Improvement of Intelligibility and Privacy in Restaurant Based on Speech Transmission Index (STI) as Parameter

• Main Author: Susanti, Riska
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknik (Rekayasa, enjinering dan kegiatan berkaitan)
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/44964
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

When a restaurant is fully occupied, conversation in every table prones to be coincided with each other that it increases the background noise. The increasing of background noise lowers the speech intelligibility and makes everyone competes and tends to raise their voice (Lombard effect) which again leads to the increase of noise level. This may causedecreasing of privacy and make the patreons feel uncomfortable and tired. In this research, acoustic improvement design is made for a restaurant which background noise level exceeds the standard value.The objective is to increase the acoustic comfort in way a good intelligibility over a table can be achieved while maintain the privacy in certain distance. In the design making, there is no partition included to keep the characteristic of a public space nor decrease the restaurant capacity. Restaurant that becomes the object of the research has background noise of 53–59 dBA (NCB 45–52) while the standard noise value for restaurant is 35–50 dBA (NCB 38–43). By speaking with normal voice (60 dBA in 1 meter) when the restaurant is fully occupied, the background noise can reach 74 dBA (NCB>65). It causes the patreons increase their voice level up above the raised voice (66 dBA in 1 meter). The acoustic design is made from difuser panel and simulated with ray tracing method. This design decreases the background noise by 3 dBA and creates 1.6 m distraction distance and 5.8 m privacy distance as the result.