Multi-Laboratory Sound Transmission Loss Comparison

Design of residential and commercial building spaces from an acoustic perspective often relies on industry standard constructions with published sound transmission class, or STC data. Modified or new wall designs are evaluated at a commercial or, in some cases, internal laboratory that is accredited. There are many laboratories in North America where a wall could be evaluated and the sound transmission loss and STC determined. Accredited acoustic laboratories must participate in inter laboratory studies that identify the variance of the result across all laboratories. A lightweight reference wall construction is used for ease of installation in these studies. However, many of the new or modified walls types are specifically designed for higher STC values. A more substantial reference wall was constructed and tested at several accredited acoustic laboratories to identify how similar the results would be. The results of this studyare presented in this paper.