In theory, an office with an open floor plan makes for better, more collegial communication among coworkers. In reality, it creates an amphitheater of wage slaves jamming headsets onto their skulls to block out the copy machines, laser printers, and the guy whose telephone voice carries like a sperm whale with a head cold. Noise is the leading complaint in US workplaces, and new privacy legislation requires tighter controls to prevent employees from overhearing customer information. So designers and acoustics experts are racing to improve the ABCs of sound control - absorb, block, cover - to achieve more Zen-like cubicles.
Insulation: Good cubicle walls do more than offer the illusion of privacy - the fiberglass behind the cloth upholstery dampens noise. Fiberglass ceiling tiles absorb 90 percent of the sound bouncing at them, and heavy-gauge metal ducts cut down on rumble.
Adaptive Noise Cancellation: Turn a sound wave upside down and play it back, and it cancels the original noise. That’s how those famous Bose headphones work, as does Silentium’s noise-killing circuitry for printers and copy machines. Next up: background filters for teleconferencing gear.
Tunable Pink Noise: Filter the annoying frequencies out of staticky white noise and what’s left is "pink." When digital processors from Dynasound or Logison match this pink noise to a room’s acoustic profile, conversations 20 feet away are impossible to understand.
Masking Software: Sonare’s desktop setup, called Babble, masks people’s speech with their own voices. Software multiplies a two-minute sample into subtle chatter played through small speakers. The virtual cocktail-party din can be annoying, but it makes cubicle conversations more private.
- Jessie Scanlon
credit Jameson Simpson
Insulation: Good cubicle walls do more than offer the illusion of privacy - the fiberglass behind the cloth upholstery dampens noise. Fiberglass ceiling tiles absorb 90 percent of the sound bouncing at them, and heavy-gauge metal ducts cut down on rumble.
credit Jameson Simpson
Adaptive Noise Cancellation: Turn a sound wave upside down and play it back, and it cancels the original noise. That’s how those famous Bose headphones work, as does Silentium’s noise-killing circuitry for printers and copy machines. Next up: background filters for teleconferencing gear.
credit Jameson Simpson
Tunable Pink Noise: Filter the annoying frequencies out of staticky white noise and what’s left is "pink." When digital processors from Dynasound or Logison match this pink noise to a room’s acoustic profile, conversations 20 feet away are impossible to understand.
credit Jameson Simpson
Masking Software: Sonare’s desktop setup, called Babble, masks people’s speech with their own voices. Software multiplies a two-minute sample into subtle chatter played through small speakers. The virtual cocktail-party din can be annoying, but it makes cubicle conversations more private.
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Keep It Down! I’m Trying to Work
