Biggest mistakes encountered on projects without acoustical consultants. Free

As consultants, the authors have been called into dozens of projects built without the benefit of guidance from an acoustician, and the results are often disastrous (and in many cases, litigious). This presentation, replete with photographic evidence, outlines some of the biggest mistakes encountered recently by design teams that lack a critical team player: the qualified acoustical consultant. Consider a natatorium with all hard surfaces and a 6‐s reverberation time to match, a fieldhouse gymnasium with a 70‐dB background noise level, and a distressingly common problem in New England: residential condominiums converted from an old mill building with nothing between stacked residences except exposed, unimproved hardwood decking. Other examples relate to inadequate (or altogether absent) vibration isolation of elevator machinery and other mechanical equipment, cacophonous restaurant acoustics, blatant disregard for a nearby railway, and poor music practice facilities.