Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

The Acoustics'08 Conference is now finished!

On behalf of all editors of Acoustic Bulletin we would like to thank all readers, the conference organisers, all those we have met at the Ecophon stand and especially those who we have had interviews with. We trust that your inputs will be of great value to many and we look forward to keep in touch. See you, and we hope you all have a great summer !!

Markku, Paulli, Tobias, Katja, Rainer, Jonas, Katrin, Martin, Per, Tina, Pierre, Colin, Anthony, Mikolaj, Guus, Mariëlle, Carsten, Erling and Marc

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:52 PM | Permalink

This is an interview with PhD Valtteri Hongisto, Senior Research Scientist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Adjunct Professor at Helsinki University of Technology.
He has performed a lot of acoustic research and has been involved in the creation of standards and guidelines, for example the Acoustic Classification of Spaces in buildings SFS 5907. Also he is one of the writers of the coming Finnish Classification on indoor climate.

Valtteri mentioned that the ISO standard 3382-3 will only deal with open-plan office acoustics and not with open plans in general, like in schools, libraries or hospitals. The focus will be on spacial attenuation and speech intelligibility. By doing that we can judge the performance at any distance from the speaker.

Listen to the interview (3,47 minutes).

By Pauli Pallaskorpi, Concept Developer - Education and Markku Hirvonen, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon Finland.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 11:43 PM | Permalink

The use of alarms in hospitals was discussed intensively during the two days session "Healthcare Acoustics & Speech Privacy".

A study presented by S. Okcu, College of Architecture, GaTech, states that a patient in an ICU can be surrounded by up to 33 different alarms from medical equipment. Not only are the alarms disturbing to the patients, they also make the task for the staff to detect and analyse them more demanding.

Ilene Bush-Vishniac
"The alarms are of utmost importance, but do we really need all these alarms?" This is a question asked by Dr. Busch-Vishniac, MacMaster University (formerly from Johns Hopkins University) who was one of the presenters at the conference. And the question is relevant; in nine out of ten times no action is taken when an alarm goes off, except for turning the alarm off.

Alarms are a help to secure patient safety, but can also be a risk to patient safety. The sound level caused by the alarms can make it difficult to the staff to hear patients calling for help or notice abnormal patient bodily sounds.

Another participant at the conference, K. Kondylas, Neva Associates, added her thoughts about alarms in hospitals. She is studying noise in hospitals and has noticed that some medical technical equipment is designed to emit sound just to indicate that the equipment is working. Is it really necessary to add unnecessary noise to an environment that is already filled with disturbing sounds?

A good acoustic environment is important to support the staff in detecting and analysing the alarms and to notice help calls from patients. It is also essential that equipment sound is taken into consideration and that the hospitals try to avoid unnecessary alarms and to use equipment where the sound can be controlled.

To secure patient safety, two critical important aspects are:
- To be able to identify what the sound is. Is it an emergency situation and what action is to be taken?
- To be able to identify where the sound is. What room does the alarm come from and which patient needs help?

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 1:09 PM | Permalink

Interview with John Hinton OBE
President of the Institute of Acoustics

Regarding Euronoise 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland 26-28 October 2009.
www.euronoise2009.org.uk
Email:euronoise2009@ioa.org.uk

By Colin Campbell, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon UK and Ireland

Posted by Marc Janssen at 9:03 PM | Permalink

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:59 PM | Permalink

Noise levels in hospitals are typically more than 15 dB(A) higher than target values given in guidelines (for example target values from WHO and the US Environmental Protection Agency). Furthermore, noise is often one of the top complaints from staff and patients. This is concluded in a review made by Hui Xie and Jian Kang at the University of Sheffield.

The aim of the review was to analyse the influence of noise on patients’ sleep in Intensive Care Units and includes studies made in a number of ICUs.

The overall arousals and awakening from sleep is caused by both people and technical-medical equipment. The review shows that hospitals use a combination of different noise reduction strategies to manage the noise. These strategies can be divided in four groups; Acoustic materials, behavioural modifications, sound masking and earplugs/earmuffs.

By Katrin Bergmark, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon Sweden.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:25 PM | Permalink

Mr Fausto E. Rodriguez Manzo presented a paper about "sonic" character of architecture.

The author stated, that hearing should be understood almost equally to sight, as a sense used to perceive architecture.

Mr.Fausto E. Rodriguez Manzo
Metropolitan University in Mexico City.
E-mail:rfme@correo.azc.uam.mx

By Mikołaj Jarosz, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon Poland.
E-mail:mikolaj.jarosz@saint-gobain.com

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:15 PM | Permalink

Directly after the session on healthcare and acoustics this afternoon we had a little talk with Dr Michael Phiri, one of the presenters.

Dr.Michael Phiri is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

By Marc Janssen, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:28 PM | Permalink

On Tuesday Adrian Popplewell of Arup Acoustics presented a paper entitled "The Future of UK Hospital Design", and here he summarises for Acoustic Bulletin his involvement in the early drafting of HTM 08.01, the new Acoustic Guidance document for Healthcare. He also talks about the Drivers for Change in Healthcare over the coming years.

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Listen to the interview (2,27 minutes).

If you have questions or comments, please contact Anthony Thomas.

E-mail:anthony.thomas@ecophon.co.uk

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:16 PM | Permalink

Dr.Michael Phiri is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

He talks to Acoustic Bulletin about his presentation this afternoon entitled "Eliminating Environmental Stressors: managing hospital noise by design".

He is an advocate of the use of Evidence-Based Design to improve patient outcomes and reduce hospital operating costs.

For info, email:m.phiri@sheffield.ac.uk

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:49 PM | Permalink

Open office acoustics is today probably one of the most active architectural acoustics areas in terms of standardization.
Several standards, both national and international provide us with a powerful set of descriptors.

Interview (1,47 minutes) with Pierre Chigot, Concept Developer - Offices, Ecophon France.

By Tina Frisbæk Jensen, Concept Developer - Offices, Ecophon Denmark.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 9:38 AM | Permalink

I am Tobias Angelbeck, Concept Developer for Acoustics in Health Care Premises, Ecophon Germany. I talked to Dr. Jo Solet – the clinical Instructor at the Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge, MA (USA).

Right now she and her department are doing two researches.
One is a behavioural research project related to patients exposure to noise, with an outcome on measure of medical views.
The other is a virtual hospital in a neuroscience lab, studying how patients respond to specific real stimuli in a hospital environment.

The result was what was expected, that in the less deep sleep stages, particularly stage 2 sleep (in which older patients spend a larger percentage of their time than young people, and who have an arousal susceptibility of about 55 dB), more than half of them are awakened, and that when exposed to a single stimulus.

One could put it like this: "If you start disrupting the sleep, you start disrupting the healing".

These are significant signs that the room acoustic, which directly affects the noise level of health care premises, is more than a “luxury”.

Every decibel counts! Especially for the most vulnerable patients – the oldest, the youngest and those who are hospitalized for longer periods of time. This is proven by many research projects all over the world.

If you want to hear more, just listen to the audio file. Please excuse the poor quality, but these was a quite spontaneous interview with a very fascinating person. If you have any other questions please contact me via e-mail at tobias.angelbeck@ecophon.de

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:50 PM | Permalink

Interview (3,35 minutes)

By Marc Janssen / Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:19 PM | Permalink

Tor Halmrast

Mr Tor Halmrast from Norway had a very interesting lecture about how to measure reverberation time, and how important it is to be a good “cougher”.

Tor works with music and acoustics. When he is on holiday, he often finds interesting rooms what he wants to measure. To measure room acoustic parameters today requires a lot of equipment that you seldom bring with you. That is why Mr Halmrast bought a small Wav-recorder and some balloons.

So when he finds an interesting building, he blows up a balloon, bursts it and records the sound with the Wav-recorder. When he comes home he calculates the RT by analysing the recordings. He has compared this measurement with the modern equipment like WinMLS and found that the old balloon-measurement gives approximately the same result for reverberation time from 250 - 4000 Hz. But you can not use it to calculate Clarity.

A person in the audience said: It is important to burst the balloon from above because if you burst it from the side you will have to much direct sound and that is not good then you measure the reverberation time.

Mr Halmrast said that it was interesting information and added: - Sometimes I cough and use that as the sound source to measure the reverberation time. He ended his presentation with saying: - I am a very good “cougher”.

By Jonas Christensson, Concept Developer - Modern Office, Ecophon Sweden.

Read more about Tore Halmrast

Posted by Marc Janssen at 3:19 PM | Permalink

It's 30 degrees and sunny so we choose to walk instead of taking the metro as we've been indoors allday. We wait to cross the traffic - it's noisy with horns beeping, busy with mopeds screeching by and hot but there is much to enjoy. Cutting through the backstreets we see some lovely buildings, markets and wary of crossing the busy roads even on a green man.

It's become quieter and we are conscious that Paris families are home eating while we walk past the open windows. Closer to the hotel children are out playing and enjoying a splash in the nearby fountains.It's a comfort to be living in a quieter area........

By Colin Campbell, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 2:47 PM | Permalink

An interview (2,44 minutes) with C.J Ostendorf (Senior Projectleader) from Cauberg-Huygen Raadgevende Ingenieurs BV in Maastricht and Jack B. Evans (President) JEA Acoustics in Austin Texas.

By Marc Janssen, Concept Developer - Health Care, Ecophon.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 12:48 PM | Permalink

Professor Kang has been involved in many acoustic research projects with the University of Sheffield, and speaks to Acoustic Bulletin on his recent and current research in Healthcare environments and summarises his presentation entitled "A Systematic Review of the Influence of Noise on Patients Sleep in Intensive Care Units".

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Listen to the interview (3,04 minutes).

Posted by Marc Janssen at 9:20 AM | Permalink

Claus Christensen works with research and development of the room acoustics software, Odeon. Odeon is a tool for room acoustic design and it helps you predicting the acoustic quality of spaces. This modelling software is also an auralisation tool allowing you to listen to how it will sound. Claus sees acoustic conferences as indeed important for meeting potential customers, receiving input from users and to upgrade his own knowledge and follow the latest development.

For more information on Odeon go to www.odeon.dk

By Carsten Svensson, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon.

Posted by Marc Janssen at 8:39 AM | Permalink

The Audio Spotlight is a revolutionary new audio technology developed by dr. Joseph Pompei, that creates sound in a narrow beam, just like light. Aim the flat, thin speaker disc to your desired listening area, and provide all of the sound — with none of the noise. Image the possibilities!

Technology

History

The technique of using a nonlinear interaction of high-frequency waves to generate low-frequency waves was originally pioneered by researchers developing underwater sonar techniques dating back to the 1960's 1. These early acoustics researchers successfully derived the formal mathematical basis for this effect and developed innovative sonar systems with more directivity and bandwidth than would otherwise be available. They called this device a parametric array.

In 1975, the first publication 2 appeared which demonstrated that these nonlinear effects indeed occur in air. While these researchers had not attempted to reproduce audio, they nonetheless proved that such a device may be possible.

Over the next two decades, several large companies, including Matsushita (Panasonic), NC Denon, and Ricoh attempted to develop a loudspeaker based on this principle, and published a paper describing one attempt in 1983 3. While they were successful in producing some sort of sound, problems with cost, feasibility, and extremely high levels of distortion (>50% THD) caused the almost total abandonment of the technology by the end of the 1980's.

While a graduate student developing '3D Audio' at Northwestern University in the late 1990's, Joseph Pompei had similar ideas of using ultrasound as a loudspeaker, largely to overcome deficiencies he saw with traditional methods of sound reproduction. After performing extensive research on the idea, he discovered the large body of knowledge in the field of nonlinear acoustics, as well as the earlier attempts at using ultrasound as an audible source. Soon after arriving at MIT, his insight led him to identify – and subsequently rectify – the barriers which had plagued the earlier researchers.Through a combination of careful mathematical analysis and solid engineering, he was able to construct the very first, and still only, practical, high-performance audio beam system 4.

Read more on: www.holosonics.com