Office acoustics
How to improve the acoustic quality of a small to medium-sized office.
The ShowTex acoustics department specializes in controlling sound conditions of architectural environments, in the broadest sense. They choose the perfect combination of flame-retardant fabrics, recycled baffles and acoustic panels to offer the ultimate noise-controlling solution for any given venue, however big or small.
The team was called in to enhance the acoustic qualities of a small office space, which primarily consisted of sound-reflecting materials. The combination of concrete, glass and epoxy caused a reverberation time close to 2 seconds, which complicated meetings and made it very difficult to talk on the phone.
Improving the acoustic quality of a small to medium-sized office
Although reverberation is not the only deciding factor when it comes to improving a room’s acoustics, it is a great reference that is fairly easy to measure. ShowTex therefore started off by measuring the reverberation time on various locations within the room and calculated an average time of 1.5 seconds.
FURNITURE PRESENT
- 1 large desk with 4 office chairs
- 1 bookcase covering almost an entire wall
Acoustic ceiling panels
No less than 8 Acoustic Panels were installed against the ceiling of the office, flush with the industrial cable tray to meet the aesthetic demands of the client.
The panels were custom-made from melamine foam and finished with white Molton CS fabric, resulting in a 28% drop in reverberation time!
Printed acoustic wall decoration
But it didn’t stop there. As functionality and aesthetics go hand in hand, ShowTex also provided an impressive print on Universal 250 mounted in a Double PrintFrame.
Perfect office acoustics
Overall, ShowTex reduced the reverberation time in this office with no less than 49.3% and transformed the hollow room into a decent office space that offers the ideal acoustics for organising meetings and making phone calls. Choosing the right acoustic enhancements can thus easily bring back focus, silence and speech intelligibility to any space!
Comparison of all measurements
* The reverberation time (or RT60) describes the time it takes for the sound to decay by 60 dB after the sound source is removed. As this can be difficult to achieve in an everyday environment, it is more common to use the RT30. This is based on the time taken for the sound to decrease by 30 dB, and is then extrapolated to a decay curve of 60 dB.