Meeting Rooms

Meeting rooms refer to small to medium-sized meeting venues, primarily used for meetings. With sufficient volume and equipment, they can also be used for training, receptions, etc. Meeting room layouts are relatively simple, with minimal or no sound reinforcement equipment. Most rooms can be converted into meeting rooms with simple renovations. Demand is high, making meeting rooms the most numerous type of venue for meetings and government affairs.

Due to the aforementioned reasons, meeting room budgets are often lower than other meeting and government affairs venues, resulting in less weight allocated to acoustic design. However, as rooms with a clear meeting function, speech intelligibility is paramount; the room must have clear sound. Therefore, acoustic design must be considered, with sound absorption as the primary treatment and the reverberation time should not be too large.

The focus of acoustic design of meeting room is on the walls. Walls are the main area for sound absorption. Since meetings primarily involve human voices, based on the frequency characteristics of human voices, sound-absorbing materials with high and medium frequency absorption coefficients are suitable and structurally installed on the walls. The ceiling treatment for conference rooms depends on the specific circumstances. If the room is small with a single function, no special acoustic treatment is needed, a standard decorative ceiling is sufficient. However, larger rooms or rooms with multiple functions require more attention. Acoustic materials should be selected based on the primary function and installed in a zoned manner within the decorative ceiling.

Lecture Halls (Conference Halls)

A lecture hall is a specialized meeting hall, named for its primary function of delivering government reports. It is a typical meeting hall. Lecture halls are widely distributed, and large companies, schools, and government departments often construct them based on their specific needs. They are primarily used for internal meetings and government reports. If the hall has well-equipped acoustic equipment, it may also be used for small performances and cultural events.

Lecture halls generally have a slightly larger volume and better hardware and software configurations than typical conference rooms. If the area is large, steps are often added to the floor, making their function and form similar to a multi-functional hall. However, since their primary purpose is still meetings, speech intelligibility remains crucial and is a key focus of the acoustic design.

To ensure good speech intelligibility in the lecture hall, controlling the reverberation time is paramount. To achieve this, the walls, ceiling, and even the floor must be carefully considered in the design. For the walls, a combination of general and strong sound-absorbing materials should be used as the primary sound-absorbing components. The ceiling design should complement the floor, using sound-absorbing materials in some areas or throughout. For the floor, carpet or soft flooring should be chosen based on actual needs.

Multi-functional Halls

Multi-functional halls, are medium to large-sized halls with multiple functions and purposes. Although still classified as meeting and political venues, their functions extend beyond meetings, incorporating multimedia presentations and artistic performances, making them comparable in form to theaters or auditoriums.

Multi-functional halls are often large, even comparable to theaters, with rich sound reinforcement systems, naturally requiring a good acoustic environment. The hall must have good speech intelligibility and excellent musical clarity. The design must consider appropriate reverberation time and pay attention to the hall's shape to avoid problems such as parallel echoes and sound coloration.

Many multi-functional halls are large in size, fully equipped, and have specific architectural layouts, often featuring a stage and a distinctive stepped floor, similar to theaters. Therefore, in addition to the ceiling and walls requiring detailed acoustic design, areas like the stage and floor also need careful consideration. Walls primarily require sound absorption treatment. Given the large number of people in these halls, the lower part of the walls can be decorated with soft padding or fabric sound-absorbing panels to reduce injuries from accidental impacts. The ceiling should be designed with tiered suspended ceilings following the contours of the stepped floor. If the hall's primary function is for meetings, acoustic materials can be considered as the main ceiling material. The stage, as the main performance venue and primary sound source, must produce clean direct sound without excessive reverberation or superimposed sound, therefore, using highly sound-absorbing materials is ideal.