The Conference Room That Sounded Like a Submarine

The new boardroom cost $2.3 million. Italian marble floors, floor-to-ceiling glass, and a ceiling so reflective you could check your tie in it. The AV system featured twelve ceiling speakers, six boundary microphones, and three DSP processors that nobody knew how to program.

The first video call with the London office went like this: 'Can you hear us?' 'You sound like you're calling from inside a washing machine.' 'We have a $2.3 million boardroom.' 'Congratulations. You sound like you're in a $2.3 million washing machine.'

An RT60 measurement revealed 3.1 seconds at 500 Hz. The STI measured 0.28 — literally 'Bad' by international standards. The twelve ceiling speakers were creating a reverberant field so dense that the boundary microphones picked up more reflected sound than direct speech.

The Moral: SonaVyx's room analysis workflow would have diagnosed this in the design phase. The AI diagnostic scores the health at 23/100 and recommends acoustic treatment before buying a single speaker.