Issues with echo in your room?
Sound Absorption
Echo in a room can make it harder to understand what people are saying. This is because you can hear the echo from the first word spoken, whilst trying to listen to the 2nd and third words. This is also an issue for the speaker as they can hear their own voice coming back; the automatic thing a person does in response to this is to speak louder to talk over their own echo. This amplifies the issue (literally!), and you start fighting a losing battle. The answer is to improve the sound quality within the room with sound absorption materials so your speech can be crisp even at the back of the room.
Office Sound Absorption
It is crucial to have a good level of sound absorption within your office to achieve clear communication. If your customers can not clearly hear the information, then they can leave feeling confused with a loss of confidence in your product or service. This can be the same issue when speaking with suppliers or key clients in meetings. If you have a meeting room with echo issues, the room can struggle to hear what is being presented, whether it is a room full of people or a conference call. Office sound absorption can come in a range of colours, sizes and designs to fit your needs. We will evaluate the space, looking at the most reflective surfaces and providing solutions to mitigate the echo in the office.
Open Plan Office Absorption
The best ways to add absorption within an open-plan office are usually the sound absorption screens. These can come in a wide range of designs that will allow you to see across the room but still disrupt the sound from travelling freely around the room.
As these acoustic screens can be hung within a space, the sound can be absorbed from multiple angles, making them the most efficient absorption screens for open-plan offices. These can be hung above and/or between desks so staff can still talk with one another whilst reducing the sound bouncing around the room.
Commonly in open-plan offices, the echo becomes more of an issue due to the room size and the number of reflective surfaces. Desks, screens and large windows are all very hard, sound-reflective materials which allow the sound to bounce around and cause sound reverberation issues. Our office absorption materials are designed to maximise absorption without losing the open-plan feel of the room.
Meeting room sound absorption
The best sound absorption for meeting rooms is usually the acoustic baffles. These can be positioned in the centre of the ceiling above a large desk (a large desk will be very reflective and also where most conversations will be held). The acoustic baffles allow the light through whilst absorbing sound from within the meeting room.
Suppose you think of sound as a bit like a bouncy ball. Hard/reflective surfaces will allow the ball to keep bouncing, whereas soft/absorption surfaces will stop the ball from bouncing around the room. If the absorption is applied directly to a ceiling, then the sound can bounce off the walls high up in the room before hitting the sound absorption panels. If you hang an acoustic baffle in a meeting room then the sound will hit the absorption material sooner, making the sound absorption baffles more efficient.
Using sound absorption panels in a meeting room is also a good idea. They are most effective when the seating positions are close to the walls. This is because they will reduce sound from bouncing off the wall behind the listener so they can hear the people clearly from the end of the room.
Glass walls in meeting rooms are a big issue for sound absorption. You also can’t fix a sound absorption material to glass walls, so the absorption material needs to be hung from the ceiling. This can be an acoustic baffle or an acoustic screen. The acoustic screens are the best way to reduce echo in a glass-walled meeting room as they still let people see the room is occupied but absorb the echo twice each time the sound goes to bounce off the glass walls. This is the same for large office windows causing echo; hanging the acoustic screen 20-50mm in front of the glass allows the sound to be absorbed twice.
Sports hall sound Absorption
Sports halls are large open spaces where all surfaces are usually hard and reflective. This means the space has a bad echo, making communication difficult. This can be an issue when sports teams are looking to communicate or a teacher/ instructor is trying to speak to a room of people who are very spread out.
You will need to use hard-wearing absorption materials for sports halls to withstand impacts from ball games such as football, basketball etc. When improving the reverberation within a sports hall, we will also look to use ‘belt and braces’ fixing methods to make sure the absorption panels are securely fixed
The most popular sound absorption materials for sports halls are Class A absorption panels. These can be wrapped in a wide range of colours to suit the room. They can also come in a range of thicknesses but our 40mm and 50mm panels are Class A absorbers ideal for sports halls.
If you would like an evaluation of the reverberation time within the room, we will need the room dimensions and a few pictures of the room. This is so we can give you an estimated RT60 of the room as it is and show you what it could be with the sound absorption materials installed.
What is an NRC or noise reduction coefficient?
Each material will have what is called an NRC rating which is a noise reduction coefficient. This is the amount of sound the materials will absorb across each 1/3 octave frequency band. Each material will have a different absorption coefficient and will reflect different frequencies more or less. Usually the harder the surface is, the more sound it will reflect. Most soft materials will absorb high-end frequencies, for example, a carpet will help with some of the echoes but it won’t absorb a lot of the base frequencies as it is too thin.
Base frequencies are the hardest to reduce as the wavelength is much longer. You generally need a panel of 40mm or more to reduce these base frequencies efficiently. A general rule is the thicker the panel is, the higher the performance the panel will be at absorbing base frequencies. The density of the panel will also affect the performance. Higher-density absorption materials are generally better at absorbing base frequencies as the fibres are more tightly bound to make it hard for the sound to push its way through.
You use the NRC when calculating the RT60 (reverbaration time) of a room). This is done by taking the room dimensions and applying the NRC of each material to the amount of that material in the room. This gives you a unit of measurement called ‘Sabines’ for each surface for each 1/3 octave frequency band.
What is an RT60?
RT60 is a calculation that gives you the reverbaration time within a room through 1/3 octave frequency bands. It is the amount of time taken for a sound to reduce in volume by 60dB. The test is done by playing pink noise at 110 dB. The sound is then shut off and the echo time is measured to give you your room RT60.
As mentioned above, you can also estimate a room’s RT60 by taking the room volume and applying the surface area of each material to calculate the number of Sabines in each area. Once you have accounted for all the walls, floor, ceiling and any other furniture, windows etc within a room it will give you the RT60 of the room.
You can then add sound absorption products into the space to show you how much the RT60 would be improved. We can display the improvement in a graph to help you decide what materials are best for you.
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