Reverberation time in ordinary rooms of typical residences in Southern Brazil

Abstract

In order to develop a subjective evaluation to assess the annoyance related to impact noise, it is necessary to record samples of sounds in an impact chamber that is acoustically representative for ordinary rooms, especially with respect to reverberation time. To define the target reverberation time measurements were carried out in 30 typical residences in Southern Brazil. This study presents the characteristic reverberation times of 30 furnished living rooms and 30 furnished bedrooms in buildings and houses with an average age of 34 years, 40% of them with wooden floor coverings, not as usual in modern constructions. The median T30 at 1 kHz for living rooms with an average volume of 63.60m³ (std dev: 18.27m³) was 0.68 s (std dev: 0.14 s), thus higher than the reference TR = 0.5 s according to EN ISO 140 parts 4, 5, and 7. The median T30 at 1 kHz for bedrooms with average volume of 33.76m³ (std dev: 8.38m³ ) was 0.49 s (std dev: 0.13 s), nearly exact the reference TR according to EN ISO 140 parts 4, 5, and 7. Data will also be compared to studies from other countries.