The sounds of your upstairs neighbors can be really annoying to you – especially if you’ve been working from home full-time or part-time since then the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there is a larger issue to consider when this happens – and hopefully ahead.
A new study suggests that the “creepy” sounds created when someone walks barefoot in an apartment directly above are not included in the current standardized performance metric requirements of existing building codes, compared to others. “sounds of impact”.
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That’s according to preliminary research presented in December at the 183rd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in Nashville, Tennessee.
“One characteristic of impact sounds is that they are impulsive – meaning they consist of one or more almost distinct sounds of short duration, which attract the attention of an unintended listener more than continuous sounds, like music or speech,” says the lead researcher. Markus Mueller-Trapet told Fox News Digital.
With more people working from home since the pandemic, the topic of “impact sounds” in residential buildings has become much more important, researchers associated with a new study said.
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Mueller-Trapet is a research officer and team leader for the National Research Council’s Acoustics Team Canada, headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
“This is likely to make impact sounds more annoying overall,” he said.
“People reported that impact sounds from neighbors had an effect on their ability to work from home.”
With more people working from home since the pandemic, “the topic has become even more important,” Mueller-Trapet added.
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“In a recent field study of Canadian apartment buildings, people reported that impact sounds from neighbors had an effect on their ability to work from home,” he also said.
Heart problems, sleep
Previous research has found that long-term exposure to these sounds can lead to heart and stroke sleep problems.
Building codes have certain impact sound requirements to help reduce the risk of occupant exposure to these sounds. For example, additional insulation or thicker walls may be required in buildings to help reduce transferable sounds.
“Impact sounds are one of the biggest causes of occupancy complaints in multi-unit apartment buildings,” according to studies, a lead researcher of a new study told Fox News Digital.
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“Studies have shown that impact sounds are one of the biggest causes of complaints in homes multi-unit residential building,” Mueller-Trapet told Fox News Digital.
Using ‘lessons learned’
The international team, including researchers from Germany and Korea, set out to study the relationship between building code performance measures and potential occupants’ perceived annoyance using standardized laboratory measurements.
“In this case, we’re using ‘nuisance’ as a proxy for how residents are affected by noise,” Mueller-Trapet noted.
“The goal was to provide a real acoustic environment for the study.”
“Our study aims to help provide data to motivate and inform the possible addition of an impact sound requirement to future editions of the National Building Code of Canada (NBC), with the express purpose of using the lessons of taken out in other countries.”
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The group had a test setup on the floor that resembled a living room, with two large rooms on top of each other and a rig to test sound traveling between these living areas.
As part of a new study to examine “impact sounds” in apartment living, people walked and dropped objects on the top floor while researchers recorded the impact sounds. They then presented these sounds to the participants under different listening conditions, such as through headphones or speakers.
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“The goal was to provide a realistic acoustic environment for the study so that the participants could imagine themselves in a living room situation,” said Mueller-Trapet.
How were the sounds created?
People walked and dropped objects on the top floor assembly while the researchers recorded the impact sounds.
They then presented these sounds to participants under different listening conditions, such as headphones or speakers.
“We used a spatial recording and playback technique called Ambisonics to create a realistic sound field for every listening condition,” said Mueller-Trapet.
To increase the sample size, the research group created an online listening survey, which began on November 21, 2022 and will run until March 31, 2023.
The researchers acknowledged that the laboratory conditions in which the participants listened may not have fully modeled, a real living space — so they also studied participants using a virtual reality headset to see how the results would change with a more realistic visual stimulus.
In all studies, they used the same interface to deliver the same sounds and asked participants the same questions about how they perceived those sounds.
The researchers found that building code performance metrics were able to generally capture the annoyance factor caused by most of the impact sounds in the study—with one exception.
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In the study there were four different impact sounds: a rubber ball dropped from two heights; a person walking barefoot upstairs; someone who walks up in shoes; and a metal hammer fell from a certain distance.
The study compared “annoyance” ratings for each of these sounds.
“Unacceptable risk of disease”
The researchers found that building code performance metrics were able to generally capture the annoyance factor caused by most of the impact sounds in the study—with one exception.
They did not pick up the sounds created by walking barefoot.
“Our research will provide the scientific data needed to help motivate and inform standing code development committees to propose a possible change…”
However, there was a limit to how many people could participate because only one voice test could be performed at a time, the lead author noted.
To increase the sample size, the research group created an online listening survey, which began on November 21, 2022 and will run until March 31, 2023.
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“Our research will provide the scientific data needed to help motivate and inform standing code development committees to propose a possible change in [National Building Code of Canada]”, he noted.
study”[aims] to reduce the risk of persons in buildings being exposed to an unacceptable risk of illness due to high levels of impact sounds coming from adjacent spaces and transmitted through a floor assembly.”
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“We would like to invite anyone interested in supporting our research to participate in our online listening survey,” Mueller-Trapet told Fox News Digital.
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For anyone interested, the link to the English version is here: https://nrc-cnrc-construction.ca/online_listening_survey/index.html.
