Noisy neighbours and their sounds are a familiar, but frustrating, element of modern living and more likely to increase as we all live more closely together.
Now a small team of engineers at the University of Auckland have been given nearly a million dollars by the Ministry of Building, Innovation and Employment to develop a sound-proof wall using meta materials that they hope will reduce the capacity of a wall to vibrate in response to sound.
Researchers Dr Andrew Hall and Dr George Dodd join Kathryn to explain how it could work, and why New Zealand's building code is shoddy when it comes to sound.
Left: the reverberation chamber where walls are tested for sound insulation properties. Right: an anechoic chamber where smaller items are checked for sound pressure levels - it's the quietest room in New Zealand. Photo: Supplied
