Room Acoustics
When the acoustics of a room are good, few people notice, but when they are bad, everyone notices. Whether your space is a classroom, meeting room, courtroom, dining space, gym, house of worship, or performing arts center, room acoustics play a key role in the successful use of the space.
Harrison Acoustics offers design, testing, and consulting services to study room size and shape, liveliness or reverberation time, control of reflections and sound buildup, projection of sound evenly to the audience and performers for performance acoustics.
Sound Isolation
Intruding noise from the space on the other side of the wall, from the floor above, or from outside are common acoustical issues. A building’s wall, floor/ceiling, and roof/ceiling assemblies must be designed with sound isolation in mind to address both airborne and structure-borne noise. Sound isolation is important in nearly every type of building, especially, multifamily, hospitality, offices, schools, hospitals and medical office buildings, gyms, fitness centers, theaters, commercial/retail tenant and amenity spaces.
Harrison Acoustics predicts the sound isolation performance and provides guidance to the decision-makers, enabling them to make informed decisions about the building construction based on each project’s specific budget and sound isolation goals.
Noise & Vibration Control
Even if the room acoustics and sound isolation are great, the overall success of a space can be jeopardized if the background sound levels from the HVAC systems are too high. Excessive background noise reduces speech intelligibility, causes occupants to talk louder resulting in an increasingly noisy space, and can be distracting when the space is intended to be quiet.
Harrison Acoustics works with the architects and engineers to design the building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems to achieve appropriate background sound levels based on the type and function of each space. We have built our reputation on finding practical, effective solutions to noise and vibration control challenges.
Speech Privacy
Medical spaces, offices, meeting rooms, school and government buildings often have specific speech privacy requirements. Harrison Acoustics guides the design team toward the floor plan, layout, partition types, workstation screening, and sound masking systems to achieve each project’s speech privacy requirements.
Environmental Noise Control
Road, rail, and air traffic are common sources of outdoor noise. A building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems can also be strong sources of exterior noise. Buildings need to be designed and constructed so that the building envelope provides the necessary protection from exterior noise sources and so that the building’s noise-making equipment doesn’t pose a noise issue to outdoor spaces or neighboring properties.
Harrison Acoustics can measure or predict the outdoor sound levels for comparison to applicable noise ordinances or other criteria like those established by the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for residential construction.
Peer Review & Expert Witness
Harrison Acoustics offers third-party review of acoustical design and analysis, testing and reporting, expert witness testimony, and presentations.