It doesn’t matter how nice your cell phone is, if you have poor reception your calls will be full of static and your audio will be unintelligible. The same goes for your conference room audio equipment. You might have the best audio equipment available, but if the acoustics in your conference room or meeting space are bad, your audio quality will be bad too, no matter how good your equipment is.
Acoustic treatment, permanent or variable, can help overcome the acoustic challenges in your spaces and create meeting and conference environments with exceptional audio quality where everyone can comfortably hear and be heard. Keep reading to learn more.
Acoustic Treatment Solutions Can Improve Meeting Room Audio
There are all kinds of factors that can interfere with the audio quality in your conference spaces. A noisy HVAC system, hard surfaces that reflect sound, ambient noise from other parts of the office—all these things can make conference and audio calls more difficult to hear.
Acoustic treatments can help you correct these issues by changing the sound inside your room to improve audio clarity. Acoustic treatments—such as curtains, fabric-covered panels, or foam panels—can soak up the sound you don’t want, so the sound you do want is easier to hear.
For conference calls, reducing echo is the best way to get the most out of your AV system and have the most intelligible and productive meetings. We often see Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) used to reduce audio echo issues, but we also see it used incorrectly as well. AEC is only intended to prevent sounds from in-room speakers from being picked up by microphones. A strong acoustic echo can muddle the intelligibility of talker’s words due to timing or quality of acoustic reflections. It can also inhibit the AEC from properly removing speaker sound from microphones and overload other DSP processes intended to make sound better—including noise cancellation— which when configured per microphone may help improve audio quality in acoustically challenged environments.
Reducing room echo beyond AEC can require acoustic treatments on both the walls and ceiling. Carpet can also help reduce echoes and absorb other distracting noise from being picked up by the microphone.
But be careful not to go overboard. Too much acoustic treatment can turn your room into a dead space where the sound you want to hear gets absorbed, too. An audio visual technology specialist like AV Solutions can help you create a space with your desired audio levels and clarity.
Without acoustic treatment in your meeting spaces, your conference calls and video conferences will suffer from muddy audio, miscommunications, and wasted time while people repeat themselves and try to catch up.
How to Choose the Best Acoustical Treatment Solutions
You have two options when deciding on an acoustic treatment solution: permanent or variable.
Permanent solutions alter the acoustic properties of your meeting spaces for good, so you can count on a clear and productive audio environment no matter what. These solutions include:
- Acoustical ceiling tiles
- Hanging baffles
- Acoustic partitions
- Acoustic foam
Acoustical solutions are best installed when you are building out your spaces, but these permanent acoustic treatments can also retrofit into your meeting space to improve audio quality.
Variable acoustic treatment solutions can help you create different acoustic environments within the same room. With variable treatments you can put acoustic elements such as foam panels on movable rails or a hydraulically operated frame that you can adjust depending on the type of audio you are producing and how you want it to sound.
Variable solutions are best for large spaces such as auditoriums and multi-purpose rooms that have multiple, changing functions and audio needs.
AV Solutions Can Help You Create the Ideal Acoustic Environment
Clear audio has always been critical to productive meetings, and that is just as important now as employees are working and collaborating from anywhere. An AV expert like AV Solutions can help you get the most out of your conference spaces and your audio solutions by creating the ideal acoustic environment for your audio needs. Ready to get started? Get in touch with AV Solutions today.
