Meadowbrook Lakes Clubhouse Acoustics

Meadowbrook Lakes reached out to discuss a problematic noise issue that had been ongoing for years at their clubhouse that serves 184 condominiums. Condo board member Scott said, “it sounds like an echo chamber.” This is where they hold meetings and other events, so it’s important to hear what’s being said. They considered going completely ‘DIY’, but quickly learned that panels in a commercial space must meet certain building codes. That’s when they started exploring their options and called Acoustical Solutions.

The clubhouse space is 30′ x 63′ and peaks at 10.4′ high in the center of the room. There are also sets of sliding glass doors along both of the long walls. The clubhouse needed some advice on how many panels and where to place them within the room to maximize the results. The material in the room was reflective sheetrock and tile, none of which absorb any sound. After reviewing dimensions and pictures, the room appeared to have a reverberation time of approximately 3 seconds. Based on that information, we recommended adding approximately 375 square feet of absorptive material to reduce the reverberation time to a comfortable level. We chose to use a combination of wall and ceiling treatments. This helps break up the reflections between parallel surfaces. Since the walls didn’t have a lot of space to work with, we sized the panels to fit where space was available.

AlphaSorb® Fabric Wrapped Acoustic Panels predominately cover most of the short walls. Some space was available on the side walls with the glass doors. AlphaSorb® Fabric Wrapped Acoustic Ceiling Clouds run the length of the room, oriented to hang as a diamond shape. We were able to custom cut these panels for the spaces and choose a color that would complement the room. Acoustical Solutions was able to guide the client to the perfect solution and for “incredibly” less than the customer had budgeted for the project.