I’m thinking that since wood absorbs sound better than cement that it would not be as loud or noisy. Noise is mainly caused by reflective surfaces, right? Anyone wishing to avoid loud noisy apartments would be, I think, well advised to seek units with more wood, including floors. I think that for the surrounding apartments, sound would travel through floors and ceilings better if they are made of wood, so that might be a factor in the general sound level in those units. But for the person living in an apartment, I believe cement would make for a louder environment. Am I correct? (A friend contends otherwise).
I agree with your thinking. I once lived in an apartment that had smooth-finished concrete floors in the main area, and walking around in shoes was obnoxiously loud. In fact, any sound I made would echo off the floor and reverberate through the apartment. I “fixed” the problem by walking around in my socks, but if I dropped a pot on the concrete kitchen floor the sound would be deafening.
If you’re talking about the floor you’re on then concrete floors will echo more than wood. If you’re talking about the sounds from the floor above you usually can’t hear anything through the thick concrete floor. Most people just put rugs down on either. Some leases require area rugs to cover some percentage of exposed wood floors.
Upstairs neighbors in a building with wooden floors: I could hear every step they took. God help you if they have a toddler. I could hear their TV and any voice louder than normal conversation.
Upstairs neighbors in a building with concrete floors: in three years I never heard them once. Neighbors below me didn’t even know I had and played a piano.
Wall-to-wall carpeting, zero issues with noise from walking inside the unit. No creaking floorboards.
When you lay wooden floorboards on bearers or battens above the structural floor you are making a resonator box like a giant guitar. You can dampen the sound with different types of underfloor material, and some of them are designed specifically for acoustic effect.
If you live in an apartment there may already be strata laws / by-laws / house rules regarding allowable floor materials, since its an easy way to fall out with your neighbours.
It also depends upon what “louder” means.
Concrete is heavy and stiff. In general that means it presents a very high impedance to acoustic energy in the air - which means it reflects very well, with minimal losses. Wood is lighter, not nearly as stiff, and has some internal damping properties. This means it will adsorb some of the acoustic energy, transmit some, and reflect less. This is going to be important in mid to low frequencies.
So in terms of a basic room that you create a noise in, the concrete will have a much longer reverberation time, and tend to sound loud.
In terms of making noise, a wooden floor could be worse, as a large sprung area made of light and reasonably stiff but flexible material will make for a great coupling of energy in the floor into the air. But a lot depends on the frequency range of what is doing the noise making. Running about on a large suspended wooden floor is going to make a racket. Dropping something heavy on it (like a bowling ball) will make a very satisfying and loud thud, yet be very soft on concrete. But say something light and metal may be the opposite. So the cooking pan suggested above dropped on a concrete floor might make a terrible din, but just a clatter on wood.
Acoustic engineers worry about reverb time, and traditionally the time taken for a sound to drop 60db - the T_{60} (which is a lot). The size of the room matters here as well. The mix gets you the critical distance - where if you stand that distance from a noise making object the reverberant field is the same intensity as the direct. That can be a useful single value metric of what a room is like.
Curiously, porous materials adsorb sound, and unfinished concrete has some porosity. But absorption needs a porous layer of a similar size of the wavelength of sound being adsorbed. So concrete might absorb very high frequencies better than finished wood. But this only occurs at the upper limits of human hearing, so isn’t going to be much more than a curiosity.
tiled floors has both of them beat
I live in a 100 percent tiled house and you can hear every sound made by anyone if they wear shoes boots etc and the echo will give you a headache …even though they’re quieter socks make noise too… if the tvs loud enough you can feel the floor vibrate halfway across the room and wakes up empress feline who lets us know its not appreciated …
I can’t tell if the OP is concerned about hearing noises their neighbors make, or hearing noises they make.
The quality and quantity of sound insulation varies greatly between buildings regardless of what they’re built with.
I lived in a concrete condo for years. It was required that all apartments put a sound deadening underflooring atop their concrete slab floor but below their tile or wood decorative flooring or whatever.
A few folks did renovations and skipped the sound-deadening layer to save a couple bucks. Bastards. The people living below those people listened to every footstep of their upstairs neighbor or their kids or their dog. Or every time they slid their chair back to get up. The folks that had the sound-deadening layers didn’t bother their downstairs neighbors nearly so much.
A different issue we all experienced is that if someone is performing construction or destruction, the sound carried through the concrete structure far better (ie louder and more annoying) than it would in a wooden building.
Somebody jackhammering up tile or ripping out cabinets 5 floors and 7 stacks away from you? You’d swear it was happening in the next room of your own apartment. Any noise energy that got imparted directly to the concrete, like drilling or hammering, carried everywhere with little attenuation. The noise seemed to come from every wall, floor and cieling in your own apartment. Because it was.
Bottom line:
I don’t think we can make an accurate blanket statement about which type construction is louder or quieter. The details of which noise(s), and other construction details will matter more than just “concrete quieter than wood” or vice versa.
I’ve lived in both. Concrete is certainly quieter. Floor noise is less unless someone is stomping. Loud sounds get muffled. Of course putting stuff up on your walls is much harder, so it’s temporarily louder.
There was a Holmes on Homes episode where people in a semi-detached house complained they could hear every sound their neighbours made on the main floor. On inspection, it was determined that the main living room had during framing been built with a doorway opening between the two livingrooms, presumably to make travel back and forth easier during construction. When the houses were being finished, they simply put up drywall but put no insulation in the opening between the two. Essentially it did what Francis says, it created a resonant echo chamber like a musical instrument between the houses. Filling in with acoustic insulation (and replacing the whole wall with acoustically more damping drywall) fixed the problem.
I saw a motel being built once, and the technique between units was simple - the base plates were 6" and the studs - 2x4" -were staggered, one flush with the left, the next flush with the right. Insulation was woven around between these two. Presumably this more easily dampened any sound.
I doubt such care is taken when building separations between floors in a wooden building.
So yes, as others point out, a wood floor may make for less echo noise, but it will carry down to the next unit much more easily than solid concrete.
This is also SOP for building an isolated room - such as a recording studio. Critically there is no hard connection between the walls. Adding some insulation adds absorption to reduce coupling though the air. Fuzzy material provides friction to moving air. The more surface area of fibres the better. When you really want to isolate the room an isolated floor will get built on compliant mounts (that gets spendy real fast). Add an isolated ceiling done in much the same way as the walls, and hung from the inner wall studs. In a domestic setting, home theatre rooms can be built with double wall construction like this. Keeps everyone happy.
My original conception and question referred to the sound that is made within an apartment and the resulting noise/sound that would reverberate INSIDE that apartment. And I speculated that wooden surfaces, i.e. floors, walls, trim, etc. would tend to dampen sound made within the apartment and cement floors, walls, trim (if there is such a thing) would reflect the sound and cause the apartment to be louder.
As for noise from surrounding units, I also know that wooden floors above your apartment can be very loud, and sounds below your apartment will be more likely to make their way into your apartment if your floors are wood. Two different issues - sound within an apartment and sound migrating into an apartment from outside. Incidentally, I once lived in an apartment below some people who had a wooden floor, no floor treatments, e.g. runners, throw rugs, etc. and they had a Doberman with long nails. And that dog would tap dance back and forth upstairs all day, click click click click click and I knew at all times where in the upstairs apartment that damned dog was. So I’m aware of sound coming from outside the apartment.