soniq-technology

How Acoustic Wood Furniture Improves Workplace Sound and Productivity

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:43:28 GMT

When buying furniture, you may not automatically research pieces that are acoustically the best. You’re likely thinking about the design of the spaces, selecting options that incorporate diverse aesthetic elements while also providing functionality. You’re also working within the parameters of the room itself to ensure that the desk you fell in love with will physically fit in the room.

But while acoustics may not be the first thing you think about when buying new furniture, it is an integral part of acoustic design and can impact the room’s overall acoustics. It is especially important in workplaces where office noise can lead to increased stress and decreased productivity. And the last thing an employer wants is for employees to feel disgruntled because they can’t get assigned projects completed and tasks done due to office noise.

Soundproofing the office or creating a strict “no talking” policy isn’t the solution; instead, it’s about building an office environment with the right acoustic systems. One part of this equation is acoustic wood furniture.

What is SoniQ™ Technology Furniture anyway?

If you just walk by, it looks like high-end wood furniture. But there is a secret inside. SoniQ™ furniture is built specifically to make a room sound better while still being a great place to work. Regular desks are just hardwood that reflects sound. SoniQ™ is sound-absorbing furniture with microperforated face and back veneers with a perforated acoustical core.

The microperforations are created with laser technology . A laser to “burn” tiny holes—only 0.4mm wide— over the veneered wood face and backer. They can barely be seen. These microperforations allow sound waves to pass through the wood face and be trapped in the perforated core, rather than bouncing back at you. This can be done to the side panels, the cabinet doors, and even the desk legs. You get a quiet office without losing that classic wood look.

Why Acoustic Wood Furniture in the Workplace Matters

Modern, open-floor plan workplaces are alive and buzzing with energy. Teams are working alongside each other, collaborating on projects and sharing ideas freely. Others are chatting in the walkways, catching up on their weekends and finding time to meet for lunch later in the week. This buzz can be a sign of happy employees, but it can also be bothersome to employees who need to concentrate.

In workplace settings — where office noise can be disruptive to employees — acoustic wood furniture can significantly reduce noise and help improve focus, productivity, and employee well-being. Selecting acoustic wood furniture can decrease auditory interruptions while also creating a functional workplace for all employees.

How Does Acoustic Wood Furniture Improve Workplace Sound

Similar to acoustic panels and other acoustic office solutions , acoustic wood furniture improves workplace sound by absorbing and diffusing sound waves. This can significantly reduce reverberation, echoes, and noise distractions.

Hard surfaces reflect sound waves, but acoustic wood can absorb them. This can lower the room’s overall sound amplification. Strategically placed acoustic wood furniture can reduce how sound travels. For example, an acoustic wood bookshelf can serve as a room divider to help dampen conversations within a semi-enclosed space. This placement can create distinct zones that help improve productivity.

Why "Pretty" Isn't Good Enough

In the world of sound, we measure things by how long an echo lasts. For a good office, you want that echo to stop fast. In a regular office with normal wood desks, that echo can hang around for way too long. That is why your head starts to hurt after a few hours of loud coworkers.

Most people think the ceiling tiles are enough, but they aren't. Even with good ceilings and carpet, you usually can't reach a comfortable sound level on your own. But when you swap those regular desks for SoniQ™ furniture, the echo time drops instantly, allowing employees to concentrate better. The furniture provides the extra sound-absorbing power that the room was missing.

How to Incorporate Acoustic Wood Furniture into an Office

With more offices returning to full-time or hybrid workplace schedules , there is a greater demand for acoustic wood furniture solutions. Fortunately, different options are available to meet a wide variety of office needs.

Acoustic booths and pods can be a cost-effective solution to creating more private meeting spaces. These portable stations can be used by employees who need to take a client call or finish a challenging task without distractions. These stations are soundproof, helping keep external noise out while also creating a level of privacy.

Free-standing acoustic wood panels can act as dividers, reducing noise levels between different sections within an office. This is particularly helpful for creating distinct collaborative zones and more private, quieter working areas.

Desks and workstations with high-backed panels made of sound-absorbing materials can be used throughout an office to absorb sound and reduce reverberation.

With numerous wood acoustic furniture solutions available, partnering with the acoustical professionals using SoniQ™ Technology by RPG Acoustical Systems ensures your workplace reduces office noise. Their acoustic expertise helps fine-tune your office environment — reducing noise distractions while improving speech clarity and overall workplace comfort.

Understanding Reverberation Time and Why It Matters

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:44:01 GMT

Reverberation time, or RT60, isn’t something that the average individual thinks about, but everyone has experienced it. It’s an integral part of acoustic design, and can make or break the space’s overall use and comfort.

What is Reverberation Time?

To understand reverberation time, you first need to understand reverberation. Essentially, it’s how long sound reflections can be heard in a room. When a sound is made — whether it’s someone speaking, a musical instrument, or a movie soundtrack — it sends out sound waves. These waves travel throughout a room, bouncing off hard surfaces and eventually fading. Reverberation happens when sound waves bounce around - the longer they bounce around, the louder and more chaotic-sounding the spaces can get.

Now, reverberation time is the time it takes for a sound to decay by 60 decibels in a room after the sound stops. The higher the reverberation time, the longer the sound lasts in a room. But a room with too little reverberation time can feel unnatural or “dead.” Finding the perfect balance is key to optimal acoustics.

How to Calculate Reverberation Time

To find the reverberation time in a space, you have to calculate it. It’s primarily calculated using the Sabine formula, which was originally developed by Wallace Sabine. To find RT60, multiply 0.161 by the volume in cubic meters (m3) of the space. Then, divide this calculation by the total absorption in the room measured in metric Sabins (m2).

Another room-acoustic metric, the Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC), indicates a material's ability to absorb sound. With this knowledge, acoustic professionals and designers can select the right materials for a space to adjust the reverberation time.

Note that applying the formula without a solid understanding of acoustics can be challenging. However, acoustic consultants in the field can perform this calculation for you and determine which acoustic systems are most appropriate for the venue.

What Impacts Reverberation Time

Various factors affect a room’s reverberation time. They include:

Room Size: The larger the space, the longer the reverberation time. This is especially true if the room is open, meaning there aren’t zoned areas or individual sections. This is why many open-floor-plan office designers create distinct zones or spaces. It breaks up the room’s size while segmenting different areas for different functionalities.
Surface materials : Hard surfaces like concrete, glass, and wood reflect sound more than soft surfaces, such as carpets and acoustical panels. A blend of both reflective and absorptive surfaces is needed in a space to get the reverberation time and the feel of the space just right.
Occupancy : What’s in the space also plays a major role. Again, a wide-open space will be more prone to echoes than a space divided into sections or that includes different furnishings. The number of people within the room will also affect reverberation time.

Why Reverberation Time Matters

Think about a time when you had dinner at a large restaurant. There may have been a time when you were unable to hear the person sitting just a few feet away from you. Every voice, every plate, every clink of wine glasses bounced around the room, creating louder and louder reverberations. As a result, you were unable to have any type of conversation with your dining partners, leading to a less-than-desirable experience. This same acoustic problem occurs in various spaces, from open-floor plan office environments to school concert halls to hotel meeting spaces to performance venues.

Reverberation time matters for numerous reasons, including speech intelligibility, acoustic comfort, performance quality, and functional purpose.

Speech Intelligibility

When reverberation time increases, speech intelligibility decreases. In certain venues, such as offices and classrooms, this can be very problematic, eventually leading to frustrated students and employees. Speech intelligibility is a core component of effective communication. Without it, messages can be misinterpreted.

Acoustic Comfort

High reverberation times can be uncomfortable. Shouting at your dining partner at a restaurant isn’t a great experience, nor is asking your teammate to repeat what they just said in a large conference room. Diners will eventually stop going to the restaurant — no matter how good the food is — and employees will become irritated and annoyed with the office setup.

Performance Quality

Lecture halls, concert facilities, and recording studios will all have different reverberation needs. Classrooms with high reverberation times can lead to poor speech perception and decreased student concentration and focus. Proper reverberation time in a concert hall or recording studio can enhance a musician’s liveliness or richness, making it sound as if the instruments or the singer’s voice are bouncing fluidly through the air.

How to Best Manage and Adjust Reverberation Time

The best way to manage or adjust reverberation time in a space is through acoustic solutions. Acoustic treatments are used to balance sound absorption and diffusion. These treatments range from wall acoustic panels to sound diffusers to suspended clouds and baffles. To treat a room, a variety of these treatments will be necessary as each serves a distinct purpose.

Partnering with acoustical consulting professionals who ensure that the right amount of the right materials are implemented to achieve proper design is the first step. The staff at RPG Acoustical Systems can then ensure that the prescription for the acoustics is met or exceeded with the highest-performance solutions and aesthetic appeal. Combined, this expertise in acoustics will fine-tune your environment so that speech intelligibility, acoustic comfort, and performance quality are right on point.

What Makes an Acoustic System — Not Just an Acoustic Product

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:43:59 GMT

If the acoustics of your space aren’t up to par, you may be researching different acoustic products to add. However, “spot treating” isn’t going to cut it. You need to think about the space holistically and solve the root problem. That’s where acoustic systems come into play.

An acoustic system involves multiple acoustic components tailored to a room’s size, layout, and purpose. Acoustic consultants will recommend an acoustic system as an approach, one that is comprehensive and thinks of the space holistically. A complete acoustic system is designed to address a range of issues, from excessive bass to standing waves to flutter echoes. Acoustic systems can completely transform a space.

Acoustic products, on the other hand, are individual pieces with a specific function. These products — such as reflectors, diffusers, absorbers, suspended baffles, and bass traps — are part of an acoustic system. When used as standalone pieces, they address only one acoustic issue, not a variety of issues. A common mistake many designers make is buying acoustic products off the shelf, hoping they will help fix the issue at hand. Adding an absorptive or diffusive wall panel here or there may help a little, but they won’t completely resolve the issue, and the space will therefore not live up to its fullest potential.

What are the Main Components of an Acoustic System?

Spaces vary based on dimensions, construction materials, and overall purpose or functionality. The need for a concert facility in a high school will differ drastically from that of an open-floor-plan office environment. However, the way that the acoustics are addressed is largely the same. Below are the main components of an acoustic system.

Wall Panels

One of the primary acoustic treatments is wall panels. They are easy to install, come in a wide variety of materials, and serve different purposes.

Acoustic wall panels absorb sound energy and prevent reverberation . When sound enters a space, sound waves scatter in different directions. If the surfaces of a room are hard, such as wood, concrete, glass, or metal, sound waves will bounce off them. This creates reverberations and leads to echoes.

Absorptive wall panels remove residual sound. They are often foam-backed, wrapped in acoustic fabrics, or perforated veneered wood, which absorb the sound waves. On the exterior, they can be finished in a variety of different materials. Wood panels can be custom-stained and lacquered to fit the space. Other materials include fiberglass, polymer, or acrylic resin.

Wall panel placement is equally important. To get the most out of each panel, you need to assess where sound hits or strikes. These are known as reflection points, or the distance between the sound’s source and the listener’s ear. For a seated audience, such as an auditorium or performing arts center , panels should be centered about 4 to 5 feet from the floor. For standing audiences, such as a museum foyer or gallery, they should be raised to about 5 to 7 feet to align with the sound source.

Acoustic Diffuser

Acoustic diffusers are specialized acoustical surfaces designed to scatter or redistribute sound waves. This ensures that the sound waves are redirected in multiple directions instead of reflected as a single echo. Diffusers are used to make a room sound “alive,” eliminating harsh reverberations and unnatural, “dead” spaces.

Acoustic diffusers can be made from different materials, such as wood, wood veneer, polymer, GFRG, and laminate. They can be treated with different finishes and paint colors to match or enhance the space’s aesthetics .

There are different types of acoustic diffusers. 1D (one-dimensional) diffusers feature vertical or horizontal wells and scatter sound in a 180-degree plane. 2D (two-dimensional) diffusers scatter sound in both horizontal and vertical directions. Quadratic Residue Diffusers (QRD) provide the most precise and predictable scattering of sound waves across a wide range of frequencies. Acoustic consultants will know exactly what types of diffusers are needed for your specific space.

As with acoustic panels, placement of acoustic diffusers is key. Rear walls and ceilings are common placements to help prevent sound from bouncing straight back to the listener. They are placed approximately 6 to 7 feet away from the listener.

Ceiling Clouds and Baffles

When it comes to acoustics, ceilings are often overlooked; however, both ceiling clouds and baffles can do wonders for a space. Ceiling clouds are panels suspended horizontally and are used for focused sound control. They aren’t mounted to a ceiling so that they can offset noise from both sides. They are great for offices, conference rooms, and home theaters.

Baffles are panels suspended vertically, which is great for capturing horizontally moving sound waves. These are best in high-ceiling environments, such as office cafeterias, warehouses, and concert venues .

Ceiling clouds and baffles are frequently used together in an acoustic system to target specific reverberation zones. For example, in an open-plan office, clouds can be placed over conference tables to improve speech intelligibility, and baffles can be hung over desks to reduce the general buzz.

Bass Traps

With the walls and ceilings both treated, the only remaining areas in the rooms are the corners. Bass traps are specialized absorbers designed to capture low-frequency sound energy that wall panels cannot handle. They can help rooms appear less “boomy” or “muddy.”

Bass traps are made from either porous materials like fiberglass or mineral wood, or solid materials such as metal and wood. They are placed in different corners of a space, such as where the walls meet the ceiling or floor.

Acoustic Systems Deliver Measurable Sound Control Results

As a holistic approach to the most common acoustic problems, acoustic systems are the outright winner. RPG Acoustical Systems can work with Professional experts to recommend acoustic systems that will transform the acoustics of your space while also adding to or complementing the existing aesthetics.

Acoustic Systems Versus Acoustic Products

The Role of Furniture, Walls, and Ceilings in Sound Control

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:44:04 GMT

The sound in a room depends heavily on its size, shape, and the materials or surfaces within it. Large rooms allow sound waves to develop, leading to long reverberation times, while smaller spaces can resonate, producing a hollow or boxy sound. While the physical size and shape of a room can rarely be adjusted, there are ways to reflect, absorb, and diffuse sound to improve sound quality.

The Role of Engineered Furniture in Sound Control

Furniture is a fundamental, yet often overlooked, component in achieving total sound control. While standard office pieces are typically reflective, causing sound to bounce and create a cluttered acoustic environment, identifying sufficient vertical surfaces for acoustic processing can transform a space. By identifying surfaces such as modesty panels, cabinet doors, and cabinetry, RPG can apply acoustic processing to turn everyday office equipment into active tools for sound control.

The core of this advancement is SoniQ™ technology , which converts normally reflective wood surfaces into absorptive ones. Unlike random bookshelves or dividers that provide only incidental benefits, furniture integrated with SoniQ™ technology is engineered and laboratory-tested to meet specific reverberation goals. For example, while the reverberation time goal for an office environment is less than 1/2 second, typical furniture and even absorptive ceiling tiles often fail to meet this target on their own. A space equipped with SoniQ™ technology can achieve this goal effectively without additional intrusive wall treatments.

When designing a space, aesthetics should not be a trade-off for performance. Standard wood office furniture looks identical to pieces processed with SoniQ™ technology, but the difference in absorption—measured in Sabins—is significant across and beyond the normal speech range. By processing vertical surfaces exposed to the environment, every component of a workstation, including both sides of a modesty panel, can contribute to the room's sound-absorbing performance.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a workspace where noise reverberation is minimized and clarity is maximized. By using these engineered surfaces, you can effectively eliminate the need for wall panels while maintaining the professional look of high-end wood furniture.

The Role of Walls in Sound Control

The walls of a room act as primary sound barriers and constitute the largest surface area for managing a room's acoustic profile. They can block noise, absorb waves, and reduce the transmission of unwanted sound. High-performance acoustical wall systems utilize three primary methods to master the sonic environment: blocking, absorption, and diffusion.

Blocking Transmission

Concrete and masonry walls act as strong barriers that stop sound waves from passing into adjacent rooms. Sheetrock walls are not as strong; they often require support from isolation systems and, in some cases, additional layers to create a stronger barrier.

Absorption

Standard solid walls are often too reflective, contributing to excessive reverberation. Modern acoustical wall systems solve this by using engineered absorptive panels like the Perfecto®, Dado™, or Expo™ series. These systems use precise perforations or grooves to "soak up" sound energy. For example, the Perfecto® Micro can achieve an NRC=0.95, effectively eliminating echoes while appearing as a solid, high-end wood finish. For more demanding environments, systems like the Absorbor™ Hi-Impact provide the necessary durability and tackability without sacrificing performance.

Diffusion and Scattering

Rather than just stopping sound, advanced acoustical wall systems use diffusion to scatter sound waves, creating a uniform sound field and a natural sense of ambiance. This is achieved through geometric designs and number-theory-based patterns and is used in meeting rooms and halls for presentations.

1D Diffusers: Products like the QRD® 734 or FlutterFree® use vertical wells and ribs to produce a directional response.
2D Diffusers: The Skyline® system uses unique block heights to scatter incident sound uniformly in all directions, minimizing "acoustic glare" in smaller spaces.
Hybrid Systems: The BAD™ (Binary Amplitude Diffuser) panel combines an optimized binary pattern of perforations with a sound-absorbent core to provide an ideal transition from absorption to scattering.

By integrating these specialized acoustical wall systems, designers can achieve specific reverberation and performance goals—far more effectively than through standard construction alone.

The Role of Ceilings in Sound Control

When you enter a room, looking up may be the last thing that you do. But if the room echoes or the sound reverberates oddly, the ceiling may be to blame. Ceiling tiles and panels absorb sound waves, preventing them from bouncing off hard, flat surfaces. This reduces echo and reverberation.

Ceilings can also be essential in soundproofing between floors. In an office building , specialized ceiling treatment may be necessary to prevent employees at their desks from hearing footsteps from people above. Reducing noise pollution can increase employees’ productivity levels. Also, ceilings can minimize background noise and echoes, which are important for speech intelligibility in classrooms, conference rooms, and offices.

Ceilings are often underutilized for acoustic treatments; however, various options can improve acoustics. Acoustic ceiling panels can be mounted directly to the ceiling, while clouds can be suspended horizontally and absorb sound from multiple directions.

Acoustic baffles are vertical panels suspended from the ceiling, offering another deflector for sound waves to bounce off. Acoustic tiles are designed to fit into standard drop ceiling grids and can replace existing ceiling tiles. This is a seamless and relatively low-effort acoustic treatment.

Tips for Building and Designing an Acoustically Sound Space

Building and designing an acoustically sound space requires a mix of treatments. Acoustic panels, thick, plush curtains, and rugs can reduce echoes and reverberations. Sound diffusers can scatter sound waves, creating a more natural sound. Ceiling panels and acoustic tiles can also manage reflections from above — a necessary treatment for large spaces, including audio listening rooms , concert venues, and amphitheaters.

RPG Acoustical Systems provides high-performance, engineered solutions for sound control. Specializing in sound diffusers and absorbers, RPG Acoustics can help acoustical consultants and architects choose the best surfaces to meet their goals and provide an acoustically sound, aesthetically beautiful space.