Which ASTM standard measures airborne sound between rooms?

• A. ASTM E336 measures airborne sound between rooms
• B. ASTM E90 measures airborne sound between partitions
• C. ASTM E414 measures airborne sound between rooms
• D. ASTM E492 measures impact sound

Answer: (A)

Airborne sound between rooms is about how sound travels through air from one space to another across a partition. ASTM E336 specifies the test setup and procedures to measure that attenuation. In practice, you have two adjacent rooms with a partition between them: a calibrated noise source in the source room and microphones in the receiving room. By taking measurements with the source on and off and applying corrections for room acoustics, you derive the transmission loss across frequency bands. This directly characterizes how well the partition blocks sound in real room-to-room conditions, yielding a TL spectrum that designers use to compare performance. The other standards describe related but different tests—some focus on partition performance in a laboratory setup, others measure different aspects like impact sound or minimum transmission loss—so the one that truly targets sound transmission between rooms is ASTM E336.