Game engine based auralization of airborne sound insulation

Describing planned acoustic design by single number ratings yields a weak link to the subjective event, especially when the single number ratings are interpreted by others than experienced acousticians. When developing infrastructure, tools for decision making needs to address visual and aural perception. Visual perception can be addressed using game engines and this has enabled the establishment of tools for visualizations of planned constructions in virtual reality. Audio engines accounting for sound propagation in the game engine environment are steadily developing and have recently been made available. The aim of this project is to simulate airborne sound insulation by extending the support of recently developed audio engines directed towards virtual reality applications. The case studied was airborne sound insulation between two adjacent rooms in a building, the sound transmitted to the receiving room through the building structure resulting from sound pressure exciting the structural elements in the adjacent source room into vibration. The receiving room composed modelled space in the game engine Unreal Engine and Steam Audio was the considered audio engine. Sound transmission was modelled by filtering based on calculations of transmission loss via direct and flanking paths using the model included in the standard EN 12354-1. It was verified that the filtering technique for modelling sound transmission reproduced attenuations in correspondence with the predicted transmission loss. Methodology was established to quantify the quality of the audio engine room acoustics simulations. A room acoustics simulation was evaluated by comparing the reverberation time derived from simulation with theoretical predictions and the simulated reverberation time showed fair agreement with Eyring’s formula above its frequency threshold. The quality of the simulation of airborne sound insulation was evaluated relating the sound field in simulation to insulation classification by the standardized level difference. The spectrum of the simulated standardized level difference was compared with the corresponding sound transmission calculation for a modelled scenario. The simulated data displayed noticeable deviations from the transmission calculation, caused by the audio engine room acoustics simulation. However, the simulated data exhibited cancellation of favourable and unfavourable deviations from the transmission calculation resulting in a mean difference across the spectrum below the just noticeable difference of about 1 dB. Single number ratings was compared and the simulated single number rating was within the standard deviation of how the transmission model calculates predictions for a corresponding practical scenario measured in situ. Thus, the simulated data shows potential and comparisons between simulated data, established room acoustics simulation software and in situ measurements should further be made to deduce whether the deviations entails defects in the airborne sound insulation prediction or is an error imposed by the audio engine room acoustics simulation