Dr. Christian Nocke presenting an overview for the new DIN18041 German standard at EIAS2016
Incorporating the international human rights treaty
The revision of the German room acoustic standard DIN18041:2016-03 was released in March. Therefor the old edition from 2004 was withdrawn. One main reason for new and updated content was adapting the international human rights treaty „Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities“. The revision isn`t changing the main core of the standard but a lot of topics and questions were edited. Those were mainly based on 10 years of experience from acousticians and the members of the expert committee from the German acousticians association (DEGA).
How to? A short look at the structure of the standard
The main differentiation of rooms which the DIN18041 is dealing with is defining the goal of acoustical quality you want to achieve.
Looking at how to achieve good acoustics in educational environments:
Room group A is focussing on rooms where the goal is to ensure good acoustical quality for speaking over medium or long distances. Typical rooms are classrooms, seminar rooms, group rooms in elderly care up to bigger spaces like auditoriums (and many more).
The standard defines specific values called „TSoll“ for reverberation time (125 – 4000 Hz) in dependence of the rooms volume in m³ and the activity.
A1 „Music“
A2 „Speech/Lecture“
A3 „Teaching/Communication“ and „Speech/Lecture inclusive“
A4 „Teaching/Communication inclusive“
A5 „Sport“
The categories „Speech/Lecture inclusive“ and „Teaching/Communication inclusive“ are new ones which should be used for refurbishments or new school buildings, kindergarten, universities and other public buildings. Those define quiet strict demands to make sure that people with a special needs on good acoustics (for example hearing impaired, second language learners) are having no communication barriers.
Looking at how to achieve good acoustics in other environments like office and healthcare:
Room group B aims at ensuring good acoustical quality on shorter distances and minimizing the overall sound pressure level. Example rooms in this group are offices, corridors, cafeterias, operation rooms, laboratories (and more).
There are guideline values for the ratio of equivalent sound absorption area of a room to room volume (A/V) depending on the room height.
B1 „Rooms not intended for people to stay in“
B2 „Rooms not intended for people to spend long time in“
B3 „Rooms intended for people to spend longer time in“
B4 „Rooms where there is a need for noise reduction and room comfort“
B5 „Rooms where there is a particular need for noise reduction and room comfort“
For rooms > 2,50m the following ratios should be met.
If you would like to know more about the changes and details you can watch the following video. The head of the revision committee Dr. Christian Nocke gives a deeper insight at the standard. The Video was recorded during the EIAS Seminar 2015 in Sweden: Revised Version of the German Acoustic Standard DIN 18041
For more information about educational environments in Germany contact: Holger Brokmann
For Offices and other spaces in Germany contact: Rainer Machner
