“We all know meetings are a very inefficient use of time, so let’s make it as good as possible. I’ve worked on something as simple as a meeting room with a tall ceiling, hard surfaces, all glass and proximity to the freeway – so you walk in the room and before anyone says anything there’s background noise of 45 to 50dB.
“Then you try to have 10 people around a table talking to each other and they wonder why they can’t understand people? The room looks gorgeous, but for a boardroom where you’re going to put very expensive talent making core decisions that can affect millions of dollars, in an environment that’s suboptimal, why bother?”
Plenty of Options
For clients seeking more cost-friendly, versatile solutions that can also address music and paging, sound masking has proved successful in a range of corporate environments, small-office suites and health care facilities, says Barr. While sound masking might be more suitable to the open areas of an office, boardrooms and teleconference rooms are places where integrators can also earn margins on high-quality solutions and distinguish themselves from competitors, notes Grimani.
Look at better microphones and speakers, for example, but then look at absorption and echo-cancelation products, which range in quality, materials and aesthetics. Materials can be everything from fiberglass to Rockwool panels covered with fabric, to slotted acoustic wood with micro-perforations in front of panels, to blown glass, to porous plaster that gets applied in front of a sound absorber and can end up appearing like an ordinary wall or ceiling.
Auralex’s Smith notes his company, which offers a wealth of absorption panels, bass traps, diffusors, and the like, provides a Free Personalized Room Analysis service to assist in the acoustical solutions services for integrators. There’s potential profit in this category waiting for integrators, whether they better educate themselves through webinars like Cambridge Sound Management’s or turn things over to a pro.
“Integrators don’t always have the ability to do the measurements and modeling,” he says. “Auralex does, so we function as their technical staff when needed without adding burden to their payroll. I think integrators have not received easy-to-understand technical education about acoustics and still perceive it as a black art. It’s tough for them to authoritatively present a solution to a customer if you’re not fully convinced they understand the problem, the solution or both.”
