MONTHLY NEWSLETTERS

“I didn’t even know that job existed!” If we had a nickel for every time someone at Metropolitan Acoustics heard that when explaining their job, we would have…at least $50. Since you receive our newsletter, you probably know at least a little bit about what we do as architectural acoustical consultants, but did you know that acoustics is a wide-ranging, highly interdisciplinary field that extends well beyond room acoustics, sound isolation, and mechanical system noise control? Read on to learn more about areas of acoustics that you may have never considered!

Every morning on the way to work on the train, hundreds of commuters put headphones on and listen to music. And each day on virtual calls with clients and internal team members, the speakers sitting next to computers relay the words that are being said. Speakers are commonplace in modern society, found everywhere from cars to grocery stores to our phones. Without them we wouldn’t be able to listen to music or even take a phone call, but how do they work? The short answer is that they convert electrical signals into sound waves, but how exactly does that occur? Read on to find out.

Despite many companies bringing their workforce back to the office, the technologies that enabled remote work during the pandemic years remain with us and are used as often as ever. For many, this means that, whether they work from the office or from home, they’re able to collaborate freely and easily whether their colleagues are 10 feet away or 10 miles. Sometimes, however, the technologies don’t play as well with physical realities as we’d hope, and remote collaboration goes awry. Read on to learn more about the interface between technology and the real world.

It’s scary season and one of the most frightening things to us acousticians is hearing loss. In previous newsletters we’ve talked about how extended time exposure to elevated sound levels can cause hearing loss and what you can do to protect yourself, but there are other causes that are not as well known. Read on to learn about ototoxicants and how they can affect your hearing.

This month’s newsletter covers a topic that we encounter on many projects at Metropolitan Acoustics – noise ordinances…or the lack thereof. Most urban and suburban municipalities have a quantifiable noise ordinance, but subjective noise ordinances are common in rural and exurb areas, which can cause a whole host of problems. Read on to learn more about how this can affect the residents of these areas.

The construction industry is filled with a multitude of standards and guidelines that developers and architects can use to select design goals for their projects. Whether it is a sustainability program like LEED, or an independent organization such as FGI, the acoustic criteria within these standards and guidelines can often be quite tricky to understand without an acoustician on board. Read on to learn about a few examples where the expert understanding of acoustic terminology at Metropolitan Acoustics can be beneficial when designing and constructing a new building following specific guidelines.

Now that spring has turned to summer, you may be getting used to the birds chirping and bumble bees buzzing. These summer sounds present a comforting backdrop for a pleasant morning on the patio with a fresh iced coffee in hand. But just as you’re about to take your first sip, you’re greeted by that other sound of summer: the start of a gas-powered lawn mower engine just on the other side of the fence, followed shortly thereafter by a gas leaf blower. Fortunately, there is a growing trend towards electric-motor lawn equipment that has the power to save your morning from noise (and air) pollution. Read on to learn more about the acoustic side of this trending topic.

Deep in the throes of the pandemic in late 2020, the idea of returning to the physical office was a distant dream. By 2022, most of us had returned to the office on a limited basis, but still spent more time working remotely. Now in 2024, the post-pandemic work model seems to lean towards an office-heavy hybrid – a shift motivated by the promise of collaboration, spontaneous interactions, clearer communication, and team cohesion. Companies are now looking for ways to optimize the use of their facilities with greater emphasis on flexibility and interpersonal communication and a deemphasis on space-hogging private offices and one-employee-one-desk models. However, the shift from the solitude of home offices to the humming open office environment can present significant acoustic challenges. Read on to learn more about open office speech privacy.

Have you ever blown across the top of a bottle to make it whistle? Did you notice how the pitch of the whistle is higher when there’s more liquid in the bottle and gets lower when there’s less liquid? That’s because the bottle is a Helmholtz resonator. Read on to learn more about the magic of this peculiar class of objects.

A buzzing florescent bulb. Crackling power lines. A humming computer graphics card. We can all recognize the distinctive sounds of electricity that surround us, but where does this noise actually come from? Read on to discover some of the ways electricity and acoustics intersect.