Transmission Loss and Speech Privacy Auralizations

The following auralizations were developed to show the effects of different types of wall construction on sound transmission.

Outdoor to Indoor Noise Transmission

This first auralization shows the effects of window and wall construction on urban traffic noise. The sound clips are all auralizations of the interior noise after transmission. Click on the button to hear the sound.
Through STC 35	Standard Insulating Glass Unit 1/4" Glass -1/2" Air Space -1/4" Glass
Through STC 48	High STC Laminated Insulating Glass unit 1/4" Laminated Glass - 1/2" Air Space - 3/8" Glass
Through STC 61	Standard CMU Exterior Wall 6" CMU Block - 2-1/2 Metal Studs w/ insulation - 5/8" Gypsum

Speech Privacy

This second auralization shows the effects of wall construction on speech privacy from a courtroom. The first clip is the sound in the courtroom itself and the other clips are the sound in an adjacent rooms with different wall constructions. To aid in the comparison, all the transmitted sound levels have been raised by 20 dB.Click on the button to hear the sound.
In Courtroom	Sound as heard in the courtroom itself
Through STC 37	Standard Interior Wood Stud Wall 5/8" Gypsum - 3.5" Wood Studs with no Insulation - 5/8" Gypsum
Through STC 49	Quiet Interior Wall 5/8" Gypsum - 3.5" Metal Studs + Insulation - 5/8" Gypsum
Through STC 62	High STC Interior Wall 1.25" Gypsum - 6" Metal Studs + Insulation - 1.25" Gypsum

These auralizations were created using transmission loss data for the different wall and window contructions taken from the text "Architectural Acoustics - Principles and Design" by Madan Mehta. The 16 bit source wav files were filtered in Adobe Audition V1.5 with the scientific filters option using TL data from the textbook.

The sound clip used for the courtroom speech privacy auralization comes from the movie "To Kill A Mockingbird" and is copyrighted. It is used here for educational purposes under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. As a result, this page has limited distribution and uncontrolled public access of those portions which include copyrighted content is not allowed.