5 Must-Have Features in a acoustic hanging partitions decorate

Acoustic clouds clustered over conversation spaces ensure sound doesn't fill up the rest of the space at Optiv in Denver, designed by Interior Architects. Photo by James Florio

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Story at a glance:

• Acoustic design starts with understanding the noise reduction coefficient, or the ability of a material to effectively absorb sound.
• Some techniques for managing acoustics include adding materials such as acoustic panels or steel decking.

Implementation of acoustic design principles in architecture can mitigate frustrations caused by external noise pollution and competing internal noises within a space.

Acoustical treatments need to satisfy the needs of the people residing within the space. For example, large, open office spaces with meeting areas may need ceiling panels that absorb sound or private meeting spaces to work without worrying about external noise infiltration.

A basic understanding of acoustic design principles and testing methods will give you the confidence to ensure the environmental goals of your project.

What is Acoustic Design?

In architecture, acoustic design refers to strategies, features, and methodologies used to achieve "good sound" within a building. The definition of "good sound" depends on the room or building’s intended use. Generally, acoustic design strives to control how soundwaves and sound energy reverberate off a building’s interior, maximizing vocal clarity while reducing echoes and excessive sound transmission.

Acoustic design is significantly influenced by the following sound characteristics:

• Reverberation: Reflected sounds from a sound wave created within a space.
• Reverberation time: The time required for sound reflections to decay by 60 dB until they are no longer audible; directly proportional to the room and indirectly proportional to the amount of sound-absorbing materials.
• Sound distribution: How sound is propagated throughout a room.
• Sound absorption: The loss of sound energy as a result of the sound coming into contact with an absorbent material.

Acoustic design is integral to creating comfortable, healthy, and productive interior spaces.

10 Acoustic Design Principles to Consider for Your Next Project

While there is no one-size-fits-all acoustic strategy for every building project, several acoustic design principles are universal and can be applied in most spaces.

1. Understanding the Noise Reduction Coefficient Rating

One of the most important measurements in acoustic design is the Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC), which measures a material’s ability to reflect or absorb sound. The NRC rating, ranging from 0.00 to 1.00, indicates the level of sound absorption, with 0.00 reflecting sound and 1.00 absorbing sound. Thicker elements with 3D properties can achieve values higher than 1.00 due to additional surface area.

Consulting an acoustician or requesting third-party testing can help if you're unsure how to interpret NRC ratings or if the provided information seems insufficient.

2. Sound Insulation & Acoustic Infill

Insulation is essential for both thermal and acoustic regulation. Soundproofing insulation reduces heat and noise transmission through walls, floors, and ceilings. Dense and closed-cell materials are preferable for noise insulation in closed spaces, whereas lighter materials are effective for noise absorption.

Products like National Gypsum’s SoundBreak family can stop noise from bleeding through to other rooms without prior demolition. Consider acoustic hanging partitions decorate for sound insulation in office spaces or commercial buildings.

3. Sound Absorbing Panels, Partitions, and Baffles

When sound insulation isn’t enough or it's too costly, installing acoustic sound absorption panels can mitigate refraction, echoing, and reverberations. Acoustic panels, made from materials like fiberglass or acoustic foam, reduce unwanted sound reflections.

Acoustic screens or partitions are beneficial in reducing noise before it reaches a room’s walls or ceiling. Acoustic baffles, which hang from the ceiling, absorb sound on all sides, making them more effective than panels.

4. Acoustic Diffusers

Diffusion—spreading sound evenly throughout an environment—is crucial in acoustic architecture. Diffusers control echoes by radiating sound energy in various directions instead of reflecting it back, maintaining a live sounding space.

5. Acoustic Zoning

Acoustic zoning addresses diverse acoustic needs for work, learning, or living environments. Techniques include using sound-absorbing materials, air gap technologies, best practice wall construction, and laminated/insulated glass solutions.

6. Flexible Design & Privacy

In open office areas, tasks requiring privacy can become challenging. Flexible designs, such as SnapCab's acoustically controlled workspaces, provide areas for confidential phone calls or small team meetings.

7. Sealing with Acoustic Caulk

Acoustic caulk, a latex-based product that remains rubbery and flexible, is essential for sealing gaps and preventing sound transmission through improperly sealed windows and openings.

8. Acoustical Steel Decking

Acoustical steel decking, featuring perforated holes, supports the insulating membrane of roofs and floors, reducing noise transmission in construction.

9. Isolated Ceilings & Acoustic Clouds

Isolated ceilings, using a steel grid system and acoustic tiles, help reduce noise by blocking or absorbing sound energy. Acoustic clouds serve similarly but are installed in specific areas requiring additional sound control.

10. Sound Attenuators

Sound attenuators, installed in HVAC systems, reduce mechanical noise transmission. These devices, consisting of baffles, insulation, and protective shells, are effective in minimizing low-frequency noises.

Acoustic Design Examples

Innovative companies continually develop new methods for controlling and reducing noise in interior spaces. Here are a few notable examples:

Arktura

Arktura, headquartered in Los Angeles, designs architectural systems and custom solutions, including wall and ceiling panels, partitions, baffles, and ceiling clouds. Their Soft Sound® material reduces reverberations, improving work environments and listening experiences.

Primacoustic

Primacoustic manufactures acoustic products like wall and ceiling panels, made from high-density glass wool or recycled PET plastic. Their TelaScapes Fabric Track System offers large surface coverage with seamless acoustics, enhancing sound absorption.

Autex Acoustics

Autex Acoustics, originally a textiles company, produces modern acoustic products, including the Frontier line of ceiling and wall baffle systems. Their products target speech frequencies, making them ideal for classrooms and schools.

ASC Steel Deck

ASC Steel Deck's Acustadek® products provide effective sound dampening, meeting high Noise Reduction Coefficient thresholds. Their sound absorption data documentation supports acoustic performance in various settings.

For more polyester fiber acoustic panels information, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

Rafael Picó contributed to this article.

If your school, performing arts center, museum, concert hall, or event venue has an auditorium, you’re probably more concerned with acoustics than most people—and rightfully so. In an auditorium, acoustics are extremely important.

Even if you recognize the importance of acoustics, that doesn’t mean you know how to achieve them in an auditorium. Auditorium acoustics can be complicated to understand, but we can break them down into seven main factors that influence the sounds in this type of space.

The Importance of Acoustics in an Auditorium

An auditorium is an important gathering place for everything from routine announcements to special performances. What all these occasions have in common is that you want the students or attendees to hear what’s coming from the stage clearly. You don’t want that important lecture on bullying or that vocal solo a student has practiced to sound unclear or too quiet.

You can pay attention to other aspects of your auditorium, like the quality of the seats, decor, and lighting, which are all important. However, you should never neglect one of the most critical aspects of your auditorium: the sound. Whether you’re building a new auditorium or renovating an existing one, acoustics should be a central focus in your design. Even if you’re not taking on a full-scale renovation, you can still make improvements with acoustic treatments for your auditorium.

Effective auditorium design should address the following goals:

• Speech, vocal performances, and music should all sound clear rather than distorted or echoey.
• Sounds should be loud enough for the audience to hear, including those sitting at the very back of the auditorium.
• The right sounds should be isolated, meaning performances and speeches ring clearly over other sounds from the room.

As we’ll see, there are many factors that affect your auditorium’s acoustics. Acoustics can be complex, but when you find the right design, you’ll enjoy better quality lectures and performances for your students and guests. The investment in improving your auditorium’s acoustics is well worth it.

Factors That Affect Auditorium Acoustics

There are several aspects of an auditorium that impact the acoustics you experience in the space. All these factors combine to create a unique acoustic landscape for every auditorium. You can draw on an understanding of these factors to account for acoustics during the design and building stage, or you can address problems in an existing auditorium and use acoustic treatments to remedy them.

1. Size of the Auditorium

In any room, size has an important influence on acoustics. Size includes the length, width, and height of the room. Larger and smaller auditoriums come with their own acoustical advantages.

For instance, a small room generally won’t allow music to ring out as richly as it will in a large room. When it comes to volume, you’ll have an easier time getting the whole audience to hear clearly in a small room, while a larger auditorium can pose some volume challenges. This is why you need the other aspects of a large room to contribute to good acoustics and why you need a quality sound system.

Another concern related to auditorium size is reverberation, which we’ll discuss more below. Larger rooms can cause longer reverberation times, which can become excessive. Smaller rooms can cause shorter reverberation times that may seem too short, making the room feel acoustically “dead.”

2. Shape of the Room

Like size, the shape of your auditorium will play an important role in determining the acoustics. This is why it’s feasible to have a computer program that can reconstruct a room’s geometry based solely on the input of one sound emission. Auditoriums come in many different shapes, though you won’t see some shapes as often because they’ve proven to be poor for acoustics.

Generally, you want to avoid square rooms or narrow, rectangular rooms since the parallel walls can cause sound waves to bounce back and forth continuously—creating undesirable reverberations that muddy the overall sound clarity. This is why many auditoriums have more of a fan shape. Some auditoriums also feature curved walls, which help diffuse sound. In addition to the general shape of a room, other architectural features like the ceiling pitch and structures in the room will affect the way sound waves behave in the space.

Some architects specialize in building spaces with the right shape to achieve the appropriate acoustics for performances or lectures. If your auditorium is already built, you may not be able to alter the shape, but you can find other ways to improve your acoustics.

3. Materials in the Room

A common problem in auditoriums is reverberation, which occurs when sound waves bounce off surfaces and congregate. If you’ve ever attended a lecture where the speaker’s voice echoed and made it difficult to understand what they were saying, you’ve experienced the issue of excessive reverberation. Some level of reverberation is a good thing, especially when it comes to musical performances, since otherwise, the room will feel acoustically dead.

In a general-purpose auditorium where you want speech to sound clear and music to sound rich and full, the ideal reverberation time—the time it takes a sound to die away—is around 1.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.

For most auditoriums, the reverberation time will be too long unless there are sound-absorbing materials throughout the room. This includes acoustic panels, upholstered chairs, curtains, and other soft, porous surfaces. If your auditorium is full of surfaces that are hard and non-porous, like windows or wood floors, these materials will reflect sound waves and contribute to higher levels of reverberation.

4. Balconies and Orchestra Pits

If your auditorium includes an orchestra pit and any balconies, these features can affect the acoustics in the room. Balconies can be a helpful way to include more seating in a room without lengthening the room to the point where attendees in the back have trouble hearing. The shape and size of a balcony and the materials it includes all affect the way sound waves behave in the room.

Orchestra pits also affect the structure and acoustics of an auditorium. Installing soundproof curtains around an orchestra pit can help a conductor control the sound levels that emerge from the pit.

The inside of an orchestra pit also has acoustics to consider. You want musicians in the pit to be able to hear themselves and hear others clearly. In surveys regarding opera halls, most of the issues people cited with orchestra pits had to do with acoustics.

5. Auditorium Use

Many auditoriums, especially those in schools and universities, are used for various purposes. This presents a challenge acoustically since the ideal acoustics for speech are not the same as the ideal acoustics for music. This is because speech should have a shorter reverberation time than music. You can continue to make distinctions beyond speech and music. For example, the ideal acoustics for a cappella choral music are not the same as the ideal acoustics for rock music.

If your auditorium is primarily used for a certain type of event or performance, you should factor this into your acoustic design. If you want to create a space that offers good acoustics for a range of uses, an acoustic engineer can help you achieve that.

6. Doors and Buffer Zones

It’s also important to consider the spaces outside an auditorium and how they can affect acoustics within the auditorium. If there are other activities, conversations, or footsteps outside that are audible inside the auditorium, this will interfere with the sounds you want the students or audience to hear.

Doors can be a point where outside noises are let in. Solid-core doors with higher sound transmission control (STC) ratings will do a much better job of blocking outside noises than hollow-core doors with lower STC ratings.

Some auditoriums use buffer zones to help prevent noise from getting into the auditorium. These are areas that lie between your auditorium and other rooms used for different purposes, such as classrooms, restrooms, or dressing rooms. These areas, which can take the form of hallways or foyers, provide a blanket of space around your auditorium that should be relatively free of noise and activity during a performance.

7. Background Noises

Even if you have soundproof doors and buffer zones to keep out noise from the outside, that doesn’t mean the auditorium will sound completely silent when empty. All rooms have ongoing noises from HVAC equipment and even plumbing pipes running in the background. In most situations, we hear these as white noise, and it’s not much of a bother. These sorts of background noises may not pose a problem in an auditorium if they are very quiet. However, if the air conditioning comes on and is noisy, it will interfere with the quality of a performance on your stage and may make it harder to understand a speaker.

Fortunately, there are solutions you can employ to eliminate these problems. Duct liners and mufflers can help absorb sound from your HVAC system so it doesn’t bleed into your auditorium. You can also choose HVAC systems that are quieter than others. With the right design, you won’t have to sacrifice comfort, and you also won’t have to sacrifice sound quality in your auditorium.

How to Improve Auditorium Acoustics

If you’re dealing with an existing auditorium that has some acoustical shortcomings, you can improve the situation through acoustic treatments. Acoustic treatments for auditoriums are products you can install to address acoustic problems and improve the sound in your facility without the need to renovate your space.

1. Custom Acoustics Analysis

There are many possible solutions out there, so it’s best to have acoustics professionals, such as our team at Illuminated Integrations, conduct a custom analysis of your auditorium. This way, they can accurately diagnose the challenges that are having a negative effect on your auditorium’s acoustics.