During the acoustic design of a conference room, it is therefore essential to pay great attention to the choice of finish materials, which have to be appropriate to the room intended use, in order to ensure low reverberation times. An effective solution is undoubtedly the installation of sound-absorbing panels that will help to lower reverberation times and improve the whole acoustics. By planning a targeted distribution of sound-absorbing material in the environment, it is in fact possible to guarantee a listening homogeneity into the whole room.

Caruso Acoustic offers a wide range of acoustic panels for conference and meeting rooms, which can easily adapt to any space and furniture.

Silente panels are a versatile solution for meeting rooms, theatres, recreational areas and much more. They can be fixed to the walls or to the ceiling, even in the hanging version, and allow to create various configurations by either playing on the different heights of the panels or on their alignments. This product offers a great freedom of choice in composition, fabric colours, but also aesthetic and technical customisation: Silente is available in two different sound-absorbing materials (Basotect® by Basf® or Whisper® by Stratocel®). Moreover, it can be fitted with LED lighting systems to guarantee the correct light output and with customised prints applied directly onto the fabric with resistant to washing, non-toxic water-based inks.

L'articolo Sixth Lesson of Acoustics: Acoustic Correction of Conference/Meeting Room proviene da Caruso Acoustic.

Link between acoustic performance and reverberation time

How does the performance change in lecture halls where the suitable acoustic comfort is not ensured?

Studies show how the margins of error of the students may be subjected to fluctuations even higher than 15% in an environment where the reverberation time causes a noise level of more than 60 dB. Below 55 dB the percentage drastically drops to 4,3%.
Sound clarity is closely linked to the “trail of sound” duration in a room, conventionally measured with the “reverberation time”. In the case of educational spaces, the reverberation should be balanced so as to strengthen the direct sound. An excessive reverberation together with a high background noise reduce the intelligibility of speech.

The optimal value of reverberation time in a listening environment thus represents the right compromise between the reaching of a sound level sufficient to hear effortlessly and the absence of masking effects among the syllables of the message.

In this sense, the acoustic design of teaching rooms aims at the best comprehension of the spoken message. The interventions for the acoustic correction should envisage the use of different materials in order to allow the absorption of the relevant frequency range. A targeted distribution of the acoustic absorption in the place should also be planned to guarantee the same listening homogeneity into the whole room.
School is a very important application field where different acoustic parameters come into play and should be taken into account as they may significantly affect the quality of teaching. Speech intelligibility is thus a fundamental and essential requirement.

L'articolo Fifth lesson of acoustics: Acoustic treatment in classrooms and lecture halls proviene da Caruso Acoustic.

The stay in noisy environments causes mental fatigue for normal office tasks, where concentration may be disturbed by device or speech background noises. The result is a reduction of the working capacity with a higher risk of error, which in some cases may have a negative effect on productivity, with non-quantifiable costs for the company.

When designing buildings the reverberation time can be calculated scientifically with a good approximation; in this calculation, the activity and volume of the room should be taken into account as both significantly affect the result.

The material choice to reach the right acoustic comfort should be aimed at achieving the optimal reverberation time considering the intended use of the room. This is the reason why Caruso Acoustic sound-absorbing panels are available in two material typologies: Basotect® by Basf® and Whisper® by Stratocel® melamine resin. This latter is particularly suitable for high-humidity environments such as swimming pools, changing rooms and canteens.

The correct installation of Caruso Acoustic sound-absorbing panels, by diversifying and distributing the sound-absorbing material uniformly, leads to a reduction of reverberation and the absorption of unwanted reflected sound waves as well as background noises.

L'articolo Fourth lesson of acoustic: Acoustic comfort proviene da Caruso Acoustic.

The absorption coefficients of a material are determined in a reverberation room in accordance with EN ISO 354. This value can be used to specify the project requirements in the acoustic design of a room.

Caruso Acoustic sound-absorbing panels exploit the principle of acoustic absorption in porous media, based on the viscosity of the sound-absorbing material. Thanks to the internal structure in Basotect® by Basf® or Stratocell ®Whisper® melamine resin, the acoustic energy dissipation occurs through the conversion of the acoustic wave into heat due to the friction of micro-cavities, which characterise these fibrous and porous materials.

A correct room design should necessarily focus the attention on finishing materials, which shall ensure an adequate acoustic absorption with regard to the intended use of the space. If it is not possible to renounce to materials without any sound-absorbing capacity, Caruso Acoustic sound-absorbing panels are the ideal solution also for corrective actions after the design phase and are therefore suitable for correcting any acoustic problems to ensure acoustically comfortable spaces.

L'articolo Third Lesson of Acoustic: Acoustic absorption proviene da Caruso Acoustic.

Let’s now define the concept of reverberation time. Given an enclosed environment with acoustic saturation conditions (by activating a sound source for an opportune time interval), time reverberation, concerning a specific frequency, is defined as the necessary time, after the switching off of the sound source, in order that the sound pressure level related to that frequency will be reduced of 60 dB compared to the level detected in the environment when the sound source was in operation.

Every environment has an optimal reverberation time according to its intended use. During the design phase of a new room or the requalification of existing venues, an in-depth phono-metric analysis is carried out to determine with precision the reverberation time, so as to develop suitable solutions to guarantee an appropriate acoustic absorption.

L'articolo Second Lesson of Acoustics: the Reverberation Time proviene da Caruso Acoustic.

In this first lesson we will address the first key concept related to the topic of acoustics: the sound wave.

The sound wave

In physics, the sound is defined as an oscillation (movement in space) done by the particles (atoms and molecules) in a given medium. This simple oscillatory motion propagates mechanically, originating a sound wave (or acoustic wave). The sound source can be any device, appliance, etc., that causes pressure variations, and the portion of space concerned by these variations is called sound field.

The propagation of sound occurs spherically, i.e. in all directions, and the speed of propagation depends on the nature of the elastic medium on which it diffuses.

In the acoustic design of a room you must take into account certain factors related to the sound wave such as magnitude, intensity, speed of propagation, and wavelength. When a sound wave comes into contact with the surface of an object, it can be reflected totally, partially, or not be reflected at all; it depends on the wavelength.

In the following illustrations, we see that if the size of the object placed in front of the sound source is greater than three times the wavelength, there will be total reflection; if the object is of equal size, there will be 50% reflection and 50% diffraction; if the object instead is smaller than 1/3 of the wavelength, there will be no reflection.

In the next lesson, we will study the concept of acoustic reverberation time and how it is measured during phonometric analyses. Architectural acoustics is the science that studies the behaviour of sound within a building. The design of a conference room, a hall, a theatre, etc., requires the analysis of all parameters related to sound and its propagation in the air.

L'articolo First Lesson of Acoustics: the Sound Wave proviene da Caruso Acoustic.