Written by: AcousticAdmin
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 

The Problem:

Two adjacent meeting rooms within this london stock brokers’ office suffer from the problems of poor sound proofing and hence, poor speech privacy. The aim was not to create ‘sound proof’ areas but rather rooms where meetings could be held with less disruption and greater privacy than was the case.The partition separating the two rooms continued only to the underside of the ceiling and was formed from non-perforated metal ceiling tiles. There was therefore a shared ceiling void over both rooms, allowing sound transmission through it. In addition there was very little absorption present in each room resulting in a higher than ideal reverberation time.

The Solution:

Reverberation Control:A combination of absorption and blocking products were used in order to solve this problem. Acoustic wall art and acoustic blinds were added to the rooms in order to reduce reverberation (shown below).





Figure 1 - Acoustic Wall Art to assist in soundproofing


Figure 2 - Acoustic Blinds to assist in soundproofing

Sound Insulation:

This part of the solution was to decrease sound transmission (increase ‘sound proofing’) between rooms. A plenum barrier was inserted above the separating partition within the ceiling void.

Figure 3 - Acoustic Ceiling Void Barrier 

Client Feedback:

The soundproofing installation has definitely made a difference but has not totally blocked out the noise (which we knew would be the case).  
We have 2 rooms back to back and before you could hear everything that was being said in each meeting, now it is slight murmurs.