Below is an excerpt from the Amana® Brand PTAC Sound Report, please click the link at the bottom of the page for the full report.

Amana® Brand PTAC Sound Report

As a manufacturer of PTAC equipment we realize the importance of product acoustics and sound levels to overall customer satisfaction.  As a long standing member of the American Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) it is our practice to utilize U.S. based, accredited third party acoustical laboratories to test our equipment and to validate our test results from our U.S. based engineering, test, and production facilities.  We also believe that back-to-back testing with our and competitive products by these third party testing facilities provide the best, most unbiased product performance comparisons. This report will discuss the various definitions regarding sound, how it is measured and the methods by which we design and test our PTAC equipment to meet industry standards.  We will also show comparative results from third party testing facilities of our Amana® brand and our competitor’s PTAC products.

We design and manufacture our Amana brand PTAC products to meet the Sound Rating System and Industry Standard calling out the applicable test and rating for PTAC equipment. The independent, nationally accredited and certified acoustical laboratory tested both the Amana brand and competitive equipment in accordance to ASTM Standard E90 and calculated with E413 for the Sound Transmission Classification and E1332 for the Outdoor-Indoor Transmission Classification.  The Outdoor/Indoor tests were conducted in accordance with ARI Standards 350 and 270 respectively.  Breul & Kjaer instrumentation were used for acoustical data acquisition during all tests.

Each of these methods was developed for specific applications; not all methods are equally suitable for the rating of HVAC related sound in the variety of applications encountered. Several background sound rating methods are used to rate indoor sound:

 Sound Transmission Class

 Outdoor-Indoor Transmission Class

 A-weighted sound power level (dBA or Bels)

 A-weighted sound pressure level (dBA)

 Noise Criteria (NC)