What is Sound Masking?
If your space is very quiet, or has only a low level of ambient background noise, loud sounds might be an issue.
For example, in a very quiet office people will often hear conversation from nearby areas clearly and understand the words easily, because the room is so quiet and sound can travel freely.
Or, in a naturally quiet bedroom, any sound that arises is more likely to wake you up than sleeping in a room with some background noise, such as fan, nearby traffic, or ocean waves. A more active ambient soundscape can hide loud sounds better than a very quiet soundscape. Sound masking involves adding speaker(s) that generate a constant background noise (that our bodies can naturally tune out), which can help us to hear nearby sounds less clearly and therefore be less bothered by them.
In many situations sound-masking is the most appropriate solution for solving noise problems. Sound-masking techniques aim to strategically add ambient sound to a space in order to lessen the effects of outside sound.
Common uses of sound-masking include white noise machines outside of a doctor’s office, and recordings of repetitive nature-sounds (such as ocean waves and waterfalls) that are designed to help you fall asleep. In both of these cases, ambient sound is added to the environment in order to lessen the extreme change in noise that may come from outside, such as a barking dog or a loud car.
Sound-masking solutions are also great for the workplace. In large spaces such as open offices and call centers sound-masking can raise the baseline of ambient sound in the room, and mask the sounds of other conversations that are happening around. They can also be useful in aiding offices to have more privacy.
We specialize in specifying and installing a complete system with all components needed for sound masking. Once such a system is installed, it can be used as any speaker or sound system: to play music, use as a PA system to make announcements, or play any type of background sound (such as nature sounds, etc).