As a possible buyer of an office sound masking system, it’s helpful to understand what makes any given sound masking system “good” or “bad” from an engineering perspective. All companies will try to sell their hardware as “the best in the business,” so it’s important to be able to discern the truth.

Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done, but Building System Solutions is here to help. Below, we discuss a few common expectations for a quality sound masking system, as well as how our products fulfill them.

Sound Masking Systems Should Be Specific, Yet Flexible

Breaking down an entire technological innovation is a little hard to do in the span of a single blog post. However, every sound masking company prides itself on different features of its systems, and there’s plenty of innovation in the industry.

Our team at Building Systems Solutions firmly believes that all good sound masking systems should be both specific and flexible.

Why a Custom Sound Masking System Is Important

Every space, from an acoustic perspective, works differently. In layman's terms, this means that your sound masking system should be customized to fit your business’s given space.

To put this into a metaphor, think about an electric guitar. It would need to be turned up to a different volume to sound the same in a practice room as it would in an amphitheater. Sound needs to be engineered and tinkered with to create the desired effect in any given area, and sound masking systems are no different.

At Building Systems Solutions, we use only the best technology to measure the acoustics of your space and customize a sound masking system that will best fit your unique environmental needs.

Sound Masking’s Flexibility Requirement

Your campus is bound to be noisier at certain points of the day than others, and your sound masking system will need to adjust its own volume to compensate. Traditional systems might be able to adjust a few times per day to compensate, but they don’t compare to our Soft dB Products, which constantly monitor the room’s noise levels and adjust accordingly.

Sound Masking Should Be Seen, Not Heard

And if you even see the speakers, they should be inconspicuous. One of the most significant beauties of sound masking is that it’s nearly inaudible to the human ear.

In order to mask sound and not add to a noisy office din, the right sound management system will be engineered to remain in the background of a space’s acoustics, even if that space tends to be relatively quiet.

How’s that possible? Sound masking isn’t the same thing as white noise—which consists of all the audio frequencies a human ear can hear. It’s not even pink noise, which has reduced higher frequencies. Instead, good sound masking is an adjustable, fluctuating piece of technology that mimics the frequencies of human speech, meaning that it is imperceptible, yet dampens faraway conversations and other such noise.

Check out our blog “The Science of Sound Masking: How it Works” for more nitty-gritty details on the ins and outs of this tech.

Sound Masking Must Help Meet Speech Privacy Regulations if Needed

Sound masking isn’t just a way to improve worker productivity—though it does that too, as we prove in our sound management blog “How Does Sound Masking Increase Worker Productivity?”

Indeed, many businesses in the financial or healthcare industries need their systems to aid in speech privacy, as privacy in these spheres is protected by law, specifically HIPAA Regulations or the GLBA regulations.

While it’s possible to achieve a private ambiance without the use of sound masking, that doesn’t mean it’s easy, and it’s not always feasible in a given space. If you’re in the financial industry and looking for this tool to help protect the information of your customers, it must be flexible and powerful enough to do so.

Luckily, in addition to sound masking systems, Building Systems Solutions also provides privacy testing. When you work with us for your sound management needs, you’ll feel good knowing that your system will help on the legal front, too.

Good Sound Masking Gets Results

We can talk forever about what makes this technology amazing, but at the end of the day what’s important is that it makes your business amazing. Good sound management should give you the following:

Increased Worker Productivity With Improved Sound Management

We’ve written an entire blog on this subject, so check it out! For now, though, know that sound masking creates the flexible, yet calm atmosphere all of your employees need to be at their best. It is unreasonable to expect workers to give it their all when their environment is actively dragging them down and making them miserable.

Sound masking serves as a seamless, catch-all, comfort-providing solution. It  limits distracting conversations from across the room, enabling more extroverted workers to settle in and focus, while allowing introverts to do the same thing as they appreciate the quiet. With good sound masking on your side, your team can happily reach its full potential.

Sound Masking Should Lead to Happier Clients

Again, we’ve delved into this topic in detail in our sound masking products blog, but here’s the short version: because your workers are more comfortable and productive, they can better provide the great service to your customers that you expect from them—leading, of course, to happier clients. Comfortable facilities thanks to sound masking also can create more positive customer experiences.

Sound Masking Should Provide a Hearty ROI

Soft dB, whose products we install and wholeheartedly endorse, has created a sound masking ROI calculator that gives context for what we mean by “hearty.” Indeed, this is one business investment that’s great for the bottom line, as we detail in our noise reduction office products blog.

Its mighty slew of benefits, from increased worker productivity to upped client satisfaction, should all come back to benefit you in the end. If you don’t get good results, then your sound masking system isn’t working as it should. Period.

Improve Worker Productivity, Confidentiality and More with Sound Masking Systems from Building Systems Solutions

Ready to experience the true best in sound masking? Our team is here to provide. Give our Blaine office a call now at 763-502-1515.