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Acoustical panels at ceiling reduce noise levels and enable conversation
Of
the many ingredients that go into making a successful restaurant, the
correct acoustical environment is often the most elusive. While a noisy
atmosphere can be very detrimental, so too can one which is too quiet. Striking
the correct balance for each individual restaurant or dinning facility is
important to its success.
While the ambience of some should be
deliberately “busy and engaging,” others should be more subdued.
Speech privacy is almost always an important consideration, at least for some
part of the facility.
Restaurants present some of the more unique
challenges relating to noise control. Often the design of the space does not
lend itself to traditional approaches to controlling noise. Other limitations
include the lack of barriers along with the close proximity of the diners.
Background and foreground music may also present a problem. Often the bar
areas, banquet areas and general dining areas are at conflict with one another.
Noise from the kitchen and “make ready” (waiters’) station may
also overflow into the dining area.
Sound (noise) travels between its
source – people, kitchen equipment – and its receivers (people), by
three paths: DIRECT, REFLECTED and DEFRACTED. We deal with sound by treating
those paths so as to isolate, absorb, and neutralize sound.
Unlike
other interior environments, in a restaurant there is usually no way to isolate
diners from one another. Certain functions may be able to be separated. For
example: the kitchen, if not a feature of the design, can be isolated by
distance and barriers. Similarly the bar area can be situated so as to minimize
the “overflow” of noise into the general dining area. The same holds
true for banquet and meeting rooms.
If sound within a dining area is
allowed to reflect from too many surfaces, the noise level can build up to a
point where the patrons cannot conduct a conversation or conversation becomes
stressful. Diners have to raise their voices to be heard and you will find
people leaning forward and cupping their ear to listen. People with slight
hearing deficiencies may be completely excluded from the conversation because
others at the table are completely unaware of their problem.
Acoustical panels at ceiling reduce noise levels and enable conversation
THE OBJECTIVE
Every restaurant seeks
to create an atmosphere compatible with its cuisine and theme. Sound levels are
an important component of that mix as is the quality of that sound. The ambient
sound level needs to be such that patrons can converse at normal or slightly
elevated volume. The background noise level should be loud enough to obscure
most of the conversations from adjacent tables. The ambient sound level should
also have a quality that is non-competitive with the articulate understandable
speech frequencies of conversation. Typically, this sound would be dominantly
composed of low frequencies – “hums” not “hisses.”
While the addition of absorbent materials and designs that provide
barriers help to create the correct environment (or, at least, improve upon a
bad one), there is a co-lateral effect, which serves to improve the noise
levels. If the noise level is lower, people speak at a lower volume thus
further improving the sound level. Without these treatments the reverse is
true. The occupants speak louder causing the other occupants to speak louder
and so on. This is frequently referred to as: “The cocktail party
effect.”
Acoustical panels at ceiling reduce noise levels and enable conversation
“THE BUBBLE”
There exists
around every source of sound (or noise) a real but unseen “bubble”
referred to as the reverberant field. This is the spherical area around a
source of sound within which that source is the dominant sound; outside of
which the other source(s) dominate. If this “bubble” is big enough,
everyone at the table can communicate with the others without significantly
raising their voice; and, everyone at the table can hear everyone else without
leaning forward (to get inside the “bubble”) or cupping their hand
behind their ear to hear. When the conversation pauses, the ambient
conversation and other sound fills the void to create a lively yet less than
overwhelming background noise level. If people wanted to dine in silence, they
would stay home. |
