Acoustic design of ordinary rooms using absorbers and diffusers

With different activities in a room, room acoustic requirements differ and when the acoustic requirements are different, acoustic treatment must be adapted. This study focuses on room acoustics in ordinary public rooms such as classrooms and offices. By tradition the acoustic treatment in these rooms is an absorbent ceiling. Experiments have been carried out in a classroom where the baseline in the acoustic treatment was a highly absorptive acoustic ceiling. This treatment has then been combined with different configurations of diffusers and wall absorbers where the coverage and pattern of the different treatments has been tested to evaluate their effect on the room acoustic parameters. Furthermore, several configurations with different diffuser directionality have been evaluated. The room acoustic parameters reverberation time, speech clarity and sound strength were assessed. The results show a clear correspondence in the room acoustic parameters for the different treatments used, as well as a frequency dependence. Here we discuss the interpretation of these results and how this new information can be used to obtain the room acoustic requirements for a specific activity.