Acoustic comfort is a concept hardly described in the literature. But it has been used in engineering typically to refer to low noise or annoyance in order to invoke no discomfort. Current standardized methods for airborne and impact sound reduction are deployed to assess acoustic comfort in dwellings. However, the measured sound pressure levels do not represent comfort. The latter should include further the human perception of the acoustic environment. Therefore, this article reviews studies that approached acoustic comfort through the association of objective and subjective field data, combining in situ acoustic measurements and survey responses from residents. We evaluated the studies using Bradford Hill's criteria. Most researches focus on self-reported noise annoyance while some others on satisfaction responses. Many studies were found incomprehensibly described: often vital data of statistical evaluation or study design are lacking. The results indicate that noise is a significant issue in living environments, especially certain impact noise types. The use of extended low-frequency spectra down to 50 Hz was suggested for impact measurements in order to predict better self-reported noise response. Greater problems with low-frequency transmission are displayed in lightweight structures which perform inefficiently compared to heavyweight components. Harmonization of presented results and study design details should be taken into account for future articles.

The concept of acoustic comfort is hardly defined and used to refer to conditions of low noise levels or annoyance based on standardized descriptors. Airborne and impact sound measurements are used to rate acoustic comfort in dwellings, but they often do not express human perception of noise or comfort. If the descriptors are statistically associated with self-reported responses, they can be used as prediction models and considered sufficient for acoustic comfort assessment. This review article presents studies that approach acoustic comfort in dwellings via the association of acoustic data and subjective responses in laboratory tests. Specifically, we investigate the cases of impact sound, since it is usually reported as the most disturbing noise source in dwellings. We also evaluated the reviewed studies with the Bradford Hill's criteria. The reviewed studies indicate that self-reported annoyance to impact sound is an important issue and it can be predicted well in overall. Various standardized descriptors are studied and associate sufficiently with subjective responses. Inclusion of low frequencies down to 50 Hz in measurements improves the association of impact sound descriptors to subjective responses. Some impact noise stimuli associate only with some descriptors but not all. From the standardized impact sources, the tapping machine is the most efficient to predict overall annoyance and the impact ball for human walking or typical impact sounds in dwellings.

Acoustic comfort has been used in engineering to refer to conditions of low noise levels or annoyance, while current standardized methods for airborne and impact sound reduction are used to assess acoustic comfort in dwellings. However, the results and descriptors acquired from acoustic measurements do not represent the human perception of sound or comfort levels. This article is a review of laboratory studies concerning airborne sound in dwellings. Specifically, this review presents studies that approach acoustic comfort via the association of objective and subjective data in laboratory listening tests, combining airborne sound acoustic data, and subjective ratings. The presented studies are tabulated and evaluated using Bradford Hill's criteria. Many of them attempt to predict subjective noise annoyance and find the best single number quantity for that reason. The results indicate that subjective response to airborne sound is complicated and varies according to different sound stimuli. It can be associated sufficiently with airborne sound in general but different descriptors relate best to music sounds or speech stimuli. The inclusion of low frequencies down to 50 Hz in the measurements seems to weaken the association of self-reported responses to airborne sound types except for the cases of music stimuli.

Ventilation ducts can have a negative effect on the sound reduction index between two rooms if they pass through the dividing structure without treatments. The overall sound reduction of a ventilation duct is dependent on several factors including the transmission loss when sound is breaking in and out from the duct. This study aims to model the sound reduction of a combined system with a separating wall and a ventilation duct through it. Three walls, characterized according to ISO 717-1, are combined with three different ventilation ducts, two circular and one rectangular with different dimensions. Laboratory measurement data are used to determine the sound reduction of the different configurations and the type of treatments needed for each configuration. A proposed model with existing theory for describing sound transmission losses of circular and rectangular ventilation ducts predicts the shape of the measurement data for many frequency bands. A new theory part is developed through an iterative process for circular ducts, which is based on measurements with previous methods and studies as a guide because the existing prediction scheme is somewhat perplexing. For rectangular ducts, the existing theory has been updated to better match measurement data. The application of the proposed theory and model in this article shows similar results when compared to measurements. The difference in weighted sound reduction index between developed theories and measurement data is 0–1 dB for every configuration.