Top Tips for Soundproofing Your Office

March 14, 2011 - PRLog -- A loud, noisy office leads to a deterioration in work quality and concentration.   The ripple effects of poor quality acoustics in an office environment include absenteeism, low morale, turnover, and a breech in confidentiality can prove fatal to the success of any office.   To properly soundproof an office, there are three keys to the success of your treatment.

The first key is room isolation.   For the bosses office, a conference room, a computer server room, or a variety of other office setups, common walls will bleed noise back and forth, lowering the level of privacy and interfering with worker concentration.   Steps can be made to better insulate the common wall, starting with adding density to the wall with mass loaded vinyl, and then disconnecting the wall using a set of resilient channels of furring strips.   For new build or existing/finished surfaces, common wall soundproofing can deaden up to 90% of the noise bleed through.   The goal is to force the collapse of the transmitting sound wave by structurally disconnecting the wall assembly, and lining it with density.

The second key to the success of your office soundproofing is to lower the level of exposure to voices and other office sound sources that share common space.   Office cubicles, while an effective use of space, are a primary source of unwelcome noise as multiple voices fill the cavity space of a room.   As the voice reflections begin to fill the cavity space of the room, sound signals get crossed, affecting phone conversations and clarity to original sound.   As a result, workers raise their voices over the background noise, causing the problem to grow exponentially.

The answer to cubicle space noise is two fold.   First, line the perimeter walls, ceiling and interior cavity space of the cubicles with sound panels designed to absorb echo.  By lowering the level of ambient noise in the room, the background levels of noise dissipate while greater clarity to original voice conversations is produced.   Panels can be floated out over the top of the room, anchored to the top 2-4' of wall space around the room's perimeter, and lined on the inside of the cubicle work stations.   Cloth wrapped sound panels are available in dozens of colors and can double as tackable bulletin boards.

The final step to successful office soundproofing is masking.   Simple, accurate sound modules can be introduced into a room's space, with emitters set into existing ceiling tiles.   Masking is the art of disguising human voice, cloaking the room with enough soothing mechanical noise that human voice becomes blurred and undetectable.

The combination of these treatments will combine to produce a more worker friendly environment, improving worker morale, and protecting the confidentiality of the bosses office and the conference room.

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NetWell Noise Control supplies a variety of soundproofing treatments and related acoustical products for noise reduction and enhanced room acoustics. Free acoustical consulting for sound treatments in most any residential, commercial or industrial venue. Visit them online at http://www.controlnoise.com