What is the right absorption for small meeting rooms and teleconferencing?

The best soundproofing to stop echo and make phone calls, speech and telemeetings sound clear and easy to understand

andrew steel3 September 2021

How to get great sound when working from home (or in any small office)

When working from home,

THESE ARE THE KEY ELEMENTS TO MAKING YOUR PHONE CALLS, ONLINE CALLS AND ONLINE MEETINGS SOUND GOOD….

andrew steel12 August 2021

Optimal use of absorption in a room

It seems to be common to cover walls, or large parts of them, in relatively thin absorption (9 to 15mm thick). This may be because it is heavily advertised, seems to be lower cost or because it means less paintwork needs to be done. More than likely though, it is done out of ignorance. The thought that more is better is a fallacy.

Doctors Now Prescribing Music Therapy for Heart Ailments, Brain Dysfunction, Learning Disabilities, Depression, PTSD, Alzheimers, Childhood Development and More

Music has proven time and again to be an important component of human culture. From its ceremonial origin to modern medical usage for personal motivation, concentration, and shifting mood, music is a powerful balm for the human soul. Though traditional “music therapy” encompasses a specific set of practices, the broader use of music as a therapeutic tool can be seen nowadays as doctors are found recommending music for a wide variety of conditions.

andrew steel21 November 2019

Is art good for your health?

andrew steel21 November 2019

Phone app fails badly at restaurant acoustics

Even a quick look at the amount of absorption placed on this ceiling would ring alarm bells - it’s not magic and that quantity isn’t even close.

andrew steel18 November 2019restaurantacoustics, noisyrestaurant, restaurant noise

Noise control for events and venues

Usually, a noise limit is set, and if you go above it, penalties apply.

andrew steel29 October 2019eventnoise, venuenoise, noisecomplaint, noisemanagement, noisecontrol, noiselimit, noiselimiter

NC and NR curves are at best not relevant and at worst disastrous in recording studios

NC and NR curves are at best not relevant and at worst disastrous in recording studios. MICROPHONES and they DO NOT hear like humans. Their sensitivity is essentially flat. Rooms designed with increasing noise at low frequency DO NOT work because the microphone will record this and the recording chain will amplify it. This generally causes monitors to have excessive excursion at low frequency and causes modulation artifacts in the audible range.

andrew steel25 October 2019Comment

Why do we use RT60 as a single figure to represent the acoustic quality of specialised rooms

RT60 is a single figure that may be OK to describe the required performance of an office or a worshop, but it is not sufficient to describe the acoustic performance of a specialised room. Such rooms include classrooms, multi purpose halls, auditoriums, music teaching rooms etc.

Studio Build

One of the first steps in our studio build is working out how to treat the floor of the office, which is directly above the studio. The floor is yellow tongue and clip down flooring on 90mm steel channel.

The Relationship Between Rise Time and Bandwidth

Here's a good one to read if you want to start thinking about the relationship between bandwidth and rise time, and then think about room modes, overlap, and it's effect on transient response in a room. It's a rabbit hole though.....

andrew steel18 October 2019

Video studio comes up superbly

This corporate video studio is used for internal communication video recording. The organisation had no real knowledge of how the room should perform acoustically, and trusted us to design it based on our experience.

andrew steel16 October 2019#soundproofing, video recording, video edit, acoustic panel, quiet air conditioning, recording studioComment

Creative use of Basotect and fabric in the Sydney Opera House

Basotect is very easy to cut so it is ideal for making shapes like these “D” profiles. They are covered in fabric, fixed to a backing and used in arrays to create and interesting look as well as good acoustics.

andrew steel8 October 2019soundproofing, acoustic panel, acpoustic foam, Noise reduction, Decorative acoustics

School ensembles, church bands, big orchestras and live music venues - how do you stay within safe sound level limits?

Monitor noise levels and have prediction software alert you to turn it down BEFORE safe limits are exceeded

andrew steel30 September 2019

Fun shapes for soundproofing acoustic foam

If you want to be creative and make interesting soundproofing acoustic foam panels Basotect from BASF is the ideal product.

andrew steel30 September 2019Basotect, Acoustic foam, Soundproofing, Acoustic Cloud, Classroom noise Comment

New Studio Build

Using 10EaZy noise management system to log noise over 5 days so that we can develop a target transmission loss for the studio construction.

andrew steel18 September 2019studio build, noise logging, 10EaZy, Soundproofing

Soundproofing a Floor (usually for those underneath)

You could spend a lot of money and time trying to reduce the sound that gets through your floor, so be aware of the pitfalls and as always, get the person who is going to do the work to give you a measurable performance change so that if it doesn’t work, you don’t have to pay e.g. if you pay me to do this it will make a 10dB difference to the sound you hear from above (or below).