It seems like a tapping machine on a carpeted floor would make essentially no noise at frequencies above about 100Hz, whereas it would make a lot of noise on a manufactured hardwood floor. Even when the hardwood floor is under-layer with a couple of inches of sound absorbent material covered with two layers of wonderboard, I would assume that tapping machines and footfalls would transmit much more midrange-frequency sound to to the living space below. Some acoustics engineers claim that tapping-machine measurements of the amount of transmitted sound with carpets (with under-payments) and manufactured wood (with acoustical insulation) are within a couple of dB. This seems unlikely to me, so I wonder whether tapping machines really generate sounds with a similar spectrum as footfalls, furniture scraping etc.

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