Wood offers acoustic benefits
Wood’s natural properties can enhance a building’s acoustics, making it a good choice for concert and performance halls, offices and meeting spaces, schools, lecture theatres and more.
Wood can enhance acoustics
For centuries, wood has been a material of choice for acoustic performance. Wood produces sound by direct striking and it amplifies or absorbs sound waves. For these reasons, wood is an ideal material for musical instruments and other acoustic applications, including architectural ones. When it comes to auditorium and performance spaces, such as concert halls, classrooms and lecture theatres, wood is often chosen over steel, concrete and glass (external link) to produce some of the most rewarding acoustic spaces for performers and audiences.
Wood can serve as a material for acoustic treatments (external link) and sound deflection (external link). Wood commonly serves as acoustic panels installed to ceilings or walls, adding aesthetic warmth and even serving as a design feature. Fabric-wrapped wood-frame panels are more durable than resin-hardened panels and the air gap between the insulation and the fabric enhances acoustic performance.
Ts’kw’aylaxw Cultural and Community Health Centre |
Photo credit: Ema Peter Photography, courtesy of Unison Architecture Ltd.
Designing for acoustics with wood
As with any material, delivering pleasing acoustics in wood buildings, both light-frame wood and mass timber, requires careful considerations to reduce vibrations and sound transmission.
All types of buildings are subject to four types of sounds mitigation:
- Airborne sound (speech, stereos)
- Impact sound (footsteps, falling objects)
- Flanking sound (airborne and impact sounds emitting through tiny cracks and holes)
- Sound reverberation caused by reflection off surfaces
With proper design (external link), occupants can enjoy the same privacy and acoustic performance in wood structures as they have come to expect from steel and concrete buildings. As a natural insulator, wood can offer added warmth and comfort while dampening and controlling sound. Wood fibre panels can replace conventional insulation made from fossil fuels while providing significant noise reduction. Interior wood finishes, slats and cladding can further enhance a building’s acoustics.
Designing for acoustics in light-frame wood construction
Through early planning and good acoustic design, light-frame wood construction can isolate sound and deliver acoustic comfort. A properly constructed wood floor and ceiling assembly performs on par with other construction types, according to a study by the National Research Council of Canada (PDF). Design solutions for light-frame wood construction focus on ways to minimize sound from airborne sources and movement by people within the building.
For walls in light-frame wood structures, sound isolation can generally be accomplished in two ways: using partitions with a high mass or using low mass systems separated by air spaces. For floors and ceilings, noise control can be improved by increasing its mass through a combination of light-weight concrete, isolation matts, subfloor, joist system and layers of gypsum board. Soft floor finishes or floating engineered hardwood can further mitigate sound transmission.
Multi-family Residential Construction | Photo credit: Rob Salmon
Designing for acoustics in mass timber and taller wood construction
The acoustic performance of traditional building assemblies, such as light-frame wood, steel and concrete is widely understood, given its long track record of use. Sound mitigation, vibration and noise reduction for mass timber assemblies and technologies, on the other hand, are still emerging and supported by ongoing research (external link).
Acoustic performance in mass timber buildings can be improved by (external link) adding any combination of increased mass, noise barriers and decouplers—which means separating the two sides of a wall to make it harder for sound to pass through the wall.
Skidegate Elementary School | Photo credit: Martin Tessler, courtesy of Acton Ostry Architects
Mass timber’s solid mass helps reduce sound transmission between walls and floors. This generally entails increasing mass wherever possible. This can include using a hybrid mass timber building system, such as one that combines wood with other materials such as a concrete topping. Other methods include adding underlayments and mats.
Every project requires a unique approach to mitigating noise transference and a certain amount of sound transference sometimes can’t be avoided. Nonetheless, mass timber projects can minimize it by reducing small openings between walls and constructing airtight connections. Building professionals should give focus to the design of building assemblies as well the quality of fit when components are connected, both on and offsite, to optimize a wood structure’s acoustic performance.
Dowel-laminated timber | Photo credit: StructureCraft
Sound Resources
Guide for sound insulation in wood frame construction
This technical guide published by the National Research Council of Canada provides design strategies to reduce sound transmission in light-frame wood construction.
Design guide for timber-concrete composite floors in Canada
Acoustic performance of innovative composite wood stud partition walls
Learn how partition-wall studs made of composite wood material could have the same or better airborne sound insulation performance as compared to a 25-gauge steel stud.
Canadian CLT handbook 2019
Download the handbook and check out chapter 9: acoustics performance of cross-laminated timber assemblies.
Apparent sound insulation in mass timber buildings
This project investigates the acoustical performance of mass timber panels produced in B.C.
Serviceability of next-generation wood buildings: Sound insulation performance of wood buildings
This technical report documents apparent/field impact insulation class (AIIC/FIIC) ratings and apparent/field sound transmission class (ASTC/FSTC) ratings for a large number of light-frame wood-joisted floors, cross-laminated timber floors (CLT), massive glulam floors, and a wood-concrete composite floor.
Acoustics summary: sound insulation in mid-rise wood building
This report summarizes research on sound insulation for mid-rise and larger wood buildings.
Acoustical guide for mass timber buildings by AcoustiTECH
With the rise of new approaches in mass timber construction comes the need for choosing the right acoustic solution to meet the project’s unique needs. This report provides results of acoustic testing on 25 different assemblies for use in mass timber buildings.
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