Soundproofing can improve the acoustics of your premises but perhaps that is not what you need.
When renovating or constructing a building, it is essential to understand the building’s issues in order to identify the preventive or corrective measures that should be implemented.
We are often consulted about possible improvements in the acoustics of spaces: A project manager or their client has detected acoustic problems and needs to solve them. In these cases it is very common to start talking about soundproofing when what is in fact needed is acoustic conditioning. There is awareness of a problem but is is not well defined, so it could happen that the chosen solution is the wrong one.
Soundproofing aims to prevent sound from entering or leaving the room and can be achieved by installing sound-absorbent wood panels in combination with other insulating materials. But sometimes, the problem is the echo within the room, which hampers the intelligibility of conversations or speeches of the people who are inside. This effect does not improve by soundproofing the space. What is required is acoustic conditioning.
Acoustic conditioning allows you to control the echo in question, which is in fact reverberation, which can be defined as the permanence of sound beyond the time required to properly hear and understand a message. Explained in a more technical manner, “reverberation time” is the time it takes for the sound to decay by 60 dB as received stood the sound emission source stops
The acoustic conditioning of a room can be carried out by installing sound-absorbent wood acoustic panels that would limit the reverberation time and therefore improve interior acoustics.
If you want to know more about soundproofing and acoustic conditioning do not miss our special section for acoustics and construction professionals.
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– The acoustic conditioning of the Qatar Development Bank – QDB