Analysis
The survey responses proved helpful in addressing the issues of sound at Spencer View. The sounds heard were divided into three categories: impact, airborne and plumbing. These were graphed according to how often people upstairs and downstairs reported hearing sounds of each type.
Following the trendlines, it is evident that the people upstairs do not hear impact sounds as much as those living downstairs. The incidences of those that "never hear" impact-borne sounds upstairs are greatly contrasting to the incidences of those who "always hear" noises downstairs.
Of the responses it is also evident that although the percentages of respondents that hear airborne sound is generally higher, the transmission of airborne sounds for those living downstairs is comparable to those living upstairs.
People downstairs hear impact sounds with much greater frequency than they hear airborne sounds. It is also interesting to observe that the shape of the trendline for impact sound heard upstairs is the same as the two trendlines for airborne sound. This could be due to the fact the most impact sounds also have an airborne or structure-borne component. For example, "Doors Shutting" produces a mixture of impact, structure- and airborne sounds, and we did not ask respondents to attempt to identify the nature of the sound source. However, the majority of the sound sources were more easily identifiable as belonging to a specific sound type.
Although the tenants living downstairs responded that they "always hear" plumbing more frequently, and those living upstairs said that they "never hear" the sound more often than people below, the plumbing situation of Spencer View apartments affects both upstairs and downstairs tenants similarly.
Annoyance
As a way of gauging people's perceptions of acoustic comfort, we chose to measure tenants' level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction for each sound source by asking them "Is it Annoying?" These graphs show the percentage of respondents who said that they heard the sound at least "Rarely" and also said that they found it annoying.
This graph illustrates that, in general (disregarding the Alarm Clock), neither the upstairs or downstairs shows a greater pattern of annoyance.
The seemingly most annoying sound source is the alarm clock, but this spike is deceiving because the absolute number of people that heard the Alarm Clock is very low (6 (out of a sample size of 71 -- 8.5%)), and could be considered a statistical anomaly.
Consider the circumstances in which you would hear your neighbor's alarm clock: early morning. If your own alarm hasn't gone off yet, you will almost certainly be annoyed. If your alarm has already gone off, you will probably be out of hearing range of your neighbor's alarm clock, and wouldn't hear it at all. These factors combined explain the inordinately high annoyance rate of the Alarm Clock.
This graph shows a clear pattern of annoyance among people living in lower units. This trend is logical considering the nature of the sound source.
Of the handwritten comments on the surveys, we found a correlation between annoyances and the time of day the sound was produced. In particular, we saw problems when people are trying to sleep. Plumbing sounds were a frequent topic of complaint because the "wet wall" of the apartment (the wall in which the plumbing is run) is the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. There is the added situation, similar to that of the alarm clock, that the bathroom gets signifacantly more use (toilet, sink and shower) around the time when people are sleeping. This creates an inherent conflict between a sound source and a person in need of quiet.
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