Office sound masking systems

Sound masking is priced per square metre of treated ceiling. A networked system such as Biamp Cambridge QtPro or Soft dB Logison typically costs £18 to £32 per m² fully installed, with small deployments at the top of the band and full-floor rollouts at the bottom. A 1,000 m² office floor usually lands at £20,000 to £30,000 including design, calibration and commissioning. We give a fixed price after a floor-plan review or a short site visit. See the full sound masking cost breakdown.

We are vendor-agnostic. The platforms we design around most often are Cambridge Sound Management QtPro and QtX (now part of Biamp), Soft dB Logison and AtlasIED. The right one depends on the ceiling (accessible tile grid, exposed soffit or a mix), how many zones you need and whether the system should share a network and control platform with your other AV.

White noise has equal energy at every frequency, so it sounds hissy and most people find it irritating. Sound masking is shaped to the frequency range of human speech (roughly 100 Hz to 5 kHz) and set at 42 to 48 dBA, so it covers conversation without drawing attention to itself and blends in with air-conditioning noise. More detail in sound masking vs white noise.

It is worth it where overheard conversation is the problem: open-plan floors, rooms next to HR, partner or client suites, and reception desks. The improvement can be measured rather than guessed: we take speech privacy readings before and after, and the system is tuned zone by zone until the target is met. Emitters have no moving parts and need only an annual level check. If the problem is echo rather than overheard speech, acoustic panels are the better first spend.

A 1,000 to 1,500 m² floor is typically installed in two to four working nights, so the business day is not disrupted. Work happens above the ceiling grid, so desks and IT stay where they are. Calibration is done out of hours with a sound level meter and a 1/3-octave analyser to confirm each zone matches the design spectrum. Exposed-soffit floors can need access equipment and weekend working. Larger buildings are phased floor by floor.

It can. WELL v2 feature S06 (Minimum Background Sound) specifically recognises sound masking in open-plan and enclosed spaces, BREEAM Hea 05 covers acoustic performance, and the BCO Guide to Specification sets acoustic expectations for office floors. We provide commissioning reports with measured levels per zone, which your acoustician or sustainability consultant can use in their submission.

Yes; it is most valuable wherever confidential conversations happen. Law firms and banks use it around partner suites, deal rooms and HR offices; healthcare providers use it at reception, nursing stations and consulting rooms to support UK GDPR patient confidentiality. We design to a measured speech privacy target (for example an Articulation Index below 0.20 in adjacent zones) rather than a fixed volume.

Very little. Networked systems have no moving parts, run on low-voltage cabling and report faults to the controller. We recommend an annual visit to re-check levels with a calibrated meter, rebalance zones after any office reconfiguration and update controller firmware. Remote monitoring is available so an emitter fault is picked up before anyone notices.