Improving Room Sound

I recently worked with a customer who built a new hall that looked beautiful. The walls included arched windows, the ceiling was textured and the floor was a gorgeous wood vinyl. Unfortunately the sound in the hall was so reverberant it was very difficult to enjoy being at a party in the hall. Having a conversation and being able to understand what people were saying was very difficult.

After reviewing the room challenges with the customer, I suggested treating the floor with carpet. Due to the benefit of easier cleanup of the vinyl floor after an event, it became apparent that carpet was not desired, not even area rugs to provide some absorption of the sound.

After measuring the reverb time of the room, I confirmed that the time was very high for a hall requiring good speech intelligibility. But the amount of absorption needed to reduce the reverb time to a much lower level was very significant, would not look good and would be very expensive.

One option was to use the area and absorption of both sides of a panel. This was not practical for the walls but would work well for the ceiling panels.

With panels mounted on the walls and ceiling panels hung about 4” from the ceiling as shown in the pictures, the estimated absorption could be doubled and the resulting total reverb time was achieved.

During the installation the customer commented on the acoustics of the room changing even before all the panels were in place. A couple of days after the install was completed the real test was a party in the hall with people who previously complained about the usefulness of the room.

The feedback after the party was very positive and the customer called thanking me for ….“Making the room useful again!”

Using value-added acoustic engineering analysis and a creative solution, achieved the expected result and a happy customer with a useful, enjoyable room.