Sounding Off: Our Blog
Thoughts, insights, and perspectives on the latest news, trends, and issues regarding architectural acoustics, environmental and industrial noise and vibration, and audiovisual systems design.
Conference Room BYOD
The conference room is often the most-used and least-understood. It’s the one place where your staff and guests intersect with audio, video, screen-sharing, and presentation technology. The problem is, you might not have the right adapters to plug in your laptop. What if someone is using a different platform? What if they use a tablet, or have their presentation on their smart phone? BYOD has been the unattainable goal for years… until recently. BYOD in your conference room might be just what you need to get everyone collaborating, and all your devices working together.
Peeking into the Fitness Center
It seems like a good idea; a fitness center in your building. It’s so convenient! Unless of course, you want some peace and quiet. Are workout spaces hiding where you live or work? Do they generate much noise? Is there anything that can be done to keep them under control? Once you start peeking into the fitness center, you start to find answers to those questions.
Plan Ahead for Vibration
Vibration can be a determining factor in the success of many projects. While you might anticipate the need to handle noise levels, the room acoustics, noise isolation, and mechanical noise, are you considering the effects of vibration on the people who will live, work, learn, and heal in the building?
Why Can’t We Just Do Wireless Video?
When a technical system design project includes video, we are asked the same question, “Can we do wireless video for that?” It sounds like a great idea. Someone wants to add a video display, projector and screen, a few cameras, or a set of monitors somewhere, and after all, they have an AppleTV at home, and that streams video wirelessly. Depending on the project, and the type of video, limited wireless video can work, but it does require some planning and understanding of the limitations.
Plan Ahead For University Radio and TV Studios
The acoustical quality of University broadcast and recording facilities can make or break the studio, and student experience. It’s best to plan ahead, before you go on air.
Acoustics and AV – Early or Often
When the first call or email comes in about a new project it’s important to ask if the project is for renovating an existing space, or new construction. It’s an important question because the approach to each type of project is different. We’re brought in after a space is occupied about as frequently as when a project is nothing but drawings.
Active Learning Classrooms
Removing obstacles to learning. That’s the mantra around the movement toward Active Learning Classrooms (ALC) in University settings. This departure from the traditional lecture format, and toward flexible furniture, writing surfaces, collaborative activities, and integrated technology brings a new set of challenges when designing a space to deliver a learning environment free from the obstacles created by noise.
Digital Signage in K-12 Schools
Teaching is all about communication. Are you able to communicate the material in myriad ways to help students of a variety of learning styles grasp the concepts? Not everyone understands everything in the same way.
How Private Are Your Medical Conversations?
If you’ve been to your doctor’s office lately, you might have been allowed to listen to a conversation between a doctor and another patient. You didn’t even need to be in the room with them. The sound isolation between many exam rooms can be so poor that you can hear virtually everything that is said next door, or in the corridor.
Acoustics – Church Designer’s Magazine
Acoustics By Design President, Kenric Van Wyk, is interviewed in the May/June 2015 issue of Church Designer’s Magazine. The Article, “A Sound Policy,” by Keith Loria, describes the need to prepare the worship space acoustically, and what to factor into the plan for a worship environment.