Achieving optimal acoustics in a videoconferencing room

Workspace designers are typically used to the concepts of echo (reverberation), sound volume (dB) and noise frequency (pitch) in large open spaces, meeting rooms and other workspace environments but what we are seeing is that there's less understanding of how small single-person spaces can be designed to provide optimum experience for Zoomers, Facetimers, Google Hangouters and everybody else using video conferencing solutions.

This article provides our top three tips on how to achieve optimal acoustics in a room used specifically for videoconferencing purposes.

1. Place the room as far away from background noise as possible

Strategic location of videoconferencing rooms is essential as background noise gets in the way of your voice.

Typically mechanical service noise contains low frequency (pitch) and high frequency sound waves that penetrate and travel further - this means that they are harder to block and absorb, so ensuring the room is as far away as possible from such sounds is beneficial for enhanced user experience.

Likewise background noise such as people talking, traffic, wind etc can all combine to make video-conferencing more challenging, so the same rule applies - ensure the positioning of the room is as far away from background noise as possible.

2. Apply absorption 50% of what Zoom picks up is from sound waves that have bounced around the room surfaces after leaving their source.

With this in mind, it is pretty essential that this 50% is eliminated. How? Application of acoustic absorption materials will ensure that airborne sound waves will be soaked up before they get the chance to reach the computer microphone!

When specifying acoustic materials for this purpose, ensure the product carries a noise-reduction coefficient of 0.9 as a minimum.

 

The next rule is to make sure you cover at least 50% of the wall surface area with this 0.9NRC rated acoustic absorption material. This ensures that there's as much chance as possible for the sound waves to be soaked up, and absorbed, therefore reducing the opportunity for sound waves to remain in the space.

 

Of course, sound that isn't absorbed stays airborne for longer - this results in the need to talk louder, or to switch up the speaker volume. In turn this creates more sound... and you start to get a compound effect that is counter to a comfortable and efficient experience.