Are Conference Room Acoustics Sabotaging Your Meetings?

Do you suffer problems with call clarity in your video conferences?

Do your clients on the other side of the call, think “you sound like you’re talking in a cave”?

Is it tough to concentrate in a meeting, on what your colleagues across the table are saying and does this tire you by the end of the meeting?

Conference rooms often suffer from being too “live” acoustically, caused due to many reflections off the hard surfaces in the room, like the walls, windows, furniture, etc, causing reverberation (commonly referred to as “echo”).

This reverberation smudged speech, affecting clarity and intelligibility. This can cause fatigue due to the additional effort the brain must make to stay with the situation.

During a telephonic call or video conference made from such room, during a telephonic or video conference call, the reverberation causes the person on the other end, to strain to decipher what is being said.

Our Approach

How do you tackle Bad Conference Room Acoustics?

A good starting point, is the use of strategically-placed, calibrated, sound-absorbing materials, in quantities calculated as per the room’s shape, size and properties.

Acoustic absorptive panels reduce repetitive reflections of sound off the surfaces, by absorbing some of the energy that they encounter and reducing the strength of the reflection.

This approach while effective, needs to be carefully calculated and implemented, to balance reduction of reflection, with not making the room acoustically dead and therefore uncomfortable.

Plan as early as you can

While the design stage is the ideal time to plan the acoustic treatment, for offices that are already operational, ready-to-install solutions that are quick to install, from companies that have a proven track record, should get you an effective solution, with the least disruption to your schedule.

Soundproofing Vs. Sound Absorption

To completely soundproof your conference room, you’re going to need a combination of soundproofing products and sound absorption products. Soundproofing products contain sound and prevent it from traveling to other areas of a building. Meanwhile sound absorption products absorb the sound that bounces from open areas in your conference room. Sound absorption is what solves your poor acoustics, ambient noise, and that annoying echo.

“Many conference rooms are designed with glass walls, hard ceilings, whiteboards and big-screen televisions on the walls,” points out Steve Johnson, founder of ADI Workplace Acoustics.

“All of these materials reflect sound very effectively, so the sound of speech bounces around from one hard surface to the next. It has nowhere to go but around and around the room.”

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Are Conference Room Acoustics Sabotaging Your Meetings?

Our Approach

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