Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

A new book on acoustics was just released – spaces speak, are you listening? Its authors are Barry Blesser (former Professor at MIT and a founder of digital audio) and Linda-Ruth Salter (independent scholar). The authors are bringing together humanistic, technical and aesthetic considerations of aural architecture with an interdisciplinary approach. Areas touch upon are architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering and so on. You can read about and purchased the book here.

Posted by Carsten Svensson at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week Inter-Noise 2006 took place in Honolulu and the week before American society of acoustics, ASA, had a big event together with the Japanese acoustical association, JAS, at the same place. As usual some standardization committees convined during the conferences.
Nils-Åke Andersson at Ecophon was invited to participate with a paper in the field of classroom acoustics and an abstract written together with Erling Nilsson and Carsten Svensson was sent and accepted. Download file
Unfortunately none of the authers were able to participate. The Inter-Noise conference was sponsered by Saint-Gobain Isover group including Ecophon and an exhibition booth were on place.

Posted by Nils-Åke Andersson at 10:44 AM | Permalink

In December 2006 the Danish National Institute for Occupational Health published the result of a large study of the working environment in Danish workplaces. More than 9.000 people participated in the research (NAK) and it was discovered that noise and poor acoustics is perceived as a serious problem. This is one of the reasons why the Danish government has just chosen “Noise from human activities” as a focus area for upcoming research.
This action also supports the increasing awareness of noise problems in Danish workplaces during the last 5 years – both from the media and in different research projects. One of the interesting research projects comes from Thomas Witterseh, Danish Institute of Technology”. His ph.d. report “The effects of moderate heat stress and open-plan office noise distraction on SBS symptom intensity and the performance of office work", examines amongst other issues the relationship between noise distraction and performance in open plan offices. Learn more from this report

Posted by Björn Berthelsen at 4:10 PM | Permalink

A study on acoustic ergonomics of schools was recently published by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Dortmund/Berlin/Dresden) in Germany. It covers room acoustics of schools, teaching styles, teachers’ health and pupil behaviour. Results show that room acoustic improvements leads to better working conditions, sound pressure levels decreases, pupils’ social behaviour becomes calmer, teachers experience a lower load and noise/sound level sensitivity.

The study was conducted by Dr. Markus Oberdörster and Dr. Gerhart Tiesler, under the umbrella of the Institute for interdisciplinary school research of the University of Bremen. Its original name is “Akustische Ergonomie der Schule” and an English translation (2006) is now available.

This study can be purchased at (www.baua.de) (direct link: http://www.baua.de/nn_8514/de/Publikationen/Forschungsberichte/2006/Fb1071e.html__nnn=true) or a condensed version can be downloaded as a pdf here (Download file">Modern School Acoustics - English)

For information contact: carsten.svensson@ecophon.se

Posted by Carsten Svensson at 3:50 PM | Permalink

In a recent Swedish study, Christina Danielsson from KTH, examines how different office layouts affect health & job satisfaction. 491 office employees from twenty-six companies participated in the study. The socalled "flexi-offices" and cellular offices got the most positive ratings from the employees. The large & medium sized open offices were caracterised as the "worst" office types - mainly because of poor supporting facilities like meeting & silent rooms where the employees can seek privacy and room for concentration.
Read the full report here

Posted by Björn Berthelsen at 3:37 PM | Permalink