Highland AG Services in Mulberry FL recently completed a large office renovation for their corporate headquarters. The 2-story office building consisted of polished concrete floors with gypsum walls that did not quite reach the corrugated metal deck. As a result the company had acoustic reverberation in the open areas as well as sound transmission between offices. They contacted Commercial Acoustics to help with their soundproofing needs in 3 different areas of the office building.
See Also: How to Soundproof a Noisy Office
Acoustic Scope of Work
- Acoustic treatment in 2 Conference rooms
- Reducing sound transmission between adjacent offices where walls did not go to deck
- Acoustic treatment in podcast studio
Conference Room Acoustics
Commercial Acoustics performed an acoustic site assessment in the conference rooms where reverb time was measured to be just under 2.4 seconds. This area required the installation of sound absorbing panels to bring that reverb time down. It’s important to be closer to a reverb time of 0.6 in conference rooms, especially if they’re being used for teleconferences.
Noise Transfer Between Adjacent Offices
When dealing with walls that don’t go to deck, you do have options based on ease of installation and what you’re willing to spend. You could take the walls to deck or use MLV to close up the gap. Because the cost of taking the gypsum board to the deck was prohibitive, the Commercial Acoustics team installed a reinforced MLV solution along the ceiling to minimize flanking above the partition.
After treating the 2 main conference rooms and soundproofing the open areas along the ceiling, Highland AG requested additional acoustic treatment for their new podcast and media room. As with many other companies Highland AG has found that podcasts have become an effective approach to growing their brand and reaching new audiences.
However, since this room had unique acoustic requirements due to the high end audio recording quality that they expect, additional acoustic panels and clouds were required to meet the target reverb time.
Acoustic Treatment and Soundproofing for Professional Podcast Studios
There are two main priorities when designing and building a professional podcast recording studio:
- Acoustic Treatment
- Use of absorptive materials such as sound absorbing acoustic panels to reduce echo and reverberation. Echo and reverb can come through in podcast recordings, so acoustic treatment is recommended to improve podcast recording quality.
- Soundproofing
- Soundproofing any walls, windows or doors in a podcast recording studio is also important to improve recording quality. If any outside noises come through on the recording, it’s likely that extra editing or extra retakes will be necessary.
The podcast room in particular was retrofitted from a previous warehouse space connected to the primary facility. The exterior CMU and the ceiling height approached 20 feet. While the reverb time was only 1.5 seconds (which would be acceptable for some office spaces) the podcast recording studio required a reverb time of no greater than 0.6 seconds.
The large walls allowed for ample space to mount 4’x4’x2” sound absorbing panels. With the installation of these panels, our team was able to bring down the reverb time to accommodate the professional recording studio.
Office Building Soundproofing – Results
Commercial Acoustics specializes in multiple areas of soundproofing including sound absorption, sound blocking, sound masking and acoustic consulting. With Highland AG, were able to help them with sound absorption in their conference and media rooms as well as sound blocking for flanking between office spaces.
