Revision of international standards on field measurements of airborne, impact and facade sound insulation to form the ISO 16283 series

This paper gives the background to the main technical changes concerning the field measurement of sound insulation in the new ISO 16283 series of standards for airborne, impact, and façade sound insulation. These changes were: (1) inclusion of only one-third octave bands without an option for octave band measurements, (2) indication of a preference for standardised (rather than normalised) sound insulation descriptors, (3) introduction of spatial sampling using manual scanning with the operator inside the source and/or receiving room, (4) introduction of a low-frequency procedure for one-third octave bands below 100 Hz in room volumes below 25 m3 using (a) corner measurements to determine the spatial average sound pressure level and (b) the 63 Hz octave band rather than one-third octave bands to measure the reverberation time, (5) alteration of the requirement on the source room spectrum for airborne sound insulation, (6) clarification of the loudspeaker directivity requirements and (7) introduction of the rubber ball as an option for impact sound insulation measurements.