
Dear Architects: Sound Matters - tysone
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/29/arts/design/sound-architecture.html
======
Cshelton
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.

~~~
monort
If you are ready to pay more, why not to soundproof your room? It's not
expensive.

~~~
cm3
How can you after the fact effectively silence sound from below (floor) and
above (ceiling)? Genuinely curious what's possible and not expensive.

~~~
jwatte
"Expensive" is in the eye of the payer. Do you think a few thousand is
expensive? A developer absolutely does. Also, it takes more space, so doing it
after the fact may lower your ceiling more than you're comfortable with
(assuming your landlord is even willing.)

We could solve this with code updates and strict enforcement. However, pro
business types will complain that it increases rents (probably true in the
short term) and drives down development (probably not actually true.) Also,
better sound management generates more livable spaces that better support city
growth in 10 or 20 years, which is also important from a sustainability point
of view. But nobody wants to pay for that. That's "someone else's" problem.

~~~
r00fus
Note: Ceiling heights are part of spec. Even losing 1" could put you out of
spec.

As a renter you have very little power to do anything.

~~~
isolate
Where I live you're allowed to stick things on the ceiling as long as you take
them off again when you leave.

------
Anechoic
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
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.

------
ianamartin
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
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.

------
m52go
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.

~~~
d23
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?

------
TheAceOfHearts
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.

~~~
copperx
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
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?

~~~
copperx
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....](http://images.meredith.com/diy/images/2008/12/p_SCTC_100_04.jpg))
too late.

~~~
Anechoic
I have to agree with Domenic_S, it's probably the solid core doors (I'm guess
the jambs and sill are well-sealed also) that's providing most of the benefit
moreso than the rockwool.

Staggered studs are an option, resilient channel also works well, provided
that it's installed correctly.

------
JumpCrisscross
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-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-
for-new-york-noise.html)

------
Htsthbjig
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.

------
erentz
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.

~~~
Htsthbjig
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
> _Old cities in Europe and Japan were designed around people walking around,
> basically because there was not anything else when those cities were
> created._

This is romanticism. Old cities weren't just filled with pedestrian traffic.
There were lots of carts and animals pulling them. Those lovely cobblestone
streets in Europe were created for vehicle traffic. Pedestrian traffic doesn't
need that kind of durable surface.

The old-world streets were (and are) smaller, but not because only pedestrians
were using them.

~~~
keithpeter
Iron rimmed cart wheels would do it (you needed a lot of carts) along with all
the _people_ you needed pre-combustion engine to carry stuff around.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQiEJW7RWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQiEJW7RWg)

[http://www.victorianlondon.org/transport/traffic.htm](http://www.victorianlondon.org/transport/traffic.htm)

Clogs (wooden shoes worn routinely in earlier centuries) with nails in for
gripping the slippery cobbles. Victorian London would have been seriously loud
I imagine, at least in the main roads. Then you had _music_.

[http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/sounds-of-victorian-
lo...](http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/sounds-of-victorian-london.html)

However, I think that the grandparent post may have a point: European cities
do have dense cores, so cars tend in many cases to be routed around the edge
of the core in a 'ring road' system.

As a practical example, Birmingham UK has extended the Metro into the very
city centre, removing car traffic from a few main streets. It is noticeably
quieter now in those streets compared to before the changes. When the system
is fully operational, we will see how the acoustic footprint changes.

Once outside the main streets of the city, but still within the central core,
you can find pockets of quiet - song thrush/nightingale quiet.

------
chiph
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.

~~~
jwatte
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
Do you have any product reccos?

------
triggercut
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.

------
turaw
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)

~~~
thrownaway2424
Two things that Etymotics earphones cannot block: the sounds of your own mouth
(like chewing) which are greatly increased by plugging your ears, and the
scratching sounds of the earphones own wires, especially on the ER4 with the
twisted wires that rub together.

~~~
turaw
Aah, I can definitely see how twisted wires would make that friction noise
worse. It's especially annoying when they scratch against a beard -- augh,
just awful. That being said, I normally just clip 'em if they're making too
much noise and take them out when eating.

------
jwatte
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.

------
ladon86
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-...](http://fortune.com/2012/11/12/apples-new-palo-alto-store-is-way-too-
loud/)

The level of amplification that space created was really quite impressive!

------
dman
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.

------
mmmBacon
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.

------
skyhatch1
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.

------
jdc0589
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.

------
TrevorJ
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
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?

~~~
TrevorJ
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.

------
cballard
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.

------
lamby
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)

------
CurtMonash
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.

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

------
blehblahbloop
Beautiful writing

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

~~~
c0nducktr
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.

------
draw_down
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.

