Acoustics: How It Works and Why It Is About More Than Just Decibels

When people talk about acoustics, they often reduce it to one simple question: how loud or how quiet a space is. In reality, it is much more complex than that.

Acoustic comfort is not just about noise level. It is about how sound behaves in a space: how it travels, reflects, fades, how clearly speech can be heard, whether there is echo or reverberation, and how natural and comfortable the environment feels overall.
That is why good acoustics are not simply about making a space quieter. They are about creating an environment where it is comfortable to speak, listen, work, and stay.

What sound is?

Sound is a physical effect on air.
Put simply, any sound source creates an energetic impulse that causes the air to vibrate. This produces a sound wave that spreads in all directions through three-dimensional space.
When that wave reaches the ear, it causes the eardrum to vibrate. The signal is then transmitted to the brain, and we perceive it as sound.
Human hearing typically covers frequencies from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.
Frequency is the speed at which a sound wave oscillates. Lower frequencies are perceived as deeper and more rumbling, while higher frequencies are heard as sharper and brighter.

Sound isolation

If a sound wave cannot pass through a barrier, it reflects back. This is how insulation works: the structure prevents sound from passing further.
Sound absorption

Soft and porous materials absorb sound energy, converting it into heat through internal friction.
Reverberation

If sound repeatedly reflects off hard surfaces and takes a long time to decay, a rumble appears, and speech becomes less intelligible.
Diffusion

Textured surfaces scatter sound waves in different directions and help avoid harsh reflections.

Acoustics is not just about materials

Comfort is influenced not only by how much sound is reflected or absorbed, but also by how it is distributed within a space.

Standing waves

If a structure has parallel surfaces, standing waves can form between them. Sound begins to accumulate at certain points, especially in corners, where a peak in sound pressure occurs. As a result, a voice sounds normal in some places, but unexpectedly loud and unpleasant in others.

Material resonance

Every material has its own natural frequencies at which it tends to vibrate. If a structural element falls into resonance, it can start amplifying specific frequencies instead of dampening them. Then, instead of comfort, a hum appears, along with the sensation that the space is producing sound itself.

Why good acoustics are not absolute silence

It may seem that ideal acoustics would mean absorbing all sound completely.
But that is not the case.

If a space absorbs 100% of sound, it becomes too “dead” and unnatural. People often perceive such an environment as acoustically strange and even psychologically uncomfortable. It no longer feels like a normal working environment, but almost like sensory emptiness.

That is why balance is essential in good acoustics. A comfortable space should be neither too echoey nor completely over-damped. It should preserve a natural acoustic response in which speech remains clear and lively, but without excessive reverberation or harsh reflections.

Good acoustics are not the absence of sound. They are properly controlled sound behavior.

Booths acoustics

How acoustics work inside the booth

Inside the booth, it is not one material or one number that matters, but the entire system.
The structure works through a combination of two principles: isolation and absorption.
The booth has two walls that act as isolators against direct sound waves. Between them sits sound-absorbing material. When sound interacts with this structure, part of the energy is reflected, while part travels into the inner layers, where it is gradually dissipated.
This principle works in both directions:

when sound travels from outside to inside,
and when someone speaks inside the booth.

That is why the booth does not simply make the space quieter. It creates a more controlled acoustic environment, where speech remains intelligible and outside noise and internal reflections do not interfere with perception.

How the booth affects the acoustics of the office itself

Acoustics matter not only inside the booth, but also in the surrounding environment.
If an office is too large and lacks partitions, sound waves spread freely throughout the space. If there are also many hard surfaces around, strong reflections build up and the overall acoustic background becomes increasingly tense.

In this kind of environment, the booth works not only as an isolated workspace, but also as an element of broader acoustic correction.

Thanks to its outer felt covering, it does not simply reflect sound — it also absorbs part of it. In other words, within the office it works as a large acoustic surface that helps reduce unnecessary sound waves and improve the overall acoustic comfort around it.

This is especially important in open-plan offices, where the problem often lies not in one loud source, but in the accumulation of noise, reflections, and constant background sound.