Why Room Acoustic Design

Why Room Acoustic Design?

Ben Meyers, P.E.

When a home is designed, a tremendous amount of attention is paid to the structural, plumbing, electrical and aesthetic components of the design, but far too often the acoustic characteristics of a home or room are completely overlooked. It’s not until a family moves in that the results of this oversight become apparent. Acoustic problems in the home generally fall into two categories: sound transmission and room “colorization”.

We’ve all heard a stereo or TV blaring in another room, even with the doors closed. If you’ve lived in a two story house, you may have experienced having footsteps in the room above sounding like an elephant trampling on your ceiling. How about watching a movie late at night with the sound turned down and having the air conditioner turn on? You naturally reach for the remote and turn the volume up so that you can hear the movie. Then when the A/C turns off, the TV is still loud and you wake up everyone in the house. Or how about trying to listen to a soft passage of music when someone outside is mowing the grass? Kind of ruins the experience. These are all examples of sound transmission problems and all can be corrected to various degrees with proper planning and construction techniques.

Ever listen to a great sounding set of speakers at a dealer’s showroom only to get home and have them not sound so good? Don’t blame the salesman, blame physics. This is an example of the room “colorization” problem. It is physically impossible for the exact same set of speakers to sound the same as it did in the showroom as it does in your den (unless of course, by some miracle your den is exactly identical to the dealer’s showroom). When you blow across the opening of an empty soda bottle, the air in the bottle resonates at a certain frequency. Your den is no different. It too has a series of frequencies at which it will resonate. The physical dimensions of the den, the size, construction and location of all the furniture, plants, doors, windows, rugs, and even people effect the perceived sound of the speakers. Even the construction of the walls, ceiling and floors impacts the perceived sound inside of the room. As important, the location of the speakers within the room greatly effect how the room will sound at a given listening position. Having just two stereo speakers is complicated enough, but with today’s multi-channel digital surround sound systems, you can have up to 8 independent channels of sound spread across up to a dozen speakers. The possibilities can give you a great big headache.

While the technology in today’s digital surround equipment provides you with much greater control over the sound produced and is an important part of the sound equation, you still cannot avoid the physics of the room itself. This is why proper acoustic design of a room is so important. An acoustically “bad” room can make even the most esoteric and expensive equipment sound bad, whereas an acoustically “good” room can make even modest equipment sound incredible. It’s amazing how many good-intentioned consumers will think nothing of spending a small fortune on equipment and completely ignore the one component that will effect it all: the room itself.

O.k. So room acoustics are important. Now what can we do to improve the sound of a room and how do we prevent everyone on the block from “enjoying” the latest blockbuster DVD as loud as we like to hear it? The answer depends on exactly what you want to do, what is really important to you, and your budget. The range of acoustic solutions goes from simple items such as proper placement of speakers and system calibration to a full-blown, acoustically-isolated, home theater with specialized “floated” wall and floor construction, interior acoustic treatments and sophisticated equalization equipment. Industrial Sound and Vision, LLC can help you decide what methods are appropriate for your situation and budget, and provide acoustic services from the simplest solution to the grandest theater and everything in between.