Sound Masking Systems Comparison: Cambridge Sound Masking and Atlas Sound Masking on Tech Talk Ep. 3
Welcome back to the third episode of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk. Featuring sound masking systems from Cambridge Sound Management and Atlas Sound, Coltin and Nathan will be breaking down the ins and outs of commercial sound masking on this episode.
Hey guys, thanks for joining us on another edition of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk. I'm Nathan, I'm Coltin, and we're here today to talk to you a little bit about sound masking.
What is it? Yeah, sound masking. What is it? How's it work? What's it good for? Uh, what can it do for you? And, uh, what's all this stuff?
All right, Nathan, I need you to tell me a little bit about what sound masking is. Because frankly, you know, there's this huge question out there. What is it? What it actually does? What's its purpose? So, I really need to know this. So, go ahead.
All right, so sound masking is basically introducing white noise or pink noise into an environment for the purpose of enhancing privacy or improving privacy, allowing people to work without distractions, that kind of thing. So sound masking itself, by using white noise or pink noise actually is kind of like more appropriately tuned HVAC noise. You know, it's like the air conditioner at the house, so it's running in the background. You don't really notice it, all of a sudden it shuts off. You can hear the fish tank, you can hear the kid down the street, you can hear the apartment next to you, and it's driving you crazy.
I notice that all the time. Yeah. So, with sound masking, this actually introduces essentially noise into the room, but in a way that is constant to where acoustically we just get used to it. We don't mind it. You know, you just get used to it always being there. And as a result, you're less prone to hear, you know, the pin drop next door or be worried about what the guy in the cubicle next to you saying, or in the hospital room next to you or that kind of thing.
Yeah. So, there's actually a couple of different ways that sound masking can work. Not to get too technical. There's what's called direct sound masking, which involves emitters pointing down. And then there's indirect sound masking, which is actually emitters with speakers pointing up. With indirect masking, the sound actually shoots up, reflects off your actual hard grid ceiling and then kind of comes back down. It's interesting.
Yeah. So, there's pros and cons of both. There is gobs of academic material about which one's best, which way you should lean, which way you shouldn't. We like both options because both are very practical. But we wanted to share with you a little bit about, you know, what these two options look like and how we can help implement them. So, what do we have here?
Yeah, so we have Cambridge Sound Management and Atlas Sound. Both of these guys have been working on their sound masking game for a long time now. More recently came Cambridge Sound Management and then Atlas Sound has been, you know, kind of considered the grandfathers of this arena essentially. So, we want to make sure, you know, you're getting the information that you need to make the decision or just get more information on which you should go with.
So, direct sound masking. Where we, where we kind are we seeing those? What are the benefits, like you said, there's pros and cons to each, but, we want to make sure we get you there.
Sure. So, Cambridge Sound Management emphasizes more the direct masking, a little small emitter. This goes into your drop tile. Basically you just got a little collar, you drill a hole in your acoustic tile, pop this guy in place, tighten it up. Picture your tile in between the emitter here and you've just got this little tiny guy generating white noise or pink noise.
What does white noise or pink noise sound like? Once again, like HVAC or, like your air conditioning. Just a nice little noise that over time is going to blend into the background. Your employees, your staff, your patients, your customers, they're not going to notice that it's going on in the background. You're just going to basically not have to be sitting in completely silent, quiet rooms just to being disturbed by every little thing.
Yeah. So, this is the QT emitter, one of these covers about a 10 by 10 area, a hundred square feet, as Coltin's point. Now it comes in four packs, packs of four. So, you can do 400 square feet of coverage at a time, wherever you need it. And then, install on those. Couldn't be easier. Like I said, comes with the hole saw, then you a drill a hole in your tile. If you have other kinds of ceilings, you know, open ceiling, there is a pendant kit, there's beam clamps to fastened, tear open grid beams. There's also a universal bracket for surface mounting it. And then you do have a lot of options on cabling. Cabling couldn't be easier. These do come with cat three network cables, just RJ 45 cables. That's basically a cat five cable for the less schooled in the different types of network cabling. It comes with cables and it hooks up to your generator here. Then mounts onto your wall, plugs into an outlet, mounts on your wall, and then you just set the level and the volume control on the QT 100 here for all your emitters. IT guy can handle that kind of thing. We can walk you through all the steps and how it goes together. And then if a QT 100 doesn't quite give you all the features that you need, we can help with that conversation. It also has some big brothers, a QT 300 and the QT 600 that we can tell you all about.
And you said indirect sound masking usually. Do we see, you know, physically see it compared to in the ceiling with Cambridge? You said normally they shoot up. So what does that kind of involve? Are they open ceilings - it's firing up or it's about like ceiling tile? How does that work? How do you, how do you kind of get around that obstacle.
Great question. So yeah, this big black box here (Atlas Sound M1000) is the indirect emitter, which basically is a 70-volt speaker firing up. So, you might have been in many skyrise buildings that have these types of systems and never known it because you don't see it. This goes above the tile. It can be used in open ceiling environments, basically, hangs from these points with the chip, with the cradle or a chain and that hangs from the ceiling and then it's a conventional 70-volt system from there. You just got your positive lead, your negative lead, and then you've got your 70-volt transformer tap here. Once again, if any of those details overwhelm you, don't worry, we can help walk you through how that aspect of it works. But what's nice with this is because it's shooting up, it's going to cover a wider area.
So we're going to get a lot more coverage space out of this type of emitter than we are with the Cambridge. The downside is because it's covering a wider area, sometimes it has hot and cold spots, so it's more important to make sure and have it designed for you professionally. But because there's fewer of these required for a larger space, you can many times use fewer emitters and they also are a little bit lower cost. But once again, like I started off, there's pros and cons of both. We can walk you through those pros and cons and we can also help design a system for you with either direct or indirect masking. With indirect masking, you are going to need an amplifier as well as a signal generator. Once again, this is a 70-volt system. So basically like, in this case, we have the Atlas GPN1200.
That is a sound masking generator that also has a four-watt amplifier built in. So that's what the white noise and pink noise generates essentially. Yup. You got it. The signal comes out of this to where it can hook up to a bigger amplifier or this can power, I would say up to eight max of these, so very basic system packages that are easy to use that we can help walk you through as far as utilizing indirect masking. And once again, if you have questions about how we can design something along these lines for your application, reach out to us, nathan@proacoustics.com or Coltin@proacoustics.com or reach out to us on our 800 number – 888-256-4112. That's www.proacousticsusa.com. Once again, if you like what you see here, give us a like, let us know you're watching. And be sure to reach out if we can help with anything further. Thank you for watching. Take care.
Yeah.