The effect of workmanship on the transmission of airborne sound through light framed walls

A study of the airborne sound transmission in a multi-tenanted building has shown that elements of the building which are nominally identical do not have the same acoustic performance. It was seen that some of this variation in performance could be attributed to visually-observable differences in the constructions. Some of the variation could not be explained however, and it was concluded that this variation was due to workmanship. The level of this variation was seen to be approximately 1 dB for a light steel framed construction. This variation is considerably less than that measured previously for a monolithic construction.