Whether seated in a noisy restaurant, a gym filled to capacity rooting on their home team, or a preschool filled with toddlers and loud kids, the noise that our ear drum experiences is a combination of both original sound and reflected sound.   The soundproofing treatments in the marketplace do less to combat the original sound (you can’t enclose the screaming child or the obnoxious diner in the restaurant), but you can lower the path of the echoes that the sound waves are taking, which is driving the decibel meter up.

In most cases, the exposure levels to noise within a space can be lowered by controlling the amount of echo allowed to continue to reflect around a room.   While surfaces such as concrete, brick, wood, glass, stone, drywall, tin or marble absorb an average 5% of the echoes that fill a space, sound panel treatments can effectively absorb up to 80% of the same echo.

A “loud” room therefore is a room filled with too much exposure to echo, while a “quiet” room has some kind of sound panel treatment in it that is capturing and converting the echoes out of the space.    This is how you combat background noise.   And by dropping the level of ambient echo, you raise clarity to original sound.   Conversations are no longer strained in a restaurant.   The teacher at the daycare center drives home at the end of the day without the headaches from the loud kids, and the crowd at the sporting event is more comfortable, less ear piercing noise.

The key to the success of any panel treatment is to first determine the best panel system for any one particular project, and then base the quantities needed on the size, shape and surface textures of the room.   We want to safeguard that clients neither “over-treat’ nor “under-treat” their space, and getting that calculation right will make or break the soundproofing treatment.   To configure panel selection and quantities needed, a Room Analysis is run to best determine the square footage required to trigger the ideal sound values being targeted.

If you have a room that fills with noise, and renders the room less than user friendly, NetWell Noise Control offers a free Room Analysis to help define your treatment, select the right material, target the appropriate quantities, produce your quote and get your questions answered.   Visit them online at www.controlnoise.com or call their help desk at  1-800-638-9355.