To the question of whether it is necessary to undertake acoustic conditioning work in videoconferencing rooms, the answer is simple: yes. These types of rooms are susceptible to acoustic disturbances typical of offices, meeting rooms and training rooms. Among them, the most common: reverberation. Reverberation is a mismatch in the time that a sound remains in the environment compared to ideal for correctly hearing and understanding a message. Technically, reverberation time is defined as the time it takes for a sound to fall by 60 dB after the source of the sound emission stops. In a room devoted to videoconferencing there are two moments in which a reverberation problem can occur. From the time the sound comes out of the loudspeakers until it reaches the ears of the participants. During time, the sound may be disturbed by interacting with floors, walls, ceilings and other items in the room. Obviously, this is not the case when the audio signal is received via headphones. The other key situation occurs during sound emission, from the time the words are spoken until they reach the microphone. If headset microphones are used, as they are similar to the use of a cell phone, the risk of acoustic problems is greatly reduced, but it is very common to share a microphone with other people in the same room and for it to be one or more feet away from the transmitter. In these cases, reverberation can, once again, produce poor acoustics that prevent the the conversation from being properly understood. The solution lies in carrying put proper acoustic conditioning in the room using sound-absorbent acoustic panels, such as those offered by the Spigotec and Spigoacustic brands. Need more information? If you liked this post about acoustic conditioning for videoconferencing rooms, you may also be interested in: – Acoustic conditioning of town halls or council houses – What is the Lombard Effect or Lombard Reflex? – Acoustic panels in hotels, what do they contribute? – Acoustics in schools and speech clarity Imagen de: Junta de Andaluc铆a, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
