Avenue Business Centre

Project Profile: Office Sound Masking Solutions

Danielle and her team have been meticulous with their sound-masking installation and follow-up service these past few years. From the first site visit to the very reasonable cost, seamless installation, and tweaking to get the sound-masking just right for each one of our counselors and therapists, I would always have Vibra-Sonic Control as part of our team!

Susan Alexander – Owner/Manager at Avenue Business Centre

Avenue Business Centre

Project Details

Location: Vancouver
Project: Avenue Business Centre
Tenants:  Various Businesses

Challenge: Implement a solution that provides privacy for all office occupants so that their conversations aren’t heard in neighbouring rooms or in the adjacent hallway. As is typical with modern office construction, the walls between the offices and hallway only extend up to the drop ceiling finish, leaving the plenum as a path for sound to transfer from one room to another. Additionally, the HVAC system is very quiet, making the background ambient very low so that any unwanted noises are easily audible.

Many of the businesses not only want privacy but require it as part of their duty to their clients.

It is critical that the work environment, of these different businesses, is a space where background sound is controlled.

Solution: The privacy of a room is a result of two key factors; the sound attenuation from the partition barriers and the background noise. This concept is explained well in this article https://www.bapacoustics.com/office-acoustics-speech-privacy-and-security/

Renovating the walls to block more noise was an obtrusive and expensive proposition and so raising the background noise was the chosen option. This was accomplished by installing an AtlasIED ASP-MG2240, class D Sound Masking Processor which contains the pink noise generation, equalization and amplification required for effective sound masking. The signal from the processor was distributed throughout the space via AtlasIED M1000 speakers which were placed in every office and down the corridors. Once the sound masking system was tuned to the National Research Council prescribed spectrum, adjustments were made to some of the individual offices to address the unique requirements of the occupants.

Result: Tenants were no longer able to understand conversations originating from neighbouring offices. When tenants or their clients were moving through the hallway, conversations from the offices they passed by were not intelligible. This sound masking solution did an excellent job at masking noise and providing privacy to the tenants and their clients.