Introduction to Acoustics ©2006 Fred Tepfer

1380 Bailey Avenue Eugene, OR 97402

non-commercial use freely granted

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Contents
1. Importance of Acoustics
2. Notable Failures
3. The Nature of Sound
4. Absorption and Reflection of Sound
5. Transmission of Sound Between Rooms
6. Amplification of Sound
7. Myths and Truths
8. A Pattern for Classroom Acoustics
9. Glossary
10. Other Sources

1. Importance of Acoustics
Acoustics are fundamentally important to learning environments. Learning is intrinsically linked with communication, and aural
(sound) communication is acoustics. Similarly, learning is about concentration, and external noise is a major distracting factor in
education. This article is about typical classroom environments, up to about 1,000 square feet. Large specialized rooms like
auditoriums, gyms, and cafeterias needs careful acoustical engineering and should not be designed using the rules of thumb
described below.

The importance of acoustics is not limited to classrooms. Noise in corridors and public spaces can soar if they are too
reverberant (too much echo), with voices raised louder and louder to overcome the background echo, just like shouting
conversations at a noisy cocktail party or restaurant. In addition, sound is an important navigational tool for people who are blind
or low vision, and either end of the reverberation scale (too "live" or reverberant, or too "dead" or absorptive) can prevent them
from finding their way.

2. Notable Failures
Most of us are familiar with the "schools without walls" of the 1960's. They were based on assumptions about teaching and
acoustics that in most cases were not valid. The school without walls is based on the open office environment ["Dilbert" cubicles].
These are moderately successful because of the major acoustical difference between individuals working alone in the offices.
However, in the school, groups of people are expected to communicate nearly constantly in the same acoustical environment,
which is quite a different acoustical challenge. Solutions appropriate to creating privacy are often inappropriate in learning
environments. Beware especially of architects and vendors who think in terms of an office environment while talking about
classrooms. The "School Zone" part of the Armstrong Ceilings web site is one example of this. That approach can result in
adequate but not excellent learning environments.

[picture of kid moving an accordian-type partition]

What's wrong with this picture? If a wall is light enough to be moved by a child, it is not going to be an effective barrier for sound.

3. The Nature of Sound

Sound is created by vibrations of air or other materials. When someone speaks, their vocal cords vibrate, which creates vibrations
in the air that travel to the ears of the listeners much as waves travel across a pond when you throw in a stone. When the sound
is higher, the waves are closer together (higher frequency sound) and when the sound is lower, the waves are farther apart.
Longer waves (lower sound) pass through thinner materials and curve more easily around barriers. Shorter waves (higher sound)
are reflected by relatively thin materials and don't bend much around barriers. Nearly all spoken sound is in the range of 125 Hz
(cycles per second) to 4,000 Hz, although people can hear from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. All sound waves carry well through
open air, or even through small holes and cracks in walls and ceilings. Because of the logarithmic nature of sound, a small hole
will let through a lot of sound.

"Noise" is just unwanted sound, and "signal" is what you are trying to hear. In every sonic envirnment there is background noise,
and if the signal isn't much louder than the noise, you will have trouble hearing. In a large room with several groups of students all
in conversation, unless enough sound is absorbed instead of reflected off of walls and passed on to the next student, the overall
effect is a lot of noise. Typical school cafeterias are built without much (expensive) sound absorbing material, so they are very
noisy.

4. Absorption and Reflection of Sound

Sound waves can be reflected or absorbed, and the science of acoustics is largely about what to reflect (send back into the room,
what to transmit (sent to the next room), and what to absorb (turn into heat energy). Environments for music want more
reverberation, enough to "warm" the sound with reflections. If too much is absorbed, less sound reaches the audience and it
sounds "dry" or "dead" , the musicians need to work harder, and the lack of reverberation makes the slightest error more
apparent. By contrast, environments for speech want less reverberation, although moderate amounts of reflection are useful to
reinforce the sound as long as the overall time that it takes a sound to decay (or die away) isn't too long. A desirable reverberation
time for classrooms is about .75 seconds for interactive (discussion-based) spaces and 1.0 seconds for lecture halls. By contrast,
a symphony hall might have a two second reverb time. My personal preference for classrooms is toward the reverberant end of
what is considered acceptable.

Education is speech-based, whether solely from presenter to listener or a discussion among a whole classroom of students, so
the nature of speech informs acoustical design for classrooms. Speech is made up of vowels, which are sounds near the lower
end of speech frequencies ("oo", "uh", "ah", etc.), and consonants, most of which are in the upper part of the speech range ("t",
"s", "k", etc.).

When we abbreviate written language we remove vowels yet retain meaning, but if we remove only consonants, the sense is
usually lost. Take the word baseball, for example, whose consonants are bsbll, still recognizable, and whose vowells are aea,
which we don't recognize as being related to the word "baseball". Similarly, if you turn up the treble and turn off the bass in an
audio system, speech remains intelligible (try it!). However, if you turn off the treble and turn up the bass, speech becomes a
muddy mess.

This suggests that classroom acoustics needs to absorb more in lower ranges of the speech window than in the higher ranges .
So how do some common classroom materials perform? NRC, or noise reduction coefficient, is the average the absorption at
certain frequencies and is the rating touted by interior materials manufacturers. NRC is a very imperfect indicator acoustical
performance. As an average rating, it tells you nothing about which parts of the sound spectrum are being absorbed. Here is a
more detailed look broken out by frequency, with higher numbers absorbing more sound, lower numbers absorbing less.

Coefficients of absorption (table still under

construction)
Material 500 Hz 1000 Hz 2000 Hz 4000 Hz NRC
carpet (glued down) .14 .37 .60 .65
concrete block (coarse, bare) .31 .29 .39 .25
concrete block (painted) .06 .07 .09 .08
gypsum wall board .05 .04 .07 .09
wood fiber tile glued to ceiling
5/8" mineral fiber ceiling tile .55
3/4" mineral fiber ceiling tile .70
1" 6 lb/cubic ft. fiberglass ceiling tile .70 .93 .98 1.03 .90

Many acoustical materials are optimized for

office environments, such as glued-down
carpet, acoustical panels, and relatively
inexpensive mineral ceiling tile. This
environment is designed to provide speech
privacy by muddying consonants (high
frequency sound) and not absorbing vowes
(low frequencies), making speech
unintelligible a short distance away. This is
the REVERSE of good classroom design
where you want to reinforce speech
intelligibility. Keep reading for a pattern for
excellent classroom acoustics for learning

Absorption of sound is particularly difficult in special environments like cafeterias, kitchens, gymnasiums, and swimming pools.
Conventional materials may be subject to damage, or absorb odors, or be incompatible in other ways. However, materials do exist
that work well. For example, for a gym, walls can be built of a special slotted concrete block. Because the absorption is inside the
block's core, no amount of ball impact can compromise its integrity.

5. Transmission of Sound Between Rooms

The control of noise from one room to another is the other major challenge in acoustics. As with absorption, different materials
transmit more or less sound at different frequencies. In transmission, blocking the entire speech range is important, and this factor
is reflected in the STC rating (Sound Transmission Class) of a wall. Unlike the NRC, the STC takes into account the performance
of the wall at its worst frequency. The STC value of a wall is a relatively reliable relative indicator of the number of decibels of
attenuation that can be expected from a wall system. STC values are a very useful tool in acoustical design but should be
downrated for actual field conditions, as even the best installation will never match the lab rating.
Critical to sound transmission issues is the background noise in the receiving room. If the background noise is higher than the
amount of sound passing through (and around) the wall, then users won't hear the sound from the adjacent room. If background
is lower than what's transmitted, then room occupants will hear sounds from the adjoining space. This tells us that some
acoustical problems can be overcome by increasing background sound, but that can cause problems as people need to raise their
voices to be heard.

Transmission tips:

In general, materials with more mass block sound more than lighter materials,
especially for low frequencies (which are very hard to block)
Sound likes to travel around barriers. To be fully effective, walls should go from
floor to the structure above, and holes should be carefully caulked or filled.
Even small holes make a big difference. Most transmission failures are caused
by cracks and holes.
Batt insulation is useful, but it has to be installed very carefully or the
effectiveness is compromised. It's best to have it inspected by someone who
understands this before walls are covered up. Unlike thermal insulation, even
minor gaps, cracks, and other installation problems result in a major reduction
in effectiveness. Wall with staggered studs
Making the wall finishes of different thicknesses/masses helps stop sound
waves, perhaps by adding an extra layer of gypsum board to one side of the
wall.
More effective than batt insulation is decoupling of the two faces of the wall by
having two sets of studs, one for each wall surface (staggered studs). Resilient
channels can be used with similar effects

6. Amplification of Sound
Sound amplification goes hand in hand with education in this day and age. Most media now include sound (videos, CD/DVD,
Internet content, etc.), so a room needs to provide for and be friendly to a loudspeaker system. On the other hand, except for
large rooms not commonly encountered in K-12 education, voice amplification is not normally used, with two significant
exceptions:

If room users include one or more people who are hard of hearing, they may use an assistive listening system that amplifies
the voice of the speaker, and can be coordinated with sound output from multimedia sources. These systems can be built in
or may be portable. They are effective for one-way communication but can be challenging in a discussion or group project
setting.
Some schools have experimented with amplifying the teacher's voice through ceiling-mounted loudspeakers. While quite
effective as a presentation tool, this does nothing for discussions, and runs contrary to much of the current direction of
education toward more interaction and involvement of the students. Furthermore, many of these systems use low quality
microphones and loudspeakers that distort the sound. My personal opinion is that this is not a generally effective solution.

7. Myths and Truths

Myth: control noise just by installing carpet. Carpet is not an acoustical panacea. It is effective for reducing noise from feet
and movement of furniture. However, for absorbing noise, the carpet system commonly used in schools (glued down) absorbs
mostly in the high frequencies of speech, i.e. the consanants. Padding the feet of furniture can help with furniture noise, but
doesn't help with foot noise.

Myth: Ceiling tile is enough. Acoustical ceiling tile, either glued to the ceiling (usually in 12" squares) or sitting loosely in the
suspended steel grid (usually 2 foot by 2 foot or 2 foot by 4 foot), can be a very effective means of absorbing sound.
However,there are many types of tile with different absorption characteristics (wood fiber, mineral fiber, glass fiber, etc.). To
ensure effectiveness, someone has to match the acoustical problem to the solution. Furthermore, nearly all ceiling tile is ruined by
painting unless very special paints are used with great care. Many older schools develop acoustical problems when acoustical tile
is painted after it gets dirty or stained or just looks old. "Best Practices" classroom acoustical design for classroom interaction
usually makes the center of the ceiling reflective, and provides high-performance acoustical tile near the perimeter. Misplaced or
poorly selected acoustical material can require louder voices and ultimately vocal stress.

Truth: Heating and cooling systems can be a major acoustical problem. HVAC systems can contribute to noise three ways.

1. The heating/ventilating equipment, the fans and terminal units, make noise. This noise can be transferred directly, usually to
the spaces under, over, or next to the unit.
2. HVAC systemscan also created noise through the distribution system because of excess air or water velocity (pipes or
ducts too small) or through poor workmanship (such as small holes that create hisses and whistles).
3. Air ducts can also create a path for sound to travel between rooms, solved only with expensive sound traps (which also
increase fan energy consumption). For this reason, ducts should generally not go from room to room but should be
branched off from a main in the corridor.

Truth: Outdoor noise can be a significant problem. The location of a school can be a significant determinant of acoustical
noise problems, especially if buildling users are expected to open windows. Locations near major roads, airports, or any other
source of noise can be a major problem, in some cases even with the windows closed. Measurement of ambient noise should be
a part of site selection for a school.

8. Pattern
For a typical classroom, keep the head wall (front) reflective with hard surfaces. Provide absorptive materials around the sides
and back of the ceiling and the upper part of the wall, using a high NC material (.8 or higher) such as one inch thick compressed
fiberglass. Provide a relatively non-absorbent material in the middle of the ceiling and on the rest of the wall surfaces. Consider
using carpet to reduce foot and furniture noise (or use other methods). Also consider a sloping ceiling at the front of the
classroom to reflect more sound out into the room.

[diagram and link to nonoise.org article]

Other sources to consult:

The best classroom acoustics source: http://www.nonoise.org/library/classroom/
A good source: http://www.mbiproducts.com/roomacoustics.html
Dictionary of terms: http://www.armstrong.com/commceilingsna/glossary.html

Glossary
Selected glossary items:

Absorption In acoustics, the energy of sound waves being taken in and trapped within a material rather than being bounced off
or reflected. Materials are rated in terms of their ability to absorb sounds.

Articulation Class (AC) Rates the listener's ability to understand the spoken work within a space, expressed as a decimal with
1.0 being perfectly understandable. The privacy index is derived from the A1 calculation. Lower A1 ratings (less than 0.2) indicate
that adjacent spoken words are less intelligible, therefore less distracting. The sum of the weighted sound attenuations in a series
of 15 test bands. Note: AC has replaced Noise Isolation Class (NIC) as the accepted industry standard performance value. NIC is
based on hearing sensitivity rather than discernment of actual speech, which is the primary concern in open office layouts
prevalent in acoustical design work. Verify the rating methodolgy with manufacturer's published data.

Ceiling Attenuation Class (CAC) Rates a ceiling's efficiency as a barrier to airborne sound transmission between adjacent
closed offices. Shown as a minimum value, previously expressed as CSTC (Ceiling Sound Transmission Class). A single-figure
rating derived from the normalized ceiling attenuation values in accordance with classification ASTM E 413, except that the
resultant rating shall be designated ceiling attenuation class. (Defined in ASTM E 1414.) An acoustical unit with a high CAC may
have a low NRC.

DBA (A-weighted decibel) A single-number measurement based on the decibel but weighted to approximate the response of the
human ear with respect to frequencies.

Decibel (dB) - A unit to express differences in power. In acoustics, equal to ten times the logarithm of the ratio of one sound and
lower-intensity reference sound. One decibel indicates a difference of about 26% and is about the smallest change the ear can
detect. The dB level is a logarithm quantity; the maximum normal level is approximately 120dB

Fiberglass Panels - Glass strands laid in mats and formed into a rigid or semi-rigid board, sometimes requiring a separate stable
material laminated to the fiberglass.

Mineral Wool - A man-made wool-like material of fine inorganic fibers made from slag, used as loose fill or formed into blanket,
batt, clock, board, or slab shapes for thermal and acoustical insulation.

Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) - Average sound absorption coefficient measured at four frequencies: 250, 500, 1,000 and
2,000 Hz which rates how well a ceiling or wall panel absorbs sound. NRC is the fraction of sound energy, averaged over all
angles of direction and from low to high sound frequencies that is absorbed and not reflected.

Reverberation Time - Time required for a sound to decay to a value one millionth of its original intensity or to drop 60 decibels.

Sound Transmission Class (STC) - A single-number rating of a wall or ceiling's efficiency as a barrier to airborne sound at 16
speech frequencies from 125 to 4000 Hz. STC is a decibel measure of the difference between the sound energy striking the panel
or construction on one side and the sound energy transmitted from the other side.

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