white noise speaker

[stellar]

so I work in an office, and we just built a new building. they put is in the top floor. its crazy. its a big open room. the ceilings have to be 25 feet and sloped. surrounding the big open room is individual offices. also with high sloped ceilings. the offices have this crazy echo and the big open room is completely dead. there are acoustical tiles at the ceiling and also a white noise generating speaker (or maybe several).

its very quiet in this room, like a library, even though it is a busy office with 25 people working in it!

I am wondering if the white noise is contributing to this and what effects it might generally have ? I can't actually "hear" anything so I dont know if its on! should I be able to hear it if its on?

[Eric Desart]

Originally Posted by stellar

.......
its very quiet in this room, like a library, even though it is a busy office with 25 people working in it!

I am wondering if the white noise is contributing to this and what effects it might generally have ? I can't actually "hear" anything so I dont know if its on! should I be able to hear it if its on?

It's not easy to imagine the exact circumstances you describe.
Hence a few loose points.

White (or adjusted) noise is often used as masking sound. It's used in open offices and to compensate (mask) for lower TL of walls.
In avery large room the diffuse field expressed in pressure is low (energy spreads over large volume). As such direct sound can be dominant (meaning we're less disturbed by others).
Our idea/feeling of being silent is related to a dynamic range (signal to noise).
By applying white noise, dynamic disturbing sounds (as e.g. voices) seem less loud (being masked).
When we're in a soundfield where masking sound is applied, that is normally so distributed, and the spectrum is as such that after a while we don't hear that sound anymore or don't recognize it as such (unless toggling it on and off).

A radio at 45 dB is silent in a noisy room and loud in a very silent room.
In a high insulated anechoic room one can hear ones own hart beat.
You can count your pols without feeling on it (depends on individual and sound level in room).
Hence the notion silent is a relative (subjective) notion.

[stellar]

good point.

I guess what I mean is,

you would expect things to be louder, but they don't seem that way.

Suppose I might have trouble hearing the person next to me speak,

in the old office this meant that the noise of everyone else in the room was so loud that I could not hear the person next to me

in the new office, the background noise of all of these people is present, but not a bother really. Its not overbearing. I don't feel like its "too loud". But I still sometimes can't hear the person next to me.

But it *feels* like if I were to measure the Db's the measurement would be at least 12 db lower.

Its actually sort of nice really,

but I have concerns about tinnitus, headaches, etc....



if that makes any sense.