Architectural acoustics experiment for tropical and eco-house prototype design

Room acoustics in the tropic is concerned with the heat, light, and sound to control itself within an enclosed space to provide the best conditions for the production and the reception of desirable sounds. Integrated material requirements for an adequate level of sound and absences of acoustics defects should compromise with the thermal and luminous environment. This research proposes the room acoustics for the eco-house as a tropical prototype model through evaluating the area dimension, building material, the background noise of its exposed-brick-wall, plastered-brick-wall, and wood-wall rooms, as the representative object. Field measurement is conducted for analyzing music effect from a harmonic or melodic instrument in an octave free scale as fundamental frequency-pitch and speech source by capturing the voice and recorded by sound analyzer software. The results highlighted that there is a difference in the sound pressure levels created by sound notes from the music played in different tones for the exposed-wall room. Meanwhile, the plastered one in the higher note, the higher the frequency is reached. However, for a repeating note, it decreases again. In the low pitch, around 250 Hz of music section in the wood-wall room, all main frequencies rise from its free musical sound condition. It was proved that each note, played by both the music and speech, create a combination of sound from a different frequency. All were also affected by the room elements, such as dimension, material, aperture, the background noise, and most of them complied first for thermal reasons.