Acoustical Design and
Detailing of Other Spaces
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• Topic - Acoustical Design and Detailing of Other Spaces – Open air theatres, Halls for Indoor Sports, home theatres,
recording studios, open plan offices, etc. Need and use of sound reinforcement systems, sound masking systems and
speech privacy.
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Home theater
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Interior finishes
a) Flooring
b) Wall finishes
c) Ceiling
d) Furniture.
Flooring:
• Farrat isomat acoustic floating floors are used to provide very high isolation between noisy or quiet rooms and surrounding rooms.
• They can be built as box in box systems with the walls and ceiling build off the floating floor.
• Used globally in all kinds of buildings
• Excellent acoustics and vibration isolation performance
• Nature frequencies down to 6 Hz.
• Acoustics air gap between 25 and 200mm.
• Floating concrete slab thickness between 50 to 2000mm.
• Load bearing capacity up to 900 kN/m2.
• Ease, speed and adaptability of installation with minimal waste.
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Prelude wall fabrics
• It offers a texture and feel which is unobtrusive, not detracting from the appeal of other design features around it.
• Flexibility in design, layout, acoustic and load bearing performance.
• Flexibility in delivery.
• Supplied fully installed or as a kit for customer installation.
• Economical
• Use of high quality, long lifetime materials.
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Wall finishes
• Acoustic curtain are typically made of the heavy duty, flame retardant, acoustically absorbent fabrics and can be used with various track system
to afford greater flexibility than fixed sound absorptive panels.
Flexible fabric system to absorb sound
• Typically used for recording studios, sound sets, dance etc. and in venues ranging from schools to theatres.
• Acoustic curtains can be used to cover window areas, to divide spaces or arranged to cover head or reflective surfaces which allows an
element of acoustic ‘tuning’ within the room.
• Acoustics curtains are manufactured from either wool serge or velvet velour, as the heavier nature of these fabric provide the best acoustic
results.
• Track selection is based on application, dependent on curtain size/weight and arrangement.
• Acoustic curtains are primarily intended for sound absorptive application, as they offer minimal sound transmission loss.
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Maintenance
• Acoustic curtain fabric can only be cleaned with vacuum cleaner or soft brush. Wet cleaning of flame retardant material will compromise the
fire resistance and must be avoided.
• Acoustic wall curtains last in excess of 10 -15 years with little maintenance.
• Although rarely required, they can be easily cleaned and repaired.
• Acoustic wall curtains are easily the most cost effective option for a high quality, professional looking cinema value.
Wool cinema wall fabrics
• Cinema uses wool that is heavy weight, opaque and extremely durable, in order to assemble the very best stage drapes, acoustic sound control
curtain systems, and other wall curtains.
Acoustic panels
• Acoustic wall panels are a cost effective and attractive means of providing your venue with the highest quality audio performance.
Acoustic stretch fabric wall
• Covering cinema walls with acoustic stretch fabric is an alternative to the use of acoustic curtains to manage the sound and echo
characteristics in the cinema auditorium.
Custom wall finishes
• Specialty cinema can be design and install any sort of custom wall finish to give your cinema a state of the art appearance.
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Ceilings
• Manufactured using optimum quality terracotta, these tiles offers resistance to humidity, heat and superior acoustical performance.
• Available in various shapes and sizes, these are readily used in offices, multiplexes, recording studios and construction industry.
• Subtex ebony, subtex pebble, subtex plane and subtex nubby walls and ceilings. These products are widely used for furnishing offices,
auditorium, retail outlets, multiplex.
• Its range is appreciated for its humidity tolerance, durability and easy access to the plenum.
Specifications:
• Surface provided with white surface finish for monolithic texture and black surface for fully light absorption.
• Large format – 1200mm X 1200mm.
• Light weight – 1.5kg – 3kg without contributing to structural load of building.
• Fast track panels can be installed in T-grids after fit out
• High quality, high aesthetic, high NRC, ceiling tiles and panels.
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• Furniture
• Types of furniture used in multiplex theatre
• Theatre seats come in a variety of widths, depending on the age of the theatre, the space available and the target audience.
• High end theatre may have luxury seating that is wider cushions at your local multiplex.
• Standard seat width varies between 18’ to 22’, but older theatres, such as historic movie houses from the 1940s and earlier, may have 15’-16’
seat.
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Acoustical requirement for a studio
• Primary factors governing studio and acoustics
• Acoustic isolation
• Symmetry in control room and monitoring design.
• Frequency balance
• Absorption
• Reflection
• Reverberation
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Walls
• The primary goal is to reduce leakage through wall as much as possible over the audible frequency range. This is generally done by:
• Building a wall structure by building thicker wall.
• Eliminating open joints that can easily transmit sound.
Guidelines:
• The inner and outer wallboards should not be directly attached to the same wall studs. The best way to avoid this is to alternately stagger the
studs along the floor and ceiling frame, so that the front/back facing walls aren’t in physical contact with each other.
• Increase transmission loss by mounting the additional layers with adhesive caulking rather than using screw or nails.
• To reduce leakage that might make it through the cracks, apply a bead of no hardening caulk sealant to the inner gypsum wallboard layer at the
wall to floor, wall to ceiling and Conner junctions.
Typical wall construction materials:
• Concrete: solid and expensive
• Hollow bricks: easier than concrete
• Gypsum plaster boards: multiple layers of plasterboard onto a double walled stud frame is often the most cost and design efficient approach to
reducing resonances and maximizing transmission loss. It is often a good ides to reduce these resonances by filling the wall cavities with rock-
wool or fiberglass.
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Floor
• Floating “floor that is structurally decoupled from its subfloor foundation”.
• Use wither neoprene “hockey puck” isolation mounts, U-boat floor floaters or a continuous underlay, such as a rubberized floor mat.
• The underlay is spread over the existing floor foundation and then covered with an overlaid plywood floor structure.
• In more extreme situations, this superstructure could be covered with reinforcing wire mesh and finally topped with a 4-inch layer of concrete.
In either case, the isolated floor is then ready for carpeting, wood finishing, painting or any other desired surface.
• Failing to isolate these allows floor-borne sounds to be transmitted through the walls to the subfloors and vice versa.
• Gaps can be sealed with pliable decoupling materials such as widths of soft mineral fiberboard, neoprene, silicone or other pliable materials.
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FLOOR
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Ceiling
• Reduce this noise by simply carpeting the overhead hallway by floating the upper floor.
• Hang a false structure from the existing ceiling or from the overhead joist. This technique can be fairly cost effective when “Z” suspension
channels are used.
• Z channels are often screwed to the ceiling joists to provide a flexible yet strong support to which a hanging wallboard ceiling can be attached.
• If necessary, fiberglass or other sound-deadening materials can be placed into the cavities between the overhead structure.
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CEILING Building services IV 17
Windows and doors
• Visibility in a studio is extremely important to communicate.
• Design vary with studio need and budget.
• Can range from being deep, double plate cavities that are built into double wall constructions to more modest prefab designs that are built into
a single wall.
• Glass walls.
• Access doors to and from the studio, control room and exterior areas should be constructed of solid wood or high quality acoustical materials.
• The appropriate seals, weather stripping, and doorjambs should be used throughout so as to reduce leakage through the cracks.
• Acoustical sound lock. This construction technique dramatically reduces leakage because the air trapped between the two solid barriers
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WINDOWS
AND
DOORS
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WINDOWS
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ISO-rooms and ISO-booths
• Isolation rooms are acoustically isolated or sealed areas that are built into a music studio or just off a control room. These recording areas can
be used to separate louder instruments from softer ones and vice versa in order to reduce leakage and to separate instrument types by
volume to maintain control over the overall ensemble balance.
• To eliminate leakage when recording scratch vocals.
• Designed as totally separate areas that can be accessed from the main studio or control room, or they might be directly tied to the main studio
by way of sliding walls or glass sliding doors.
• Isolation booth provide the same type of isolation as a iso room, but are often much smaller.
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ISO ROOM
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ISO BOOTH
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Acoustical partition
• Movable acoustic partitions are commonly used in studios to provide on the spot barriers to sound leakage.
• By partitioning a musician and instrument on one or more sides and then placing the mic inside the temporary enclosure, isolation can be
greatly improved in a flexible way that can be easily changes as new situations arise.
• Based around wood frames, fiberglass or other acoustically absorptive materials with your favourite coloured fabric coverings.
Symmetry
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Acoustical partition
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Room acoustics – design of room
• Floor plan : the design of the auditorium or a lecture hall usually begins with the layout of the floor plan.
• The seating should be arranged so that the audience is as near the stage. (after keeping the required setback).
• Circular and elliptically shaped floor plans nearly always give rise to focusing effects, non-uniform distribution of sound,
and echoes.
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• speech privacy is the inability of an unintentional listener to understand another person’s conversation.
• People with a lack of speech privacy are overhearing lots of conversations that they shouldn’t be, which is, understandably, quite annoying to
employees.
• White noise : noise containing many frequencies with equal intensities.
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• Sound masking is the addition of sound created by special digital generators and distributed by normally unseen speakers through
an area to reduce distractions or provide confidentiality where needed.
Why Do You Need Sound Masking?
• Reduces noise distraction – conversation over 15 feet away will fade into the background, making it easier for employess to
concentrate.
• Protect speech privacy – employees can speak more freely knowing their conversation won’t be overheard by people across the
room or in adjacent private offices.
• Improve workplace acoustics – sound masking helps create a balanced, comfortable acoustical environment that’s not too quiet,
not too loud, but just right.
• [Link]
Sound masking system could be of two types
1. Direct
2. Indirect
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• A sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers in enclosures all controlled
by a mixing console that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds to a larger or more distant audience.
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Need and use??
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