Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

Photo: Gabriella Wachtmeister

Imagine being at the dentist. You are lying down, staring at the ceiling and are surrounded by strange noise from the equipment. Your heart is beating faster. A visit at the dentist is often something you just want to be over with. To help their patients relax, a dentist practice in Sweden wanted something that could, in a positive way, distract and occupy the patient’s mind.

The practice decided to install an acoustic ceiling and to have art printed on some of the ceiling tiles. This proved to be a good idea as some of the unwanted sound gets absorbed by the acoustic ceiling, while the patient’s mind get absorbed by the art.

Do you want to know more about how to ensure a good sound environment and at the same get colours, art and photos into the room, please have a look at www.fototext.se.

Posted by Katrin Bergmark at 8:00 AM
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A survey among 1200 employees shows that six in ten percieve the sounds in the workplace as disturbing. Sounds from the surrounding people, not computers or fans, disturbs the most. Frans Davidsson recently made recommendations based on the results from this study in swedish magazine Chef.

Frans Davidsson, Concept Developer - Modern Office, Ecophon Sweden

According to Frans, it is not the sound from people who sit the closest that we get upset about. On the contrary, those sitting within four to five meters from us, we like to hear. "Sounds coming from the people around us are generally perceived as positive. Humans are curious by nature. We want to hear what we may find useful"

Therefore it is important that people who are in the same project sit in close proximity. Then the employees can benefit from overhearing other people's conversations. But when the sounds come from people further away from us, about 10 meters, they are percieved as disturbing.

"A common mistake is the lack of quiet rooms. Employees must have a place where they can work undisturbed. Most people need at least a few hours every day", says Frans Davidsson about the open plan office.

How to get more peace in open plan offices:
1. Inform about the benefits and risks when sitting in open plan.
2. Have clear codes of conduct - as you've decided together.
3. Make sure as many people as possible have laptops so they can move to the quiet room when they need to. Install wireless network in the office so that you can work anywhere.
4. Have a sufficient number of quiet rooms. Start with at least a quiet room per ten employees. Quiet rooms should be visible from the open office.
5. Invest in sound-insulating and sound-absorbing materials and screens - then you can reduce sound propagation.
6. Hold meetings in separate meeting rooms, including spontaneous meetings.

This post is a translated summary of an article published in chef.se. See the original article in swedish here

Posted by Ricardo Canto Leyton at 3:34 PM
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Image: clickgamer.com

Well instead of becoming "angry birds!" A recent study shows that noise changes the way birds communicate much like the way we might behave when in a school canteen according to review of research carried out on Finches in Mexico City

House Finches Raise the Pitch When It's Noisy
Picture yourself in your school cafeteria at lunchtime. It's very loud, and you're trying to talk to your best friend. What do you do to be sure your friend hears you? Naturally, you turn up the volume of your voice. But you probably also raise the pitch of your voice, which means speaking in a higher voice.

Scientists in Mexico wondered if birds could react in the same way to noise. They knew that city birds generally sing in a higher pitch than country birds. But what they didn’t know was whether the birds had evolved to sing that way, or if birds could change their sounds very quickly in response to noise, just as you did in the cafeteria when the "lombard effect" takes place.

They tested house finches by playing sounds recorded from a noisy Mexico City street. Can you guess what happened? As the noise grew louder, the birds started to sing in a higher pitch. When the scientists turned down the noisy city sounds, the birds went back to singing in a lower pitch.
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Images above courtesy of It's A Noisy Planet

This article about the way noise shapes the way these birds communicate is based on a previous article which can be seen at It's a noisy planet home site´.

Posted by Colin Campbell at 1:15 PM
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At the recent Building Schools Exhibition and Conference (BSEC11) in the UK, Shane Cryer the Education Concept Developer with Saint-Gobain Ecophon (pictured above) was invited along with Alan Knibb, Asset Manager with Essex Council (pictured in entry below) to discuss the benefits of good acoustics in schools.

More about LGN emagazine

More about BSEC

Posted by Colin Campbell at 6:19 PM
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Night time noise can be devastating for the recovery during a hospital stay. Through it’s Shhh (Silent Hospitals Help Healing) Committee, the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix is making a conscious effort to improve the sound situation in the hospital by involving the patients. By sending “noise alerts” in real-time via the in-room-television, the patient notifies the surrounding staff when sound levels become unacceptable, and the hospital can immediately take action to reduce the noise.

By becoming aware of the sound levels via the interactive technology the hospital has increased their patient satisfaction scores, and the patients’ ratings for “Quiet at night” has increased from 43 percent to 57 percent.

More here

Full article (available for members only)

Schofield, D., and Atkin, D., Enhancing the Patient Experience through the Use of Interactive Technology, The Beryl Institute, Dallas, February 2011.

Posted by Sara Holmqvist at 2:41 PM
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Acoustics in sports halls is quite a hot topic in Holland. As you probably have seen before on AB it even was an issue on national TV. In his daily work Guus Klamerek, Concept Developer Education, meets a lot of acousticians who are dealing with this matter. He learned that they are doing their own small studies and use their own way of calculating. Since you have high parallel walls, hard surfaces, a non diffuse sound field and high ceilings. Next to that you have different users, different sports, people moving around all the time etc. These sports hall complexities led Ecophon Holland to organise a round table session with experts.

This round table session took place on the 19th of January. Ecophon organised the meeting supported by NAG (Dutch Acoustic Society) and NVBV (Dutch Flemmish Building physics Assocation). 20 acousticians were invited and they all participated.

Together with Lau Nijs http://bk.nijsnet.com/ and Martin ten Pierik of TU/Delft we worked out a programme and a questionnaire which was sent to all participants a few weeks before to highlight the areas for discussion. This was filled in by all participants which shows the huge commitment to the subject!

Sports hall questionnaire pdf in english: Download file here

Click here for guideline in dutch

The programme:

12.30 - Welcome and lunch, presentations of outcomes questionnaires by Guus Klamerek
13.00 - Case 1 by Jeroen Vugts, LBP Sight http://www.lbpsight.nl/medewerkers/49/
14.00 - Workshop on 6 statements
16.00 - Case 2 by Gerard Dethmers, Buro Nieman
17.00 - Evaluation with fingerfood and drinks

We had some very interesting discussions going on. We have a pretty strict practical guideline in Holland called NOC*NSF ISA-US-BF1. It is based on RT and volumes. This guideline was discussed and everyone agreed that some adjustments can be done to improve it.

Some highlights:

Questionnaire and statements:
- 10 people use Sabine equation to calculate RT in sports halls
- 9 people use a ray tracing model
- 3 people use Eyring
- On the question which method do you trust most only one person said Sabine. 8 people said they trust a ray tracing model the most.
- Absorbing materials are in most cases chosen together with the architect
- Most of the acousticians give experienced based advice. Also with ray tracing it is very important to have some experience. Also the specs of the materials given by the producer determines the outcomes of ray tracing.
- Possible parameters to add to the ISA norm:
STI, G, C50, EDT
- Are flutterechoes disturbing? And if when? What should one do with the flutters?
- Should we use T20. T30 or EDT?
- A sports hall should not be over damped.

Project group

At the end of the session we concluded that there still are some question marks. We decided to make a project group who will have a look at if and how we can let a student do a study so that we possibly can change the standard.

Project group participants:

Renz van Luxemburg, TU/ Eindhoven, Level Acoustics
Lau Nijs/ Martin Tenpierik, TU/ Delft
Jeroen Neggers, ISA Sport
Maarten Luykx, Peutz
Monika Rychtarikova, KU Leuven
Guus Klamerek, Ecophon

Posted by Guus Klamerek at 2:14 PM
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According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) - teachers are generally unaware of the efffects that poor classroom acoustics have on learning.

Most teachers are unaware that the typical classroom may not be providing the best environment for listening and learning due to poor acoustic characteristics. Important information may be lost because a deteriorated or weak speech signal reaches the learner which makes listening difficult and creates significant gaps in learning.

Their research indicates that most teachers neither attempt acoustic improvements in their classrooms, nor welcome an amplification system or acoustic modifications.

They also argue for speech-language pathologists to consider educating teachers on the effects of poor acoustics on student learning, at-risk students, teacher vocal health, and the means for obtaining grants for amplification systems until designs for acoustical accommodations can be provided for classroom.

More info about this article on the ASHA website
More info on the ASHA website regarding classroom acoustics

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 140,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialise in preventing and assessing hearing and balance disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment including hearing aids. Speech-language pathologists identify, assess, and treat speech and language problems including swallowing disorders.

Posted by Colin Campbell at 4:29 PM
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