Building Design for Sound and Acoustics Overview of Sound Control

Building, Design for Sound and Acoustics, Overview of Sound Control
It is important to understand the fundamentals of the different methods and materials that are used for controlling the sound quality in the interior of a space for proper design and planning. If you’re really serious about completing the project successfully, then you must care about the comfort and satisfaction of the residents and other occupants of your facility. Often you are not able to convey a message intelligibly to an audience as a result of poor acoustics of the venue. There are occasions when the audience cannot understand a word of what is being said. Excessive reverberation or echo is usually the reason for poor sound quality. The positive thing is that the situation can be changed.
Types of Sound Control Materials
In general almost all rooms are built with materials that are highly reflective, for examples, concrete, drywall, glass, metal, wood, etc. This calls for sound control products of high quality. The treatments generally used for improving the quality acoustic control in any room can be grouped into four types:
Reflective: If a space is too dull addition of reflective surfaces will add brightness to the room.
Absorptive: Excess echo can be removed by absorbing reflections of middle and high frequencies.
Diffusive: Direct reflections can be removed by diffusing their frequencies to get a balanced sound.
Bass Traps: Improve the overall quality by removing undesirable bass resonance of low frequency.
Balance between reverberation and absorption of sound
Too much of reverberation and excess of sound absorbing panels are both not advisable. The former will make the room sound like a cave with too much of reflected sound, while the latter make the room dull and lifeless. With proper balance you can enjoy vocal & musical performances better. This is possible by ensuring good quality of sound inside a room. The only way to achieve optimum sound quality is by sticking to the basic principles of sound control and room acoustics. It is necessary to keep in mind that the interior design should be in harmony with the placement of products of acoustical treatment of the room. A good design has superior appearance as well as good sound quality.
NRC rating
The widely used measurement rating for effectiveness of sound control materials is the Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) rating. Similar to STC ratings the NRC ratings deal with the frequencies between 125 Hz and 4000 Hz. The difference between the ratings is that the NRC refers to the ability of the materials to absorb sound as against containing it. The NRC is a one digit index used for rating the absorptive level of a material. This industry standard is from zero (totally reflective) to 1.00 (totally absorptive). A rating of 1.0 indicates that all the sound hitting the material is absorbed by it. That means excellent sound control.
Many products are available with claims of good sound absorption qualities. Experts recommend Glass Fiber Boards as a good choice from point of view of cost and ease of installation.