What Would Be The Sound Rating?

[BryanR]

I am currently in the process of having a warehouse space built out to a sound stage and the owner has asked me "What is the insulating sound rating required for the soundstage wall" I was hoping someone could help me with an answer to this question. We are building a soundstage in the middle of a warehouse and the most noise there will be on either side of the soundstage is people talking / meeting and an occasional toilet flush.

What would be the sound rating required for this? If you need any more information I will gladly give more of a description I'm just not sure exactly what goes into getting that number.

Thanks in advance!

[Sebg]

What is the specification for the sound stage? Once you know how quiet the sound stage is required to be and how loud the extraneous sounds are then you can determine a sound insulation rating for the wall.

[BryanR]

Originally Posted by Sebg

What is the specification for the sound stage? Once you know how quiet the sound stage is required to be and how loud the extraneous sounds are then you can determine a sound insulation rating for the wall.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by specification but we would like it as quite as possible. The walls will go to the ceiling. Basically a box.

[Starlight]

Sound travels through walls. We call this is sound transmission. You want to lose some of that transmission, so the technical term that applies here is Sound Transmission Loss or STL for short.

What you want to know so that you have a target to aim for is how much of the sound that transmits into or out of the building you want to trap, to stop escaping or entering. How much is measured in decibels.

See the topic Method for Testing Sound Transmission of Existing Walls for some ways of working out how much you want to aim for.

[BryanR]

Originally Posted by Starlight

Sound travels through walls. We call this is sound transmission. You want to lose some of that transmission, so the technical term that applies here is Sound Transmission Loss or STL for short.

What you want to know so that you have a target to aim for is how much of the sound that transmits into or out of the building you want to trap, to stop escaping or entering. How much is measured in decibels.

See the topic Method for Testing Sound Transmission of Existing Walls for some ways of working out how much you want to aim for.

I like all their ideas but the problem is the walls aren't built yet. We have about 8,000 SF that it will be built in the middle of and the sound stage will be 3,000 SF.

[avare]

What do you need isolation from? How loud is sound that you want to block from the outside and how quiet do you need to be outside of the sound stage? Read Rose's Guide to Acoustic Practice for starters. There are links to it off the referencer sticky. BBC has several RD papers relating to isolation requirements. They are linked off my reference post.

Andre

[Sebg]

Originally Posted by BryanR

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by specification but we would like it as quite as possible. The walls will go to the ceiling. Basically a box.

If you don't know how quiet you want it to be then how do you expect to meet that noise goal...?

Pick a number ... any number ...

A sound stage may need to be as quiet as 15dBA, but often, 20dBA or 25dBA is acceptable. So, pick one as a goal. Then, how loud are the extraneous sounds that you want to control?

[BryanR]

Originally Posted by Sebg

If you don't know how quiet you want it to be then how do you expect to meet that noise goal...?

Pick a number ... any number ...

A sound stage may need to be as quiet as 15dBA, but often, 20dBA or 25dBA is acceptable. So, pick one as a goal. Then, how loud are the extraneous sounds that you want to control?

Perfect, that makes sense. I just didn't know what type of number anyone was looking for. If we could get the sound stage as quite as 15dBA and there will be people talking on the other side of the wall, would that be around 50dBA?

[bdenton]

All things considered, may I suggest you consider hiring a professional acoustics engineer?

It appears someone is about to spend a fair amount of money on this project without a requisite amount of knowledge being attained...

[Sebg]

edit: +1 to what bdenton said.

If you had a sound level meter then you could do your own measurements of speech.

Pearson et al did a big study and found average speech levels at 1m:

Males
Casual 54dBA
Normal 58
Raised 65
Loud 76
Shouted 89

Average Speech Levels and Spectra in Various Speaking/Listening Conditions: A Summary of the Pearson, Bennett, & Fidell (1977) Report -- Olsen 7 (2): 21 -- American Journal of Audiology

note that Peak levels are around 8dBA higher than the average.

[BryanR]

Originally Posted by Sebg

edit: +1 to what bdenton said.

If you had a sound level meter then you could do your own measurements of speech.

Pearson et al did a big study and found average speech levels at 1m:

Males
Casual 54dBA
Normal 58
Raised 65
Loud 76
Shouted 89

Average Speech Levels and Spectra in Various Speaking/Listening Conditions: A Summary of the Pearson, Bennett, & Fidell (1977) Report -- Olsen 7 (2): 21 -- American Journal of Audiology

note that Peak levels are around 8dBA higher than the average.

How could I get a rating with the numbers below?

What we want it inside the sounds stage: 15dBA
What it will be outside the sound stage: 65dBA

[Sebg]

Well, FSTC = L1-L2+10*log(S/A) is how you could calculate the FSTC/R'w required.

If you are more interested in what happens close to the wall of the sound stage then Marshall Long has an excellent explanation and a slightly different formula in his book that takes account of closeness of the receiver to the transmitting wall.

[avare]

Meant in honest way, if the numbers being mentioned haev no meaning to you, then hire a professional. Beyond sound from outside, to acheive such low figures for the noise level inside the studio requires special (read expensive) HVAC design as well.

Good luck!

Andre