Building acoustic design and architectural acoustics that make buildings sound right and perform as intended, delivering regulatory compliance alongside an exceptional user experience. Allegro Acoustics works with contractors and design teams from concept through detailed design, tender, construction and completion, so that projects achieve the acoustic standards they are held to.
Building acoustic design is the work of specifying how a building will control sound before it is built, covering sound insulation between spaces, reverberation within them, the façade that separates them from outside, and the noise made by the building services themselves. Allegro Acoustics provides building acoustic design and architectural acoustics across Ireland and the UK, from concept advice through to completion testing.
Combining engineering expertise with practical construction knowledge, our team of engineers and architects specify building acoustics solutions that are buildable, cost-effective and deliver the required acoustic performance.
Acoustics is cheapest at concept stage and most expensive after handover. A change to a party wall build up costs nothing on a drawing, something on site and a great deal once a building is occupied and failing its completion test. We prefer to be involved while the plan is still moving, because most acoustic problems are layout problems before they are specification problems.
As an acoustic design consultant on a live project, our role runs across the stages. Concept advice on adjacency and separation, developed design of constructions and junctions, acoustic specification written into the tender documents, review of contractor proposals and substitutions, site inspection during construction, and testing at completion. The specification is only worth what the site build actually delivers, which is why the inspection stage matters as much as the design stage.
Separating walls and floors have to resist both airborne sound, meaning speech and television, and impact sound, meaning footfall. The two behave differently and are improved by different means, so a construction that performs well against one can perform poorly against the other. We design constructions to meet the airborne and impact criteria that apply, and we detail the junctions, because flanking transmission through a continuous floor screed or an unsealed service penetration will undo an otherwise correct wall.
In Irish residential buildings the criteria come from Technical Guidance Document E. Our guide to Technical Guidance Document E, Sound explains how performance is regulated and verified. Where a scheme is in the UK, or where a client specification applies, the targets change but the design method does not.
Building acoustics is not only about keeping sound out. Inside a classroom, a lecture theatre, an open plan office, a sports hall or a performance space, the question is whether people can understand each other. Reverberation time, and increasingly speech transmission index, describe that, and both are set by room volume, shape and the absorption on its surfaces.
We model rooms where the geometry warrants it and specify absorption where it will do the most work, which is not always where it is easiest to install. Our guide to room acoustics covers how size, shape and materials interact to shape what a space sounds like.
Where a building sits beside a road, a railway, a flight path or an industrial neighbour, the façade is what stands between the occupants and the noise. Façade sound insulation design sets the glazing specification, the ventilator type and the wall build up needed to reach the internal levels in BS 8233 and the relevant planning condition.
This is where acoustics and ventilation strategy meet, and the collision is common. An acoustically adequate façade with an openable window as its ventilation strategy is not adequate at all once the window is open, which is why mechanical ventilation with heat recovery so often becomes part of the acoustic answer rather than a separate services decision.
Plant noise breaks out to neighbours and breaks in to occupants, and both directions carry criteria. Air handling units, chillers, generators, lifts and pumps all need to be assessed against the internal noise rating in the space they serve and against the external limit at the boundary. Where the plant is substantial, the external assessment overlaps directly with planning noise assessment work and is usually best done as one exercise.
Building acoustics is one of the few disciplines where the design is verified by test at the end, so a design is a prediction until it is measured. We carry out pre-completion sound insulation testing to ISO 16283 and reverberation testing to ISO 3382, and where a result falls short we diagnose the cause rather than simply reporting the failure. In practice most failures are workmanship or detailing rather than the specified construction, and finding which one it is determines whether the fix is a remedial detail or a rebuild. Our guide to sound insulation testing explains what the tests measure and how they are conducted.
Recent building acoustic design projects include the Trinity College Dublin E3 Learning Foundry, the Convention Centre Dublin and the Connacht Rugby High Performance Centre, alongside a large body of student accommodation, hotel and residential work.
As early as the plan is still moving. Most acoustic problems are layout problems before they are specification problems, and a change to a party wall build up costs nothing on a drawing, something on site, and a great deal once a building is occupied and failing its completion test.
TGD Part E sets minimum airborne sound insulation and maximum impact sound transmission performance for walls and floors separating dwellings in Ireland, and requires that performance is demonstrated, either by testing the completed building or by building to an accepted robust detail.
Airborne insulation resists sound carried through the air, such as speech and television. Impact insulation resists structure borne sound such as footfall. They behave differently and are improved by different means, so a construction that performs well against one can perform poorly against the other.
We diagnose the cause rather than simply reporting the failure. In practice most failures are workmanship or detailing rather than the specified construction, and establishing which one it is determines whether the fix is a remedial detail or something more substantial.
Your enquiry is on its way. We'll be in touch shortly.
