Office Sound Masking Systems: Enhancing Privacy and Productivity
Sound masking systems add a controlled ambient sound to reduce office noise, improve speech privacy, and create a more productive work environment. By generating a consistent background sound, these systems help block distracting noises and make conversations less intelligible to others.
What is Sound Masking?
Sound masking is the strategic introduction of continuous, engineered background sound-often resembling gentle airflow-to reduce the perceived intelligibility of human speech. Sound masking is a technology used mainly in office spaces to reduce distractions and protect privacy. By adding a subtle, ambient sound, similar to airflow, through strategically placed speakers, it elevates the background noise level, making it harder to overhear conversations. Sound masking makes surrounding conversations and common noisy distractions a lot less audible.
Implemented properly, a sound masking system improves speech privacy, minimizes noise distractions, and supports better workplace acoustics. Adding sound to a space actually makes the space seem quieter. It sounds counter-intuitive but it’s true. This is because the added sound reduces the intelligibility of human speech.
Unlike white noise, sound masking is specifically engineered to match the frequencies of human speech and to sound comfortable, even pleasant, to the human ear. Sound masking is an ambient sound, similar to the sound of airflow, that’s specifically engineered to the frequency of human speech you can target conversational distractions and make them less distracting.
Benefits of Sound Masking
- Improves speech privacy
- Minimizes noise distractions
- Supports better workplace acoustics
- Reduces the need for specialty acoustic insulation and extra drywall layers in closed rooms requiring good acoustic privacy.
- Increases productivity in your workspace by reducing noisy distractions while improving concentration and acoustic privacy.
Safety and Regulation
Decades of implementation have shown no evidence that sound masking systems cause adverse health effects. Sound masking systems have been successfully deployed in commercial environments since the 1960s. Modern systems like Cambridge Qt use pink noise-a balanced background sound centered around the frequency range of human speech-to effectively lower speech intelligibility.
Sound masking typically operates at a measured sound pressure level (SPL) of no more than 48 decibels A-weighted (dBA) in an open office. This sound masking level is significantly lower and set at 40 to 42 dBA in private offices. Such SPL levels are much lower than many common sounds, such as road noise when riding in an automobile or normal face-to-face conversation (which averages 65 dBA at three feet away). A-weighting is a filter process used to better represent sound levels based on how humans perceive sound and is the standard for the measure of environmental noise levels.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates safe occupational noise exposure levels in dBA SPL over time as published in Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 1910.95. For an 8-hour period, the allowable continuous noise exposure is 90 dBA, while 80 dBA is permissible for a 32-hour period. The full details of this regulation are available here.
The decibel (dB) is an expression of a logarithmic relationship; therefore, 90 dBA represents an acoustic pressure exposure more than 125 times more powerful than the 48 dBA level of typical sound masking in an open office space. It is worth noting that sound masking solutions from Biamp are not capable of producing sound levels even approaching OSHA limits. The speakers and amplifiers used in sound masking solutions are physically incapable of reaching harmful levels. Their purpose is to subtly enhance the environment, not to overwhelm it.
Installation and Tuning
Like all other professional audiovisual technologies, sound masking requires installation and tuning by a properly trained system integrator. A sound masking system that isn’t installed correctly-with emitters (specially engineered loudspeakers) improperly spaced or wired out of sequence, and if there are two similar output channels next to each other-could create the comb-filtering effect. If a person is sitting precisely in the middle of those two emitters, it could potentially create an uneasiness (some refer to this as a phasing issue). But this shouldn’t create any adverse effects, and the issue can easily be addressed by installing the emitters in their proper locations.
Even when properly installed and tuned, a sound masking system introduces a new acoustical element in any environment. This is why upon installation, the system should be programmed to gradually “ramp up” the volume at which it operates. This helps those within sound masking’s range to become acclimated to the new background sound without disruption.
Recognition and Applications
OSHA and ASTM are just two of the organizations that recognize sound masking as a viable, safe technology for reducing speech intelligibility and noise-related distractions, thereby improving acoustic privacy and workplace comfort and productivity. Sound masking also protects patient confidentiality and helps patients sleep better while being treated in medical facilities.
Sound Masking Kits
At Office Privacy, we understand the need for a quick solution to providing your workplace with ambient noise to create a focused, productive, and quiet work environment for your employees. That is why we offer our white noise sound-masking kits to all businesses and workplaces in need of noise reduction. Below, you can find kits that have been created for the most popular do-it-yourself systems. Choose the appropriate square footage of your office to match the square footage on the kit. If needed, additional emitters can be purchased.
It is often assumed that a sound masking system is an extra expense that can hardly fit into an office buildout or retrofit budget that's already tight as it is. Our advanced sound masking technology will help you increase productivity in your workspace by reducing noisy distractions while improving concentration and acoustic privacy. Get a Quote