Sylvan Lake Community Center

The Sylvan Lake Community Center in Sylvan Lake, Michigan gathers as many as 150 people in a single multipurpose room for meetings, ceremonies, film showings, and community events. The room is built to feel open, with a vaulted ceiling, but that same shape and its hard surfaces made it difficult to follow a speaker or enjoy a presentation.

Challenge

Memtech Acoustics measured reverberation time (RT60) in the space and found values as high as 1.9 seconds, well above the 1.0 second maximum that a multipurpose event room should hold. The smooth vaulted ceiling was the main driver, reflecting sound back into the room, along with the walls, windows, and the room's symmetric shape. At 1.9 seconds, speech overlaps and background noise grows until a full room becomes hard to hear in.

Solution

Memtech set a 1.0 second target, the standard for a lively event space, and used a parametric model to size the coverage needed to reach it. Because the vaulted ceiling was doing most of the reflecting, the engineered layout concentrates absorption there, with additional panels on the walls where they add the most benefit. The panels were specified in a finish that suits the room so the treatment reads as part of the space.

Results

The engineered design is modeled to bring the room from 1.9 seconds to its 1.0 second target, giving the center a space where a speaker can be heard and a film can be understood across a full house. Memtech verifies reverberation on site after installation and adjusts the treatment until the room meets the target.