Problems with room acoustics often occur when there is an unwanted reverberation time in a specific room. Some examples where this problem often occurs are meeting rooms, class rooms, lobby, church, theatre etc.
A high reverberation time in a room makes speech unintelligible and makes conversations very difficult.
Every room with it''''s own usage and dimensions, has an optimum reverberation time.
So first the reverberation time of the room in question has to be measured and compared with the optimum reverberation time.
There will be a shortage of sound absorption in the room. The acoustical engineer can advise what kind of materials should be installed in the room and how and where, to get the best results.
Nowadays there are many sound absorbing materials in all sorts of materials, colors etc. so they can be integrated in existing designs.
Before building any room where speech intelligibly is required, we can make reverberation calculations in the drawing stage to assess if problems are expected. In the design stage many times small adjustments can be made to get the right results.