Article posted on July 23, 2016
Most workplaces today feature open floor plans with smaller, and often shared, workstations. Lower partitions and less sound absorptive materials such as hard or glass surfaces and thinner walls and doors are used in modern office construction and retrofits and without a plan for managing sound around the office there can be unnecessary noise distractions that cause real business problems. Conversations are sometimes audible through thin walls, office chatter can distract even the most heads-down workers, and confidential client or employee information can leak to the curious eavesdropper in many office environments. Cambridge Sound’s QtPro™ solutions remedy these acoustical challenges that negatively impact workplace satisfaction, productivity and speech privacy.
Sound masking works by adding sound to an area to make speech less audible. While it seems counter-intuitive to fight sound with sound, it has been proven effective in many applications. Professionally engineered ambient sounds don’t eliminate the noises in the environment, but they reduce the area where human speech is intelligible. With sound masking, it becomes more challenging to understand conversations from across the room, and thus makes it less likely those conversations will be distracting. QT® emitters are ceiling mounted and spaced appropriately for perfect acoustic coverage. The sound they produce is often described as that of water flowing or airflow.
Cambridge Sound Management’s QtPro™ line is being used by large industry leading enterprises, but is designed to scale from the smallest of applications to full size facilities. QtPro systems disperse sound masking only in spaces where it is needed, eliminating unwanted spillover into adjacent areas. The system provides a uniform blanket of sound coverage throughout the work space and is unaffected by ceiling design and the many obstructions that often litter the plenum, a problem for traditional sound masking applications. The sound is transmitted via four uncorrelated channels, creating a more pleasant and comfortable masking sound. The QtPro system is designed to grow and change with your business. Qt Emitters can be moved and reconfigured with minimal effort and impact when your work space needs to change. The energy efficient emitters can integrate with paging and music functionality, making the system a complete solution for creating better acoustic environments.
Their latest product line, the Qt Conference Room Edition, is a cost effective solution designed to make sure conversations in conference rooms remain private. The system comes with lighted indicators to show occupants when sound masking is activated and conversations are safely being kept inside the room. The low-level background sound outside the conference room is a remedy for acoustical problems often overlooked during construction, and allows businesses to achieve proper speech privacy without sacrificing the modern features of their conference room designs.
Cambridge has compiled extensive research into workplace satisfaction and the costs associated with noise disturbances in working environments. One study from UC Irvine found that employees are interrupted once every 11 minutes, taking them up to 23 minutes to get back into the flow of what they were doing before they were interrupted. Another study found that employees waste an average of 21.5 minutes per day due to conversational distractions, making speech privacy the number one cause of reduced productivity in any given workplace. 21.5 minutes is roughly 4% of an average workday, and some quick math shows that a company with 100 employees with an average salary of $50,000 per year translates to $200,000 worth of lost productivity per year. Yikes!
Together with Cambridge Sound Management’s expertise in sound, Assurance Media’s knowledge and experience as a premier cabling and A/V system integrator is a winning combination for our clients. We work closely with Cambridge Sound Management’s designers and sound engineers to evaluate your work spaces and create a custom sound masking plan for all types of facilities large and small.
If you have any questions about sound management and masking, give us a call at 302-892-3540 or email info@assurancemedia.net
