Acoustic treatment refers to the physical changes made to a room, such as absorptive panels, ceiling baffles, carpet and soft furnishings, that reduce reverberation and background noise so speech remains clear — both in the room and at the remote end of the call. In most conference rooms, reverberation and acoustic return echo are the biggest acoustic challenges, ahead of background noise.
Whether a room with acoustic challenges needs treatment, a different audio system or both depends on the nature and severity of its issues.
This article explores the causes of conference room acoustic problems, how to measure room acoustics and where acoustic treatment reaches its limitations in being beneficial.
Acoustic treatment can improve meeting experiences, but understanding the problems it addresses and when it helps is essential:
Reverberation and return echo are the main acoustic problems in conference rooms and for remote participants, with background noise close behind.
The three measurements that gauge these specific acoustic challenges are reverberation time, background noise level and speech intelligibility.
Glass walls, concrete floors and minimal furnishings reflect sound because they offer little to absorb it.
An overtreated room can sound artificially “dead.”
Nureva® audio systems feature continuous autocalibration, allowing them to adapt to a room’s changing acoustics, which often results in a reduced need for acoustic treatment.
Nureva offers an acoustic check tool that measures a room’s acoustics before installation.
There are three main causes of poor conference room acoustics:
Reverberation
Return echo
Background noise
Reverberation is often the main issue behind poor conference room acoustics. Reverberation, or RT60 (reverberation time 60 dB), quantifies how long a sound takes to fade in a room. When the sound of speech reflects off hard surfaces before fully dying out, it builds up, making it harder for microphones to isolate a single talker. A widely cited target for conference rooms is RT60 at 0.6 seconds or less.
Return echo is a related but separate problem. It happens when a remote participant’s voice comes out of the room’s speaker, is picked up by the room microphone and gets sent back to them with a delay. When a room has a lot of reverberation, the audio system’s echo canceller has to work extra hard. A treated room with less reverberation makes the echo canceller’s job much easier.
Background noise is another issue. Sources such as HVAC systems, street traffic and adjacent rooms can add a steady hum that competes with speech. These sounds cannot be mitigated by any design or aesthetic choice made in the room itself. That’s why acoustic treatment for conference rooms to improve audio quality typically starts by addressing reverberation and return echo — and then background noise.
Three measurements are used to determine whether a conference room will sound good on a call:
Reverberation time
Background noise level
Speech intelligibility
| Form of acoustic measurement |
What each acoustic measurement means | Ideal acoustic target for conference rooms |
| Reverberation time (RT60) | How long sound takes to decay by 60 dB after it stops | Between 0.2 and 0.6 seconds (Nureva). |
| Background noise (dBA ) | Steady ambient noise from HVAC, traffic and adjacent spaces | Maximum background noise level of around 40 dBA (Nureva). |
| Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) | How much of the speech signal remains audible and understandable over background noise, scored on a 0 to 1 scale defined by ANSI/ASA S3.5. | Higher is better. There’s no single fixed target for conference rooms, but the score will increase as reverberation and background noise come down. |
In practice, the higher the level of background noise relative to a talker’s voice, the harder it becomes to separate the speech signal from everything else in the room. Reverberation, background noise and intelligibility scores all matter and they need to be considered together rather than in isolation.
Most acoustics mistakes in conference rooms come down to misjudging how much treatment a room actually needs — not the specific product chosen. Some rooms receive no treatment at all when they actually need it, such as those with hard, reflective surfaces. Then in other rooms, excessive treatment is applied.
The most common acoustic treatment mistake in conference rooms isn’t picking the wrong panel or baffle — it’s having no treatment at all in the spaces that actually require it. Modern meeting room design often prioritizes aesthetics — exposed glass, polished concrete and minimal furnishings — over how a space will actually sound. Acoustics become an afterthought rather than a design input, creating a real challenge for microphones trying to isolate speech.
Glass walls, concrete floors and minimal soft furnishing reflect sound rather than absorb it, increasing reverberation. Without carpet, upholstered furniture and other absorptive materials, the sound energy keeps bouncing around the space instead of dissipating. That’s the scenario where conference room acoustic treatment panels, ceiling baffles and soft furnishings make the biggest measurable difference, since they give the sound energy somewhere to go and therefore reduce the reflected sound.
Investment in too much treatment can work against acoustic goals. An overtreated space can sound acoustically “dead,” and pushing reverberation too low makes the room sound unnatural and provides an uncomfortable experience for those using it. Less background noise is generally better, but only up to that point.
A room’s acoustic properties shift constantly with doors and windows opening, people moving around and furniture being rearranged. Continuous autocalibration automatically adjusts an audio system to those changes. Its main job is to manage conference return echo, resetting the echo return path in real time so remote participants don’t hear their own voice repeated back to them. With traditional audio systems, configuring that return path might require a knowledgeable installer to set it up and make adjustments manually. With continuous autocalibration, the adjustments happen automatically and the audio system keeps adapting as the room changes.
While Nureva doesn’t sell acoustic panels or baffles, its systems use patented Microphone Mist™ technology to optimize audio performance. This complements any acoustic treatment and in some cases removes the need for it.
In addition, Nureva offers tools that measure reverberation and background noise and make recommendations for the space.
The patented technology at the core of all Nureva audio systems creates a dense grid of virtual microphones — individual pickup points created when two or more physical microphones work together to focus their sound pickup on a distinct location. The audio system listens to each virtual mic simultaneously and zeroes in on the predominant sounds.
Microphone Mist technology makes possible several features that improve room acoustics:
Continuous autocalibration — continually adapts to changes in a room’s acoustic profile, including those caused by rearrangement of furniture.
Intelligent Sound Targeting — uses adaptive learning algorithms to preemptively ignore persistent background noise like HVAC, rather than suppressing it after the fact.
Position-based gain control — applies gain separately to each sound in a space based on its position so conversations sound more natural.
The Nureva App’s acoustic check tool measures both reverberation and background noise in a space. A balloon pop (or loud clap) captures reverberation, then a separate reading captures background noise. The two combine into one score:
The score tells an IT team, before installation, if a room is ready as is, if specific placement and configuration considerations are required for the audio system and if the room needs acoustic treatment.
Whether a room needs acoustic treatment, a different audio system or both depends on its reverberation and background noise levels. Nureva audio systems come with unique technology that easily adapts to different types of rooms, making them a good choice for acoustically challenging spaces.
To predict audio performance at a specific location in your rooms, an acoustic check tool is available in the Nureva App before installing a system. Learn more about how acoustic check measures reverberation and background noise in a room in seconds.
For those still deciding on an audio system, a demo can be booked to see firsthand how Nureva combats acoustic issues.