Air Attenuation in Octave Bands and How to Normalize Room Acoustic Measurements to a Standard Atmosphere

Abstract

Featured Application: The results can be applied in software for room acoustic measurements and simulation. The air attenuation of pure tones as a function of temperature and humidity is well known and described in ISO and ANSI standards. However, room acoustic measurements are performed in octave bands, which is the reason for the complicated, non-linear behavior of the air attenuation. It is known that room acoustic measurement results depend on air temperature and humidity, and these atmospheric data should always be reported in connection with room acoustic measurements. A calculation model for the air attenuation can make it possible to normalize the room acoustic results. For accurate results, it is possible to apply a summation method on each time sample in the impulse response. An approximation to the air attenuation at and above 1 kHz is possible by linearization using the pure-tone attenuation of two different frequencies, one frequency valid for the early part of the impulse response and another frequency valid for the later part of the impulse response. The purpose of the suggested methods is to make it possible to normalize room acoustic measurements to a standard atmosphere.