How to Soundproof a Conference Room

A conference room with poor acoustics can be a nightmare for hosting video calls with other departments or important clientele. Such a conference room may have a noticeable echo that every participant can hear. In other cases, participants may be quiet or inaudible if they are seated at the far end of the conference table. These situations lead to a loss of focus and frustration for all participants, and failed meetings overall.

To make matters worse, thin conference room walls mean everyone else in the office may inadvertently eavesdrop on private business matters, or they may find it hard to focus around such a loud boardroom.

To help alleviate sound problems in a conference room, and before you EQ any of your equipment, you should first perform a best effort of soundproofing the meeting space.

Soundproofing Tips for Conference Rooms

Here are a few suggestions for soundproofing a conference room, as well as some recommendations of new types of conference room audio technology that can greatly alleviate poor acoustics.

Fill the space

Conference rooms are very purpose built, and so in many cases you will often find just a conference room table, chairs, and a TV in an otherwise barren room. With no sound absorbent material or objects present in the space, this can lead to a bad echo as soundwaves are free to bounce off large surface areas such as the walls and ceiling.

One of the first solutions you should implement for improving acoustics in the conference room is filling the space with absorbent material. The biggest contributors in this regard are carpeting and upholstered furniture, which offer a lot of surface area and soundwave disruptions to the space.

Install acoustic panels

Similar to adding carpeting or upholstered furniture, acoustic panels are tiles of plush material designed to absorb sound. These are commonly used in recording studios, but can be used in a conference room setting. If the conference room has many large windows, acoustic panels over each window can have a significant impact on sound containment.

Downsize the conference room

While the look of a grand boardroom may be appealing, the sound challenges they bring with echo and seating arrangement may not always be worth it. Huddle rooms have become increasingly popular in recent years, allowing specialized teams of smaller headcounts to host impactful meetings where every participant comes in loud and clear. If you find that your conference table always has a lot of extra seating available, in might be time to consider repurposing a smaller room in the office for video calls.

Noise cancelling conference room microphones

Soundproofing a space can be a big endeavor, from rearranging furniture, trying new rooms, and installing expensive materials. What if a microphone could just cancel out all that extra noise and echo, while improving vocal clarity for even the most soft-spoken participants?

Yamaha UC specializes in delivering best in class audio solutions for conference rooms, huddle rooms, and training spaces with advanced microphone technology suited to suppress distractions and deliver vocal clarity.

Our conference room microphone options include features such as noise cancelling and dereverberation, with smart audio pickup that focuses on the voice and position of any active speaker. Even in a conference room that echoes or that isn’t fully soundproof, our mics are able to filter background noise and perform to high standards in busy spaces.

Learn more about our conference room microphone systems, or contact Yamaha UC today for specific recommendations depending on your use case.

Sound masking for conference rooms

Soundproofing a conference room isn’t always done just to improve audio clarity on video calls. Often times it’s to keep sound from escaping the meeting room and distracting the rest of the office.

Yamaha UC offers a dedicated sound masking solution for office environments that keep business conversations contained in the room they’re being held. When installed in or in close proximity to conference rooms, meeting attendees can be assured their discussions are private, and nearby employees can enjoy a greater degree of focus and less stress thanks to the auxiliary benefits of noise masking machines.

Our speech privacy sound system is built to scale for any office environment, and is even trusted among healthcare professionals for sound masking confidential information when it matters most.

Learn more about our VSP-2 Speech Privacy System, or contact Yamaha UC today if you have any questions regarding sound masking solutions for your office environment.