Technically no, the reason why not is both simple and technical. Firstly, the noise we measure is not the noise as the human ear hears it. We measure the energy created and stopped, not the perceived level of noise. For noise to be displayed as the human ear hears it, we apply a separate ‘rating’ called A Rating. This is typically displays as dBA. Secondly, when measuring sound insulation, we measure across 16 separate frequencies from 100Hz to 3150Hz, though many testers measure beyond that range where possible. 100Hz to 3150Hz is broadly the range of human hearing. For a lot of acoustics measurements, we group the frequencies into frequency bands known as ‘octave bands’ (similar to a piano moving between A to G notes). For sound insulation, we use 1/3 octave bands (pronounced one third octave bands), which means each octave band is made up of 3 measured octave bands. Technically we get a sound insulation test result for each of the 16 octave bands (1/3 octave bands) but that’s difficult to report and use for compliance, so we use the BS EN ISO 717 rating curve method to convert the 1/3 octave bands into a single frequency which makes it much easier for compliance purposes. This does mean however that a partition will have good and bad parts. A wall may still meet its minimum requirements with very good high frequency performance and poor low frequency performance, meaning noise may still pass through the wall at low frequencies and it still be considered acceptable.