Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

"The acoustical evaluation of rooms requires several room acoustic descriptors. Reverberation time alone is not enough!" says Erling Nilsson, Acoustics Specialist at Ecophon.

Room Acoustic Comfort™ (RAC™) means that, when performing an evaluation of room acoustics, it is important to take into account different types of rooms and what people do there.
Give priority to the different acoustic properties such as reverberance, speech clarity and sound level, depending on what the room is used

To learn what you can do to achieve Room Acoustic Comfort™, simply look here
To get the information in othere languages than english, go here and choose your country

By Marc Janssen at 4:10 PM | Permalink

Voice is a basic tool for teachers. Chronic voice disorders, very common among teaching staff, cause long term sick leaves or leaving the job for good (for other profession or for disability pension). In Poland, chronic voice disorders as a group of diseases are formally recognized as occupational disease. In 2007, officially confirmed voice disorders cases were the biggest group (24,4%) of all occupational diseases in Poland

Continue reading "VOICE DISORDERS AMONG TEACHERS AS AN OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE" »

By Mikołaj Jarosz at 2:01 PM | Permalink

Noise can make it more difficult to cope with pain. A nursing study performed by Barbra Blake Minckley showed that twice the number of patients were administrated pain medication when noise levels were “High” compared with “Low” or “Middle”.

Even quite moderate noise levels can potentially disturb the process of caring for the patient.
She said "If there was a way to facilitate the communication between staff members as well as prevent noise from propagating in the room, it would most likely become a more patient friendly environment".

Continue reading "Less noise - less need for pain medication" »

By Marc Janssen at 11:52 AM | Permalink

A recent study called "Noise exposure in a neonatogical care unit and in incubators" demonstrated a far from ideal environment for neonatals inside incubators.

Summary
The noise exposure of premature infants in incubators is determined by the noise situation in the neonatological care unit and on the other hand by acoustical properties of the incubator, which should shield the premature infant against an excess of noise beside the primary life-saving functions. The noise inside a neonatological care unit is caused by lot of supplying and controlling devices provided with loud alarm functions, but also by the nursing staff and visitors.

The report can be ordered here

Continue reading "Noise inside incubators - quietest hour 49 dB(A)!" »

By Marc Janssen at 11:41 AM | Permalink

The new HTM (Health Technical Memorandum) gives Design Criteria for Room Acoustics in UK Healthcare Premises.
The document's Executive Study states "Noise can increase heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate and even blood cholesterol levels. Good acoustic conditions improve patient privacy and dignity, and promote essential sleep patterns. Such conditions are key to healing"
Recently published, it requires acoustic treatment, usually ceilings, to be provided in all occupied areas, including corridors.
The requirement is ...

Continue reading "HTM 08.01 NEW UK ACOUSTIC GUIDANCE FOR HEALTHCARE" »

By Anthony Thomas at 3:37 PM | Permalink

The Audio Spotlight is a revolutionary new audio technology developed by dr. Joseph Pompei, that creates sound in a narrow beam, just like light. Aim the flat, thin speaker disc to your desired listening area, and provide all of the sound — with none of the noise. Image the possibilities!

Continue reading "PUT SOUND WHERE YOU WANT IT!" »

By Marc Janssen at 7:30 AM | Permalink

The Acoustics'08 Conference is now finished!

On behalf of all editors of Acoustic Bulletin we would like to thank all readers, the conference organisers, all those we have met at the Ecophon stand and especially those who we have had interviews with. We trust that your inputs will be of great value to many and we look forward to keep in touch. See you, and we hope you all have a great summer !!

Markku, Paulli, Tobias, Katja, Rainer, Jonas, Katrin, Martin, Per, Tina, Pierre, Colin, Anthony, Mikolaj, Guus, Mariëlle, Carsten, Erling and Marc

By Marc Janssen at 2:52 PM | Permalink

This is an interview with PhD Valtteri Hongisto, Senior Research Scientist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Adjunct Professor at Helsinki University of Technology.
He has performed a lot of acoustic research and has been involved in the creation of standards and guidelines, for example the Acoustic Classification of Spaces in buildings SFS 5907. Also he is one of the writers of the coming Finnish Classification on indoor climate.

Valtteri mentioned that the ISO standard 3382-3 will only deal with open-plan office acoustics and not with open plans in general, like in schools, libraries or hospitals. The focus will be on spacial attenuation and speech intelligibility. By doing that we can judge the performance at any distance from the speaker.

Listen to the interview (3,47 minutes).

By Pauli Pallaskorpi, Concept Developer - Education and Markku Hirvonen, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon Finland.

By Marc Janssen at 11:43 PM | Permalink

The use of alarms in hospitals was discussed intensively during the two days session "Healthcare Acoustics & Speech Privacy".

A study presented by S. Okcu, College of Architecture, GaTech, states that a patient in an ICU can be surrounded by up to 33 different alarms from medical equipment. Not only are the alarms disturbing to the patients, they also make the task for the staff to detect and analyse them more demanding.

Ilene Bush-Vishniac
"The alarms are of utmost importance, but do we really need all these alarms?" This is a question asked by Dr. Busch-Vishniac, MacMaster University (formerly from Johns Hopkins University) who was one of the presenters at the conference. And the question is relevant; in nine out of ten times no action is taken when an alarm goes off, except for turning the alarm off.

Continue reading "Alarms in hospitals – a chaotic sound environment" »

By Katrin Bergmark at 1:09 PM | Permalink

Interview with John Hinton OBE
President of the Institute of Acoustics

Regarding Euronoise 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland 26-28 October 2009.
www.euronoise2009.org.uk
Email:euronoise2009@ioa.org.uk

By Colin Campbell, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon UK and Ireland

By Marc Janssen at 9:03 PM | Permalink

By Marc Janssen at 8:59 PM | Permalink

Noise levels in hospitals are typically more than 15 dB(A) higher than target values given in guidelines (for example target values from WHO and the US Environmental Protection Agency). Furthermore, noise is often one of the top complaints from staff and patients. This is concluded in a review made by Hui Xie and Jian Kang at the University of Sheffield.

Continue reading "Influence of noise on patient’s sleep" »

By Marc Janssen at 8:25 PM | Permalink

Mr Fausto E. Rodriguez Manzo presented a paper about "sonic" character of architecture.

The author stated, that hearing should be understood almost equally to sight, as a sense used to perceive architecture.

Mr.Fausto E. Rodriguez Manzo
Metropolitan University in Mexico City.
E-mail:rfme@correo.azc.uam.mx

By Mikołaj Jarosz, Concept Developer - Education, Ecophon Poland.
E-mail:mikolaj.jarosz@saint-gobain.com

By Marc Janssen at 8:15 PM | Permalink

Directly after the session on healthcare and acoustics this afternoon we had a little talk with Dr Michael Phiri, one of the presenters.

Dr.Michael Phiri is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

By Marc Janssen, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon.

By Marc Janssen at 8:28 PM | Permalink

On Tuesday Adrian Popplewell of Arup Acoustics presented a paper entitled "The Future of UK Hospital Design", and here he summarises for Acoustic Bulletin his involvement in the early drafting of HTM 08.01, the new Acoustic Guidance document for Healthcare. He also talks about the Drivers for Change in Healthcare over the coming years.

By Anthony Thomas, Concept Developer - Healthcare, Ecophon UK and Ireland.

Listen to the interview (2,27 minutes).

If you have questions or comments, please contact Anthony Thomas.

E-mail:anthony.thomas@ecophon.co.uk

By Marc Janssen at 3:16 PM | Permalink