(Replying to PARENT post)

I'm more concerned about noise isolation

Concrete buildings seem to isolate my neighbors' noise far better than wooden structures

πŸ‘€trinovantesπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

When you say "wooden structures", you're referring to typical stick framed construction with likely no sound dampening or insulation. This post is about mass timber construction[1], where the (manufactured) timbers function more like a concrete or steel columns/girders/shear walls.

Many modern concrete buildings use steel stud framed walls, which are actually worse than stick framing for noise isolation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_wood

πŸ‘€SECProtoπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Noise isolation is much more a function of how the actual insulation being put in. If houses are build to the lowest standard than yes they will be incredibly noisy. I mean cheap concrete apartment buildings are essentially made with large concrete frame and thin plaster interior walls.
πŸ‘€cycomanicπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Mass, decoupling, and air tightness are all required to isolate sound effectively. All three are expensive to implement, and spec homes (houses built to immediately sell, as opposed to live in) are all about saving money to make more profit.
πŸ‘€falcolasπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Yeah, I lived in a wood frame building. The first week we were there, we heard some young kids right outside our door making noise. I opened the door to ask them to quiet down and there was nobody there. But I can still hear them. So I go up one floor. No kids, but they’re still just as audible as before. I go up one more floor to the top floor. Sure enough that’s where they were, 2 floors above us. It sounded like they were at our doorstep. Needless to say we moved out after just under a year because of the noise problems.
πŸ‘€thewebcountπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Except when someone wants to drill a hole to hang a painting. You can hear that multiple floors up or down. I live in a 30 story building and the drilling noise in a real nuisance.
πŸ‘€KaotiqueπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

noise transmission (and the reduction thereof) is affected by all aspects of building design. A wood building will not always be noisy. More expensive buildings tend to have multiple mitigations in place for sound transmission. These can be multiple special purpose layers in floors and walls, from elastic layers that are only a few mm thick, to inches of poured concrete present only for the sound response. A technique in very nice stick-built (the 5-over-1s mentioned) buildings is to have walls built with different structural systems for either side of the wall. Two layers of drywall on a single structural wall acts like a membrane, transmitting sound to the other side. Attaching drywall to disconnected structures greatly inhibits that vibration, at the cost of a thicker wall (lost rentable sqft) and ~2x spent on structure.
πŸ‘€abcanthurπŸ•‘3yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0