Random errors revisited

It is well known that the random errors of sound intensity estimates can be much larger than the theoretical minimum value determined by the BT-product, in particular under reverberant conditions and when there are several sources present. More than ten years ago it was shown that one can predict the random errors of estimates of the sound intensity in, say, one-third octave bands from the power and cross power spectra of the signals from an intensity probe determined with a dual channel FFT analyser. This is not very practical, though. In this paper it is demonstrated that one can predict the random errors from the power and cross power spectra determined with the same spectral resolution as the sound intensity itself.