear the next room over for loud noises could be a safety issue, but hearing my neighbor has never been a positive. I can see zones of sounds inside a dwelling (e.g. kitchen - dining room - living room sound separated from bedrooms or office).
  - richardkmichael 11y ago
    In my 20 years of experience with apartments and noise, "most" people do not care about disturbing others. This is at best "some" people, but likely "a few".
    - egypturnash 11y ago
      I live on the ground floor of a six-unit building in a university area. Not too long after the new semester starts, I find myself having to politely get the attention of a new student renter because they are playing music loudly at 3AM. Every single time I've done it, they've apologized, turned it down, and usually thanked me for doing it myself instead of calling the cops. I've lived here for about three years now. It's a smaller pile of anecdata than yours but I don't feel like I'm likely to see a different trend any time soon.
- copperx 11y ago
  In my newly built house, I asked for the master bedroom wall to be soundproofed with rockwool and its inner door to be solid wood. It works incredibly well, and it makes the house appear bigger: If someone's watching TV in the living room, I can just go to the master bedroom and shut the door and there's incredible silence. I did this because as a teenager I always struggled with privacy in my parent's house. Even though the house wasn't small, it was hard to have a conversation with my girlfriend without it being heard in the nearby rooms (my parents rarely watched TV, so there was no sound to mask my voice). If I ever get the chance to build another house, I will specify rockwool insulation in all inner walls and all-around solid doors. In that way, I can have a small house with great privacy. Or I can study while someone else is watching a movie with surround sound in the adjacent room with no problem.
  - Anechoic 11y ago
    Rockwool (as a substitution for fiberglass or cellulose insulation) by itself shouldn't do all that much. Are the internal walls 2x4 or 2x6 construction? Do you know the thickness of the drywall panels?
    - Domenic_S 11y ago
      Almost certainly it's the solid door doing most of the work. Doors and windows are absolutely terrible at keeping noise out. I had new windows recently installed, laminated dual-pane, real beasts. In bedrooms that face the street, almost no noise, they're amazing. But in the front room where the front door is? The door might as well be open.
    - copperx 11y ago
      2x4s. I can't remember the specs, but I recall doing research and it was a pretty dense rockwool. I did ask for the drywall panels to be thicker than normal, but I don't recall how much. I found out about staggered 2x4s (http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04.jpg http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04....) too late.
      - deleted 11y ago
erentz 11y ago
Having been dealing with some sound problems lately: I have to observe that American cities are loud compared to most overseas cities in my experience. Everything about them is louder, and I'm not sure why or how it got that way, and why it isn't seen as something to remedy. Particularly when we want to encourage increased density and inner city living. While attacking the problem through better design and insulation is one way I also think we need to look at the amount of noise produced outside too.
- civilian 11y ago
  If you're looking for loud overseas cities, you should visit Beijing. :) Heavy car traffic, constant honking, loud salespeople, and everyone is constantly hawking a loogie (since it's unhealthy to swallow phlegm, according to traditional Chinese medicine.) What quiet overseas cities were you thinking about?
  - erentz 11y ago
    That's very true, add in most large Asian cities outside of Japan to that list (Bangkok, Manila, ...). I was thinking mostly of experiences in the major European/Australian/NZ cities.
- Htsthbjig 11y ago
  It is obvious to me: American cities are designed around cars and only cars. Old cities in Europe and Japan were designed around people walking around, basically because there was not anything else when those cities were created. They had small streets, only some of them were demolished and started anew, like Lineal in Barcelona or Castellana in Madrid. Public transportation like subways improved the situation, but it was a problem at first. Now it is something that people are starting to value, walking(or public transport) for shopping, for work and to see friends. Cities like Boston, Detroit, those were cities designed for cars. As a student I lived a year in Boston and was shocked on how much the city depended on cars. Let's not talk about L.A, even more.
  - dpark 11y ago
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chiph 11y ago
A townhouse I used to live in had a two-story open area with a loft for working. It looked terrific, but sounded like a bus station, with awful echoes. Adding curtains helped some, but nothing could be done about all the flat drywall surfaces. I'm thinking that the houses of the 30's-50's, with all the built-ins, were better for this because they broke up the flat surfaces, and thus the echos.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  I can confirm this. I just moved into a classic MCM house which has a ton of built-ins (I should post some pictures when I get a chance) and although the house has really high, angled ceilings and a very open concept floor plan, it's surprisingly quiet.
- jwatte 11y ago
  You can hang a /lot/ of diffusors and add bass traps and the interior soundscape will change and feel more intimate (and your TV/stereo will magically sound better!) But that doesn't change exterior noise transmission.
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    Do you have any product reccos?
cballard 11y ago
This should also be targeted at the people that run technology companies: - You're playing music? Huh? - You have a dog in the office? What? Yip yip yip yip.
Htsthbjig 11y ago
I believe New York, or any other crowded big city, like Shanghai or Beijing is hardly the model of how things should sound. After having lived in those cities I enjoy a lot living in places like Switzerland or Spain where there is silence or people in a much more natural way, like small buildings with pedestrian only streets. All this background noises in big cities are just cars thermal engine vibration. I hate it. You go to savanna and you see 6 ton elephants that sound very weak because nature is efficient.
- deleted 11y ago
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Anechoic 11y ago
A friend forwarded this article to me about a half-hour ago. After reading the article a few times, my feelings are a little mixed. Yes, sound matters. Sound can help to characterize an environment. But I read some of the quotes in the article ("We need reverberation", "The beauty of the high ceilings and big windows was amplified, and humanized, by the scratching of chairs and the clomp-clomp of boots on hardwood floors", "There can be privacy in a crowd" etc) and I hope that architects don't come away with the message "background noise is good, silence is bad" because that's not the case. Look at the Grand Central terminal example - yes, the high ceilings and reverberant background helps to create an atmosphere of a "great metropolis." But it also hurts the intelligibility of conversations and the PA system. You're trading acoustic comfort for atmosphere. The non-native English speaker or hearing-impared patron is not going to appreciate the atmosphere when they miss their train because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed. Similarly, yes a room sounds very different when a window is open. Sometimes you need that background noise. I remember being in a bedroom that was so quiet I could hear the blood flowing through my ears. I had to open a window to let in the natural sound to I didn't go crazy. On the other hand, you may not want that sound of sirens coming in at 3am when you, or your newborn, is trying to get some sleep. I guess my recommendation hasn't changed - hire an acoustician! :)
- jholman 11y ago
  Honestly, that library reading room sounds terrible. I should not have to hear chairs on the floor. And like you, I don't want the terminal to reverberate, I want it to be functional and welcoming. I'm not looking for the acoustic atmosphere of a place to reassure me that that place is high-status. I think that the author of TFA does have that need.
- JumpCrisscross 11y ago
  > because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed Does Grand Central have a non-emergency public-address system? Cannot recall having ever heard it.
- tracker1 11y ago
  On a similar note... some of us are noise def... I can't really make out anything but the loudest sound in an environment like that... most conversations I don't get anything if the person isn't facing me, and even then it's only if their lip movements are enough of a key to get what they're saying... I have an inhuman sense of smell, but less-than-average vision, and piss-poor aural perception. The harder part, is that rough surfaces that tend to mute the "loud" tend to collect a lot more dust and be harder to clean properly/regularly at scale, which is another concern for some spaces.
Cshelton 11y ago
It doesn't talk about it much but...Apartment noise from neighbors. Oh. My. Gosh. I live in an area where many expensive, luxury apartments have been built in the last few years and every single one of them have complaints from "hearing the person above me set the toilet seat down" for example. I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors. I lived in a complex built in the 80's. It's dead silent. I can jump up and down on my floor and the neighbor below me will never hear. Now in a newer complex, I can't walk across my hardwood floored kitchen without knowing my neighbor will hear every footstep. I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise as it sounds like they are moving furniture ALL THE TIME. Even though it's not their fault...and they really aren't moving furniture every evening...They are just walking around... Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. You are creating a whole generation of buildings that are awful to live in. My next apartment, I have no idea what I'm going to do...the tour ends right away for me when I hear thumps from above the second I walk into the room. I seriously shouldn't and don't want to know every time the couple next to me has sex or the guys on the other side of me are watching a loud action movie. I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE.
- robmiller 11y ago
  I wrote about this on Quora [1] some time ago. Here are the highlights on some ways to check if the unit you're touring has an above average acoustical design without just making noise in an adjacent unit: (1) Is the floor construction concrete and steel or a wood joist system. The concrete/steel building type is preferred. A caveat is if it is a "loft" style with no ceiling (drywall, etc) and is open to the concrete structure for reasons I'll describe at the end. (2) Ask if the apartment building was designed to convert to condos at some point. If the potential conversion was known during design, an acoustics professional may have been involved. (3) Is the space marketed as "luxury?" While dangerous to trust marketing this much, if legitimately so, should have "above norm" acoustical separation between spaces. (4) Pull a wall plate off a switch that's in a demising wall between units and look for fiberglass in the wall cavity around the edges of the backbox. You may be able to knock on walls and tell if they're hollow or fiberglass filled. If you find two layers of drywall between the plate and backbox, that's a good sign. (5) Often the bathroom/toilet plumbing is along the corridor wall in newer buildings. Can you hear the water running from the corridor? If so, you can expect to hear the neighbors' plumbing above your unit too. Listen for water hissing in the walls while you run the kitchen sink. Yes there's noise through walls from adjacent neighbors, but be aware of impact noises above. If floors are hard (not carpet) expect to hear footfall noise unless a resilient underlayment was properly installed in the units and/or the ceiling is isolated in the unit below. If the unit has hardwood floors, check for a gap between the baseboard trim and the floor by running a business card between. If it doesn't fit, then the resilient floor is compromised and your neighbors below are likely to hear your footfalls, and chances are you will hear your neighbors' above too. [1] https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-tell-how-sound-proof-the-walls-are/answer/Rob-Miller-9 https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-te...
mmmBacon 11y ago
The architects of the Hong Kong airport paid a lot of attention to sound I think. The ceiling is very high but there are panels that are at various angles that help reduce reflections. The first time I visited I noticed it right away. As a result I've found the airport to be a very peaceful space. It's calming and relaxing.
m52go 11y ago
I just want to say: that was the most beautiful article-reading experience I've ever had on a publisher's website. No sidebars, suggestions, social buttons or anything...just quality content presented cleanly with just enough branding and functionality. The moving images with the sound was an excellent touch, and although it's specific to the purpose of this article, I love the idea of looping moving images that aren't obnoxious and add to the content. I don't read the NYT very much, so I apologize if this is something that's been around for a while. EDIT: I had loaded the site with Ad Block turned on...so I didn't see the social buttons. Frankly even those are done very elegantly, and if I were a user of those social networks, perhaps I'd even appreciate them.
- enimodas 11y ago
  For me it would have been better if the movies only played on hover. Anything that moves catches my attention and distracts my reading.
- d23 11y ago
  Despite your glowing praise, I think this is actually an understatement. Every once in a while someone makes a point that is somehow simultaneously fresh and immediately obvious -- so obvious you can't believe you've never thought of it before. To me, this article did exactly that. Sometimes the design of things leaves element(s) that cause the user or experiencer pain, but we learn to stuff it in the back of our minds and forget it's even there. I've never even considered that the acoustic noise a place generates can contribute so much to the "feel" of it. Why don't we put more emphasis on this in our cities and working environments?
- sdkmvx 11y ago
  I have to disagree. There were movies every two paragraphs. It is hard to read when something is moving around an inch from the text. Further the movies took forever to load. I sat and waited 10 minutes for one. So I really had big panes that were still for 15 seconds and then suddenly jumped. The article would have been much better technically if the movies didn't load or play until asked for. I'd argue it would have been better still if the author removed half of the movies and expanded on his point more. I didn't get much more than what it says in the title. Is it good or bad to hear so much in a library? What are the differences between buildings designed by architects that pay attention to sound and those who don't?
jdc0589 11y ago
cool article and all, but in all honesty I was more excited just to hear some more binaural (3d) audio. It doesn't pop up too often.
turaw 11y ago
Relating to background noise, in case anyone else finds these useful, my pair of Etymotic earphones [1] have been doing an excellent job of cutting out basically everything. The kids version is pretty cheap (for a mid-range earphone), and apparently differs only in that it's slightly smaller and has a higher impedance (so you may require an amplifier). [1]: http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html
- newman314 11y ago
  Second. I travel frequently and I pretty much have my Etymotics with me at all times.
  - turaw 11y ago
    Are they not _fantastic_? The insertion depth can be uncomfortable at first, but the experience of listening to 'loud' music, then removing the earphones and noticing that the ambient noise was even louder is just amazing.
    - newman314 11y ago
      The only things that bother me are the fact that sometimes the earplugs get stuck and come loose as well as the microphonics caused by the wires. I'm considering custom ear molds. Have you tried them? http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/custom-fit/faq http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/custom-fit/faq
      - turaw 11y ago
        I've had custom ear_plugs_ by a company that also produces compatible molds for etymotics IEMs. After a suitable break-in period (for which you're literally supplied with ear lubricant) they fit perfectly. I've never had the earplugs come out unintentionally, though they don't have cables to get snagged.
      - lhl 11y ago
        Most over-ear IEMs usually have better microphonics (the ER4's microphonics are notoriously bad). Shures and Westones both have good isolation and low microphonics (and start at reasonable prices). If you are considering customs (CIEMs), I'd strongly recommend you audition some other headsets first - ERs were my first pair of IEMs, and I loved them, but they have poor bass, and there are sets w/ better detail, instrument separation, soundstage/imaging at the same price range. IMO, for the price, the UM Pro 30s w/ Comply tips are hard to beat. Another set you might want to check out might be the LEAR LHF-AE1d, a dynamic driver (vs balanced armature) IEM w/ balanced sound, and the ability to cheaply add a custom-fit nozzle. The IEM market is undergoing a sort of cambrian explosion right now, with design approaches, quality (and also sadly, price).
draw_down 11y ago
I can't stand the noise situation in my office building. It's full of glass walls and granite floors, so if there is a slight squeak in your shoe, the sound bounces around and amplifies to a comical degree. For some godawful reason the bathrooms are the quietest place in the whole building, the one place where you really really want background noise.
TrevorJ 11y ago
My dad is an architect, he once challenged me to find some area of study that architect's don't potentially need to know something about. I still haven't come up with one.
- GregBuchholz 11y ago
  What counts as an area of study? Integrated circuit design? Astrobiology? Nuclear fusion? Veterinary medicine? History of warfare? Textile manufacturing? I'd definitely like to hear his some of his answers. Heck, this might even be the basis for a game. There is a deck of cards with professions (architect, banker, doctor, actor, etc.), and another deck with subject matters, and your goal is to try an come up with some tenuous reasons for why that profession needs to know about that subject. Maybe there is a timer, and there are two "professionals", and the other players judge which one had the most credible idea?
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I'd buy that game if it had input from the professions included in the game.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    That would be an interesting game! I think the basis of his argument generally stood on principle that most human activities involve or interact with architecture in some less-than cursory fashion. Most of the examples you gave require purpose-built architecture in their pursuit so somewhere along the line there was an architect that needed to understand the requirements of say, a IC chip factory, or a biology lab, or a history museum.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  The role of long-term trusts in jurisdictions without any rule against perpetuities? I just finished a three-hour lecture on that one. Didn't see any architects.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
such_a_casual 11y ago
I have never seen a webpage use "hover for sound". That is an amazing technique.
- maaaats 11y ago
  Yeah, cool presentation. Just wished the videos weren't that large (as in pxs high).
- c0nducktr 11y ago
  The New York Times has an excellent team of web developers/designers. It's one of a short list of websites that consistently amaze me with their presentation.
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jsudhams 11y ago
In India it is always a concrete slab but still get above the floor furniture moves
dman 11y ago
Is it possible in browsers to turn off mouse events during scroll? This article uses it to good effect but in general the effect is very annoying. For instance on many websites when using the mousewheel to scroll you land up with the cursor over an element (lets say a map) and now suddenly you are scrolling the map instead without intending to.
lamby 11y ago
Here's an interesting interview with Julian Treasure from a week or so ago about sound design: https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504 https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504
ladon86 11y ago
I'm reminded of newer Apple Store in Palo Alto, before they did some work to fix it: http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-way-too-loud/ http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-... The level of amplification that space created was really quite impressive!
triggercut 11y ago
Not just Architecture, but Town Planning: When I was studying Architecture I did a group research project around this very idea, but limited it to public space in cities (particularly the one I was in at the time). We took many recordings in Parks, Retail heavy streets, Business centers (on the weekend), tourist areas etc... We asked people to listen to the recordings and rate things like "Does this space feel Cold or Warm"? As well as asking them to draw a diagram of what they imagined (which is a whole other area of interesting research that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head). Going through the literature, and more scientific studies, the short history is it's thought we evolved to associate loud, bass sounds, (which are less directional and imply larger masses) with danger (eg, thunder, large earth movements), which can lead to an increased amount of cortisol expression in children. It's less pronounced in adults suggesting that we get used to it when we realise it's not a real threat (CBT). One paper looked at school children near Heathrow Airport vs. in a similar urban area with no air-traffic. The former had much higher cortisol levels generally and performed worse academically after adjusting for other environmental factors. Another looked at offices and the effect of HVAC systems droning away 9-5 (ever noticed when the HVAC goes off at work?) What we found in our limited study was what you would expect; Places with live background music rated much more favorably. The stand out was Circular Quay (this was Sydney), where there were a lot of buskers and performers interspersed with happy sounding chatter from passes by. Outdoor areas that reverberate (Martin Place on the weekend with skateboarders) as you can imagine didn't rate too well. Not really groundbreaking by any means, but designing space means designing for everything we experience; light, sound, tactility, temporality. p.s One of the problems with traditional Architectural education is that it's hard to convey sound design through a visual-centric presentation style, so not many bother. Movement, whether implied or explicit, was always important to me in my designs and relatively easy to visually communicate (animation etc). If I ever go back to finish and become a real Architect, sound will probably be just as important, luckily VR is now at a stage with entry price and skill level where faithfully constructing the sonic profile of a space should be possible and easily communicable.
jwatte 11y ago
The problem is not architects. They know. The problem is buyers, who don't want to pay for good sound management. And when public services in the US (NY subway, say) buy from the cheapest bidder, guess what's been compromised to lower cost? The US is a hundred years behind the state of the art in sound management, just like most other public goods.
blehblahbloop 11y ago
Beautiful writing
ianamartin 11y ago
Notice: a slight rant ahead. I moved from a Dallas, TX suburb to a pretty "nice" place in Brooklyn, NY last June. Holy shit, the things that people think of as normal and okay here are totally nuts. I never heard a damn sound from anything in Dallas. Nothing. I could play my classical music pretty much as loud as I wanted whenever I wanted, and neighbors would never hear it. Here in Brooklyn, I swear to god we live like animals, and people are okay with it. I got a noise complaint with cops and everything the other day just having reasonably quiet sex with my girlfriend. Neither of us is noisy. I can hear everything above and below and next to me. It's stupid. There's no central heat/ac. The building just turns on the heat when they feel like it, which is nuts. It's more than 80 degrees in my apt right now. I don't even like that temp ever. I have to open windows to let it cold air to bring the temp down to something reasonable. There are no reasonable grocery store. If you want to cook a reasonable meal at home with your own cooking skills, you have to go to at least 5 different places, and there's nothing about a store that tells you what you can and can't get there. It's insane. And they don't tell you with a sign on the the door if they are or are not cash only. I love the opportunities I've found in NYC, and am truly loving my job, but the tradeoffs are fucking terrible. Aside from public transportation, this is the worst, most idiotic city in the world. Seriously, it's like living as an animal here. And I live in one of the best parts of Brooklyn. This is just stupid, and I kind of hate it.
- dijit 11y ago
  Reminds me very much of London, the prices are so high now that you're paying half your salary in rent and you'll very likely still end up in a shared "house" which has 8 bedrooms. As you can imagine, a 4 bedroom house converted into an 8 bedroom house is not exactly quiet or peaceful. When I decided I wanted to live alone (and bumped my rent to 74%~ of my salary) I was greeted with very serious road noise. Which seems to become an unidentifiable dull throb in your head after a while, rather than something you consciously hear. I'm sure living in large cities is very bad for mental health. Unless you're very well off.
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skyhatch1 11y ago
Reminds me of when I used to live in SF. moved into a building that was built in 2005; thought they'd factor in the 120+ dB measured on streets. I was wrong. Didn't really sleep for the first 2 months. Choppers grunting past, hobos fighting with chains. Fun.
CurtMonash 11y ago
After 15 years in Manhattan, I never want to live in a busy city again. Noise is a big part of why. Moving to the Boston suburbs was a revelation or me.

363 points by tysone 11y ago

The New York Times recently ran an article detailing the attention, expertise and cost it takes to properly sound-proof an apartment: "The engineer tested the penthouse to find the problematic noise frequencies, then used accelerometers to measure the shaking. She determined which noises were airborne and which were from vibration. With that information she was able to specify materials and construction methods that would hush the rattle and hum. Throughout the 3,500-square-foot apartment, pipes and ducts were wrapped in acoustic barrier insulation, walls and ceilings were hung on vibration-absorbing rails and floating floors were installed, at a total cost of about $200,000. ... The solution is seldom as simple as adding insulation. Noise is insidious. No two room hums are exactly alike, and what silences one might make another worse. 'What a contractor did across town that worked 99 percent of the time might not work for you,' said Alan Fierstein, an acoustical consultant who owns a 39-year-old New York firm called Acoustilog." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-for-new-york-noise.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-f...

TheAceOfHearts 11y ago

I wish people spoke more about noise insulation in apartments. If I don't have a baby, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by crying babies. If I don't have any children, I don't want to hear them yelling all day long.

xenophonf 11y ago
It cuts both ways. If you had a baby, you wouldn't want them woken up in the middle of their nap by someone coming home and turning on a TV, closing a door, or something else equally normal. If you had children, you'd want them to have a quiet place to study and rest, even when the twenty-something neighbors are throwing a raucous party. I think most people, including parents, both don't want to be disturbed and don't want to disturb others.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  When my sister had her first baby, I was tip-toeing around their house when her baby was sleeping and was told not to. Apparently if you go about your normal day, babies will get used to falling asleep in a semi-noisy environment. However, you go out of your way to create an ultra quiet place when they sleep, any slight disturbance will wake them up.
  - Avenger42 11y ago
    True, but there's a difference between "don't bother keeping your voice down when talking in the next room" and "my baby wakes up when the neighbor three apartments down the hall slams his door". I don't necessarily want noise insulation within a dwelling, but I sure want it insulated from my neighbors.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      > I don't necessarily want noise insulation within a dwelling, but I sure want it insulated from my neighbors. For me, this would be the goal. Being able to hear the next room over for loud noises could be a safety issue, but hearing my neighbor has never been a positive. I can see zones of sounds inside a dwelling (e.g. kitchen - dining room - living room sound separated from bedrooms or office).
- richardkmichael 11y ago
  In my 20 years of experience with apartments and noise, "most" people do not care about disturbing others. This is at best "some" people, but likely "a few".
  - egypturnash 11y ago
    I live on the ground floor of a six-unit building in a university area. Not too long after the new semester starts, I find myself having to politely get the attention of a new student renter because they are playing music loudly at 3AM. Every single time I've done it, they've apologized, turned it down, and usually thanked me for doing it myself instead of calling the cops. I've lived here for about three years now. It's a smaller pile of anecdata than yours but I don't feel like I'm likely to see a different trend any time soon.
copperx 11y ago
In my newly built house, I asked for the master bedroom wall to be soundproofed with rockwool and its inner door to be solid wood. It works incredibly well, and it makes the house appear bigger: If someone's watching TV in the living room, I can just go to the master bedroom and shut the door and there's incredible silence. I did this because as a teenager I always struggled with privacy in my parent's house. Even though the house wasn't small, it was hard to have a conversation with my girlfriend without it being heard in the nearby rooms (my parents rarely watched TV, so there was no sound to mask my voice). If I ever get the chance to build another house, I will specify rockwool insulation in all inner walls and all-around solid doors. In that way, I can have a small house with great privacy. Or I can study while someone else is watching a movie with surround sound in the adjacent room with no problem.
- Anechoic 11y ago
  Rockwool (as a substitution for fiberglass or cellulose insulation) by itself shouldn't do all that much. Are the internal walls 2x4 or 2x6 construction? Do you know the thickness of the drywall panels?
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    Almost certainly it's the solid door doing most of the work. Doors and windows are absolutely terrible at keeping noise out. I had new windows recently installed, laminated dual-pane, real beasts. In bedrooms that face the street, almost no noise, they're amazing. But in the front room where the front door is? The door might as well be open.
  - copperx 11y ago
    2x4s. I can't remember the specs, but I recall doing research and it was a pretty dense rockwool. I did ask for the drywall panels to be thicker than normal, but I don't recall how much. I found out about staggered 2x4s (http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04.jpg http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04....) too late.
    - deleted 11y ago

erentz 11y ago

Having been dealing with some sound problems lately: I have to observe that American cities are loud compared to most overseas cities in my experience. Everything about them is louder, and I'm not sure why or how it got that way, and why it isn't seen as something to remedy. Particularly when we want to encourage increased density and inner city living. While attacking the problem through better design and insulation is one way I also think we need to look at the amount of noise produced outside too.

civilian 11y ago
If you're looking for loud overseas cities, you should visit Beijing. :) Heavy car traffic, constant honking, loud salespeople, and everyone is constantly hawking a loogie (since it's unhealthy to swallow phlegm, according to traditional Chinese medicine.) What quiet overseas cities were you thinking about?
- erentz 11y ago
  That's very true, add in most large Asian cities outside of Japan to that list (Bangkok, Manila, ...). I was thinking mostly of experiences in the major European/Australian/NZ cities.
Htsthbjig 11y ago
It is obvious to me: American cities are designed around cars and only cars. Old cities in Europe and Japan were designed around people walking around, basically because there was not anything else when those cities were created. They had small streets, only some of them were demolished and started anew, like Lineal in Barcelona or Castellana in Madrid. Public transportation like subways improved the situation, but it was a problem at first. Now it is something that people are starting to value, walking(or public transport) for shopping, for work and to see friends. Cities like Boston, Detroit, those were cities designed for cars. As a student I lived a year in Boston and was shocked on how much the city depended on cars. Let's not talk about L.A, even more.
- dpark 11y ago

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chiph 11y ago

A townhouse I used to live in had a two-story open area with a loft for working. It looked terrific, but sounded like a bus station, with awful echoes. Adding curtains helped some, but nothing could be done about all the flat drywall surfaces. I'm thinking that the houses of the 30's-50's, with all the built-ins, were better for this because they broke up the flat surfaces, and thus the echos.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
I can confirm this. I just moved into a classic MCM house which has a ton of built-ins (I should post some pictures when I get a chance) and although the house has really high, angled ceilings and a very open concept floor plan, it's surprisingly quiet.
jwatte 11y ago
You can hang a /lot/ of diffusors and add bass traps and the interior soundscape will change and feel more intimate (and your TV/stereo will magically sound better!) But that doesn't change exterior noise transmission.
- marcusgarvey 11y ago
  Do you have any product reccos?

cballard 11y ago

This should also be targeted at the people that run technology companies: - You're playing music? Huh? - You have a dog in the office? What? Yip yip yip yip.

Htsthbjig 11y ago

I believe New York, or any other crowded big city, like Shanghai or Beijing is hardly the model of how things should sound. After having lived in those cities I enjoy a lot living in places like Switzerland or Spain where there is silence or people in a much more natural way, like small buildings with pedestrian only streets. All this background noises in big cities are just cars thermal engine vibration. I hate it. You go to savanna and you see 6 ton elephants that sound very weak because nature is efficient.

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Anechoic 11y ago

A friend forwarded this article to me about a half-hour ago. After reading the article a few times, my feelings are a little mixed. Yes, sound matters. Sound can help to characterize an environment. But I read some of the quotes in the article ("We need reverberation", "The beauty of the high ceilings and big windows was amplified, and humanized, by the scratching of chairs and the clomp-clomp of boots on hardwood floors", "There can be privacy in a crowd" etc) and I hope that architects don't come away with the message "background noise is good, silence is bad" because that's not the case. Look at the Grand Central terminal example - yes, the high ceilings and reverberant background helps to create an atmosphere of a "great metropolis." But it also hurts the intelligibility of conversations and the PA system. You're trading acoustic comfort for atmosphere. The non-native English speaker or hearing-impared patron is not going to appreciate the atmosphere when they miss their train because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed. Similarly, yes a room sounds very different when a window is open. Sometimes you need that background noise. I remember being in a bedroom that was so quiet I could hear the blood flowing through my ears. I had to open a window to let in the natural sound to I didn't go crazy. On the other hand, you may not want that sound of sirens coming in at 3am when you, or your newborn, is trying to get some sleep. I guess my recommendation hasn't changed - hire an acoustician! :)

jholman 11y ago
Honestly, that library reading room sounds terrible. I should not have to hear chairs on the floor. And like you, I don't want the terminal to reverberate, I want it to be functional and welcoming. I'm not looking for the acoustic atmosphere of a place to reassure me that that place is high-status. I think that the author of TFA does have that need.
JumpCrisscross 11y ago
> because they couldn't understand the PA announcement that departure platform has changed Does Grand Central have a non-emergency public-address system? Cannot recall having ever heard it.
tracker1 11y ago
On a similar note... some of us are noise def... I can't really make out anything but the loudest sound in an environment like that... most conversations I don't get anything if the person isn't facing me, and even then it's only if their lip movements are enough of a key to get what they're saying... I have an inhuman sense of smell, but less-than-average vision, and piss-poor aural perception. The harder part, is that rough surfaces that tend to mute the "loud" tend to collect a lot more dust and be harder to clean properly/regularly at scale, which is another concern for some spaces.

Cshelton 11y ago

It doesn't talk about it much but...Apartment noise from neighbors. Oh. My. Gosh. I live in an area where many expensive, luxury apartments have been built in the last few years and every single one of them have complaints from "hearing the person above me set the toilet seat down" for example. I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors. I lived in a complex built in the 80's. It's dead silent. I can jump up and down on my floor and the neighbor below me will never hear. Now in a newer complex, I can't walk across my hardwood floored kitchen without knowing my neighbor will hear every footstep. I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise as it sounds like they are moving furniture ALL THE TIME. Even though it's not their fault...and they really aren't moving furniture every evening...They are just walking around... Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. You are creating a whole generation of buildings that are awful to live in. My next apartment, I have no idea what I'm going to do...the tour ends right away for me when I hear thumps from above the second I walk into the room. I seriously shouldn't and don't want to know every time the couple next to me has sex or the guys on the other side of me are watching a loud action movie. I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE.

robmiller 11y ago
I wrote about this on Quora [1] some time ago. Here are the highlights on some ways to check if the unit you're touring has an above average acoustical design without just making noise in an adjacent unit: (1) Is the floor construction concrete and steel or a wood joist system. The concrete/steel building type is preferred. A caveat is if it is a "loft" style with no ceiling (drywall, etc) and is open to the concrete structure for reasons I'll describe at the end. (2) Ask if the apartment building was designed to convert to condos at some point. If the potential conversion was known during design, an acoustics professional may have been involved. (3) Is the space marketed as "luxury?" While dangerous to trust marketing this much, if legitimately so, should have "above norm" acoustical separation between spaces. (4) Pull a wall plate off a switch that's in a demising wall between units and look for fiberglass in the wall cavity around the edges of the backbox. You may be able to knock on walls and tell if they're hollow or fiberglass filled. If you find two layers of drywall between the plate and backbox, that's a good sign. (5) Often the bathroom/toilet plumbing is along the corridor wall in newer buildings. Can you hear the water running from the corridor? If so, you can expect to hear the neighbors' plumbing above your unit too. Listen for water hissing in the walls while you run the kitchen sink. Yes there's noise through walls from adjacent neighbors, but be aware of impact noises above. If floors are hard (not carpet) expect to hear footfall noise unless a resilient underlayment was properly installed in the units and/or the ceiling is isolated in the unit below. If the unit has hardwood floors, check for a gap between the baseboard trim and the floor by running a business card between. If it doesn't fit, then the resilient floor is compromised and your neighbors below are likely to hear your footfalls, and chances are you will hear your neighbors' above too. [1] https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-tell-how-sound-proof-the-walls-are/answer/Rob-Miller-9 https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-te...

mmmBacon 11y ago

The architects of the Hong Kong airport paid a lot of attention to sound I think. The ceiling is very high but there are panels that are at various angles that help reduce reflections. The first time I visited I noticed it right away. As a result I've found the airport to be a very peaceful space. It's calming and relaxing.

m52go 11y ago

I just want to say: that was the most beautiful article-reading experience I've ever had on a publisher's website. No sidebars, suggestions, social buttons or anything...just quality content presented cleanly with just enough branding and functionality. The moving images with the sound was an excellent touch, and although it's specific to the purpose of this article, I love the idea of looping moving images that aren't obnoxious and add to the content. I don't read the NYT very much, so I apologize if this is something that's been around for a while. EDIT: I had loaded the site with Ad Block turned on...so I didn't see the social buttons. Frankly even those are done very elegantly, and if I were a user of those social networks, perhaps I'd even appreciate them.

enimodas 11y ago
For me it would have been better if the movies only played on hover. Anything that moves catches my attention and distracts my reading.
d23 11y ago
Despite your glowing praise, I think this is actually an understatement. Every once in a while someone makes a point that is somehow simultaneously fresh and immediately obvious -- so obvious you can't believe you've never thought of it before. To me, this article did exactly that. Sometimes the design of things leaves element(s) that cause the user or experiencer pain, but we learn to stuff it in the back of our minds and forget it's even there. I've never even considered that the acoustic noise a place generates can contribute so much to the "feel" of it. Why don't we put more emphasis on this in our cities and working environments?
sdkmvx 11y ago
I have to disagree. There were movies every two paragraphs. It is hard to read when something is moving around an inch from the text. Further the movies took forever to load. I sat and waited 10 minutes for one. So I really had big panes that were still for 15 seconds and then suddenly jumped. The article would have been much better technically if the movies didn't load or play until asked for. I'd argue it would have been better still if the author removed half of the movies and expanded on his point more. I didn't get much more than what it says in the title. Is it good or bad to hear so much in a library? What are the differences between buildings designed by architects that pay attention to sound and those who don't?

jdc0589 11y ago

cool article and all, but in all honesty I was more excited just to hear some more binaural (3d) audio. It doesn't pop up too often.

turaw 11y ago

Relating to background noise, in case anyone else finds these useful, my pair of Etymotic earphones [1] have been doing an excellent job of cutting out basically everything. The kids version is pretty cheap (for a mid-range earphone), and apparently differs only in that it's slightly smaller and has a higher impedance (so you may require an amplifier). [1]: http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html

newman314 11y ago
Second. I travel frequently and I pretty much have my Etymotics with me at all times.
- turaw 11y ago
  Are they not _fantastic_? The insertion depth can be uncomfortable at first, but the experience of listening to 'loud' music, then removing the earphones and noticing that the ambient noise was even louder is just amazing.
  - newman314 11y ago
    The only things that bother me are the fact that sometimes the earplugs get stuck and come loose as well as the microphonics caused by the wires. I'm considering custom ear molds. Have you tried them? http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/custom-fit/faq http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/custom-fit/faq
    - turaw 11y ago
      I've had custom ear_plugs_ by a company that also produces compatible molds for etymotics IEMs. After a suitable break-in period (for which you're literally supplied with ear lubricant) they fit perfectly. I've never had the earplugs come out unintentionally, though they don't have cables to get snagged.
    - lhl 11y ago
      Most over-ear IEMs usually have better microphonics (the ER4's microphonics are notoriously bad). Shures and Westones both have good isolation and low microphonics (and start at reasonable prices). If you are considering customs (CIEMs), I'd strongly recommend you audition some other headsets first - ERs were my first pair of IEMs, and I loved them, but they have poor bass, and there are sets w/ better detail, instrument separation, soundstage/imaging at the same price range. IMO, for the price, the UM Pro 30s w/ Comply tips are hard to beat. Another set you might want to check out might be the LEAR LHF-AE1d, a dynamic driver (vs balanced armature) IEM w/ balanced sound, and the ability to cheaply add a custom-fit nozzle. The IEM market is undergoing a sort of cambrian explosion right now, with design approaches, quality (and also sadly, price).

draw_down 11y ago

I can't stand the noise situation in my office building. It's full of glass walls and granite floors, so if there is a slight squeak in your shoe, the sound bounces around and amplifies to a comical degree. For some godawful reason the bathrooms are the quietest place in the whole building, the one place where you really really want background noise.

TrevorJ 11y ago

My dad is an architect, he once challenged me to find some area of study that architect's don't potentially need to know something about. I still haven't come up with one.

GregBuchholz 11y ago
What counts as an area of study? Integrated circuit design? Astrobiology? Nuclear fusion? Veterinary medicine? History of warfare? Textile manufacturing? I'd definitely like to hear his some of his answers. Heck, this might even be the basis for a game. There is a deck of cards with professions (architect, banker, doctor, actor, etc.), and another deck with subject matters, and your goal is to try an come up with some tenuous reasons for why that profession needs to know about that subject. Maybe there is a timer, and there are two "professionals", and the other players judge which one had the most credible idea?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I'd buy that game if it had input from the professions included in the game.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  That would be an interesting game! I think the basis of his argument generally stood on principle that most human activities involve or interact with architecture in some less-than cursory fashion. Most of the examples you gave require purpose-built architecture in their pursuit so somewhere along the line there was an architect that needed to understand the requirements of say, a IC chip factory, or a biology lab, or a history museum.
sandworm101 11y ago
The role of long-term trusts in jurisdictions without any rule against perpetuities? I just finished a three-hour lecture on that one. Didn't see any architects.
- TrevorJ 11y ago

such_a_casual 11y ago

I have never seen a webpage use "hover for sound". That is an amazing technique.

maaaats 11y ago
Yeah, cool presentation. Just wished the videos weren't that large (as in pxs high).
c0nducktr 11y ago
The New York Times has an excellent team of web developers/designers. It's one of a short list of websites that consistently amaze me with their presentation.

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jsudhams 11y ago

In India it is always a concrete slab but still get above the floor furniture moves

dman 11y ago

Is it possible in browsers to turn off mouse events during scroll? This article uses it to good effect but in general the effect is very annoying. For instance on many websites when using the mousewheel to scroll you land up with the cursor over an element (lets say a map) and now suddenly you are scrolling the map instead without intending to.

lamby 11y ago

Here's an interesting interview with Julian Treasure from a week or so ago about sound design: https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504 https://youtu.be/_MORUgvdWTs?t=504

ladon86 11y ago

I'm reminded of newer Apple Store in Palo Alto, before they did some work to fix it: http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-way-too-loud/ http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-... The level of amplification that space created was really quite impressive!

triggercut 11y ago

Not just Architecture, but Town Planning: When I was studying Architecture I did a group research project around this very idea, but limited it to public space in cities (particularly the one I was in at the time). We took many recordings in Parks, Retail heavy streets, Business centers (on the weekend), tourist areas etc... We asked people to listen to the recordings and rate things like "Does this space feel Cold or Warm"? As well as asking them to draw a diagram of what they imagined (which is a whole other area of interesting research that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head). Going through the literature, and more scientific studies, the short history is it's thought we evolved to associate loud, bass sounds, (which are less directional and imply larger masses) with danger (eg, thunder, large earth movements), which can lead to an increased amount of cortisol expression in children. It's less pronounced in adults suggesting that we get used to it when we realise it's not a real threat (CBT). One paper looked at school children near Heathrow Airport vs. in a similar urban area with no air-traffic. The former had much higher cortisol levels generally and performed worse academically after adjusting for other environmental factors. Another looked at offices and the effect of HVAC systems droning away 9-5 (ever noticed when the HVAC goes off at work?) What we found in our limited study was what you would expect; Places with live background music rated much more favorably. The stand out was Circular Quay (this was Sydney), where there were a lot of buskers and performers interspersed with happy sounding chatter from passes by. Outdoor areas that reverberate (Martin Place on the weekend with skateboarders) as you can imagine didn't rate too well. Not really groundbreaking by any means, but designing space means designing for everything we experience; light, sound, tactility, temporality. p.s One of the problems with traditional Architectural education is that it's hard to convey sound design through a visual-centric presentation style, so not many bother. Movement, whether implied or explicit, was always important to me in my designs and relatively easy to visually communicate (animation etc). If I ever go back to finish and become a real Architect, sound will probably be just as important, luckily VR is now at a stage with entry price and skill level where faithfully constructing the sonic profile of a space should be possible and easily communicable.

jwatte 11y ago

The problem is not architects. They know. The problem is buyers, who don't want to pay for good sound management. And when public services in the US (NY subway, say) buy from the cheapest bidder, guess what's been compromised to lower cost? The US is a hundred years behind the state of the art in sound management, just like most other public goods.

blehblahbloop 11y ago

Beautiful writing

ianamartin 11y ago

Notice: a slight rant ahead. I moved from a Dallas, TX suburb to a pretty "nice" place in Brooklyn, NY last June. Holy shit, the things that people think of as normal and okay here are totally nuts. I never heard a damn sound from anything in Dallas. Nothing. I could play my classical music pretty much as loud as I wanted whenever I wanted, and neighbors would never hear it. Here in Brooklyn, I swear to god we live like animals, and people are okay with it. I got a noise complaint with cops and everything the other day just having reasonably quiet sex with my girlfriend. Neither of us is noisy. I can hear everything above and below and next to me. It's stupid. There's no central heat/ac. The building just turns on the heat when they feel like it, which is nuts. It's more than 80 degrees in my apt right now. I don't even like that temp ever. I have to open windows to let it cold air to bring the temp down to something reasonable. There are no reasonable grocery store. If you want to cook a reasonable meal at home with your own cooking skills, you have to go to at least 5 different places, and there's nothing about a store that tells you what you can and can't get there. It's insane. And they don't tell you with a sign on the the door if they are or are not cash only. I love the opportunities I've found in NYC, and am truly loving my job, but the tradeoffs are fucking terrible. Aside from public transportation, this is the worst, most idiotic city in the world. Seriously, it's like living as an animal here. And I live in one of the best parts of Brooklyn. This is just stupid, and I kind of hate it.

dijit 11y ago
Reminds me very much of London, the prices are so high now that you're paying half your salary in rent and you'll very likely still end up in a shared "house" which has 8 bedrooms. As you can imagine, a 4 bedroom house converted into an 8 bedroom house is not exactly quiet or peaceful. When I decided I wanted to live alone (and bumped my rent to 74%~ of my salary) I was greeted with very serious road noise. Which seems to become an unidentifiable dull throb in your head after a while, rather than something you consciously hear. I'm sure living in large cities is very bad for mental health. Unless you're very well off.
- deleted 11y ago
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skyhatch1 11y ago

Reminds me of when I used to live in SF. moved into a building that was built in 2005; thought they'd factor in the 120+ dB measured on streets. I was wrong. Didn't really sleep for the first 2 months. Choppers grunting past, hobos fighting with chains. Fun.

CurtMonash 11y ago

After 15 years in Manhattan, I never want to live in a busy city again. Noise is a big part of why. Moving to the Boston suburbs was a revelation or me.