Episode #10 - Modernizing Music Practice Rooms at The Berklee College of Music

This conversation focuses on a music practice rooms project involving IAC Acoustics and QuietStar Industries at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Hear from industry experts Rodrigo Muzquiz from IAC and Steve Dutton from QuietStar as they detail this unique project and review how several critical obstacles were overcome to produce tremendous results.

 

Opening

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Catalyst Conversations. Today's topic is focused on a music practice rooms project involving IAC Acoustics and QuietStar Industries at The Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The discussion will be led by Rodrigo Muzquiz from IAC and Steve Dutton from QuietStar.

IAC Acoustics is a leader in noise control offering acoustic metal solutions for industrial, architectural, HVAC, and medical applications, and is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary in business.

QuietStar is the Northeast leading provider in turnkey noise control solutions in both industrial and architectural sectors and includes offerings with state-of-the-art noise reducing rooms, doors, windows, barriers, enclosures, and air moving attenuators.

And now let's get started with today's conversation.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

My name is Rodrigo Muzquiz and I'm excited to introduce you to today's podcast where I am joined by Steve Dutton of QuietStar Industries.

For a quick background, I'm starting on year four with the company (IAC). First couple of years I led the manufacturing facility in the North Aurora facility in Illinois. Since last year, I transitioned to the commercial side of the business.

Currently, I'm at the architectural enclosures sales manager at IAC which includes recording studios, music practice rooms, audiology booths, among others.

And Steve, I'll pass it over to you to share a little information about yourself.

Steve Dutton

Oh, great. Thank you, Rodrigo.

Again, my name is Steve Dutton. In 2006, I started with a partner QuietStar Industries which was a rep firm specifically designed to represent the IAC products.

Before then, all the way back to 1993, I've been in the industry more on the manufacturing end and working with the Berklee College of Music from both sides of the equation in terms of QuietStar Industries and even earlier when I was in manufacturing.

So, I know the Berklee College of Music folks very well and been doing this for a long time.

Was a partner in the QuietStar Industries up until last year which I ended up going into a more consulting role and I've been doing that ever since.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

So, thank you, Steve. Let's start with some details about this project specifically at Berklee College of Music.

What was the issue that was presented to you or how was it presented?

Steve Dutton

Well, the Berklee College of Music is in, it's really downtown Boston which as an aside is where I grew up, my hometown. But it's a really old historic district. Fenway Park is right around the corner and that was built in 1912. The finish line for the Boston Marathon is right on Boylston Street right across from actually, a church called the Old South Church that I actually grew up as a member of and that was established in 1669. So, it's a very, very old part of the country.

And so, The Berklee College of Music is right in the center of this vibrant historic area and while that's all really well and good, it makes for some challenges in terms of having modern amenities especially if you're in this case a school of music and you expect certain things.

You can't just have a hundred-year-old building and have it be kind of, it's cute that it's historic but it also has to be modern, and it has to be efficient for the students.

So, they had a bunch of practice rooms that were over 40 years old, and they were in the basement of several buildings and Berklee like many schools that are in metropolitan area kind of buys up buildings as they need them but they're old and this one old building was an old bank and it was in the basement, and they had these practice rooms that were after 40 years of students being in and out of them, they were pretty decrepit.

So, they wanted to clean that area up and so they came to us, and they were saying what can we do and what have you. And so, we kind of put together kind of an idea of what was possible and then we just moved forward from there.

Some of the challenges that we had on the project again and I kind of alluded to it was look it's not only a hundred-year-old building but access to it is having trouble as well.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

What were some of the unique challenges that were faced with this project and what were the expected timelines?

Steve Dutton

I guess probably the biggest challenge and again I alluded to how old these buildings are and even the deepest darkest basement can be cleaned up but getting into the building itself was probably the most difficult thing without elevators and stairways that were very limited in their size and their access. So, we ended up doing a lot of small deliveries that were bite size and that was one of the challenges that we faced.

Another challenge is trying to reconfigure a space and maximize the use without being able to see it empty and open. I mean they weren't going to tear down the practice center or the area before we could design our room.

So, we had to design with some flexibility in mind. And so, getting access, going in bite-size deliveries where the guys might spend two hours every morning bringing in the panels for rooms as opposed to trying to bring in all of them at once and having nowhere to put them.

And then, in order to meet the challenge of not really knowing what the space was going to be like we actually used some common-size panels where the rooms could be shrunken or grown on-site if an obstacle came in the way.

Like, again, a hundred-year-old building doesn't have blueprints and if we get behind this area and oh my goodness there's a sewer pipe that we can't move or there's something like that.

So, we did a lot of work ahead of time to make sure that A. we had a good plan but B. that we had flexibility in that plan. And a lot of times most modular manufacturers they get a size, they want to use it and if it doesn't fit, you’re kind of out of luck.

Well, here we had an ability where our size had some flexibility, and it worked out really well.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

It's interesting to hear all those challenges because most of the times are the things the projects that I've been involved with. It's typically an open space, first or second floor and there's not a lot of barriers to entry.

It seems like in this one there was a lot of thought process put into place when designing and trying to determine how long are your timeline for the project itself.

Steve Dutton

Yeah, no you're absolutely right Rodrigo and I mean there's all these little unforeseen things like our installers they put up cones on the sidewalk so that they could get in and out of the truck, but the students have a reputation of not thinking that the cones apply to them and so they're walking across your path anyway.

It's always an adventure but it's also really rewarding when you have a project work out as well as this one did.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

Yeah, I think we take it for granted spending time on the construction side that everybody knows and follows the same rules and students not knowing exactly where to go through.

So, if we focus on the solution to address this problem how did this project come all together and what kind of products were utilized in the making of it?

Steve Dutton

Well, this was one of the projects where first of all we probably spent more time pre-order on-site figuring out all these little details than we normally would but that's kind of our job and it's a secret to success.

So, we used the IAC Accutone 2 panel. It's a great panel for the music practice room. It has a good TL rating, it has an STC I believe of 53 and you have to check me on that Rodrigo but it also has an NRC of 0.8 so it's got some absorption and the resulting practice room with all Accutone 2 panels has a beautiful combination of being bright enough so that the music students can hear a reflection in their ear because no student wants to hear it be in a completely dead room because they want to hear what they're practicing but it also has enough absorption so that the overall NIC of the room the transmission from room to the corridor is a high one.

So, we used the Accutone 2 panel that was the obvious choice, and the second thing that we did was we designed all the rooms that fit into common-size panels, so all our panels were interchangeable.

If you're working, if there's 14 rooms and you're working on room one, that it has a combination of panels that would also fit on room 14. And that was really key as far as the logistics because we've tried in the past to kind of have IAC crate things, alright, crate number one should have these panels, crate number two should have these panels, but it's really hard to deliver those things and coordinate them.

So, by having interchangeable panels, you know, we could say, all right, deliver 1015-inch panels, 530-inc panels, and what have you, and it didn't matter where those panels could go to the room 14 - they could go to the room 7, they could go to room 1, so making the panels likely sizes really helped both in the delivery and it gave the crew the opportunity to you be flexible in their scheduling.

I mentioned, I'm sorry, with their assembly which I mentioned earlier, and we did run into there was one particular case where we were trying to expand a room that they had existing to be a little deeper but when they tore it down, there was some pipes that were in our way, and we couldn't make it deeper. So, instead, we just deleted the panels that would have extended it and they ended up having the same size room that they had before, but had we built it to be this other size with no flexibility, then we would have had to do some field modifications and nobody likes to do that, especially the user who feels that they pay for factory products.

So, those were some of the challenges that we faced. I think that one of the things that really helped in this case was we had a customer whose facilities manager for Berklee College of Music, who I worked with directly, was also an architect and he had the understanding of the needs. For example, the multiple deliveries because it's just like you can't do a lot there.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

I think it's pretty smart on your end, you know, to kind of configure it that way because I'm assuming that the space for staging was not very big, right, so like you mentioned, if we were to send the room one, then it would have to be a delivery for just one room or two and not have enough space to move things around at the site.

And then when you find situations where you started demoing stuff you would like in the case that you mentioned where you find the pipes then you had the flexibility to move things around and continue to move forward without, you know, putting the project at a halt.

Steve Dutton

Yeah, exactly, and I think a lot of that, Rodrigo, comes with experience.

I've been doing this for a long time, and I think I've probably made every mistake out there, and the installers are never afraid to let you know about your mistakes and so you put a lot of thought into it.

One of the other things that I really need to mention is IAC, when we were running this project and we have we designed with IAC, Quietstar designed, IAC built, and then together we collaborated to kind of do the final design of a ventilation panel so that you can access and maintenance the ventilation fan from the inside of the room.

Now this kind of came to our attention when we had done rooms earlier the year before and they were so backed up that one of the installers saying like these guys are never going to be able to access the fans if they need to meet and some and they, we did some tricks on site that you know they could access them if they had to but it was never going to be easy.

So, when they ordered these 14 rooms to go into you know largely the same general area of the school I decided like you know we just need to get better at this and so Quietstar sketched out a concept for a panel that would have the fan in it but it would also have some plates and integration so that we maintain the transmission loss of the IAC and they call it the blister pack - it's a ventilation silencer attached to a panel but it had everything integrated, but also had internal hatch available to access that fan from the inside.

It made building the panel a lot more complicated and Quietstar designed it, we sent the design over to IAC the IAC engineers laid it out and then I actually flew out to the plant and sat down with the guys on the shop and we you know sort of you know assembled the whole thing together and the first one we came out with, we did one as a kind of a proof of concept.

It came out like 90 percent right but there was a couple little things and each room has two blister packs of ventilation for intake and exhaust, and so you know, 90 percent right of 14 rooms. two panels a room, 28 panels. I'm going to hear about field modifications that needed to be done to access it from the installers and so you know to IAC's credit, they shipped us the panel we made some notes on it, they did some revisions, and then they built all 28 of them.

They came out beautifully and I fully expect to use this panel again in these kinds of situations, but what I was very impressed with is the willingness of IAC to do this because everyone has a harebrained idea on how they can make things better, but no one has to build it, and IAC came in and said well you know we're willing to take a chance on this.

So, I was very very proud of that aspect of this part of the project because now when they need to you know look the old rooms were 40 years old, these fans are electric, they're going to have failures you know years down the road. Someone's going to be very happy that they don't have to you know climb on the ceiling of a room that has no room to climb on to try to change the fan or just what Berklee College of Music did with the old rooms that we took down - they just didn't replace the fans, and they were just stuffing.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

It's interesting that you mentioned that because you know pretty much all my career has been in manufacturing so building stuff and taking care of equipment and one of the biggest complaints I've always had is that when people design things, they come in and then you know they sign it, they install it, and it's up and running but they don't think you know about the people that are going to do it after. They're going to provide the maintenance of it, and you know this is a great example where you know that was well thought of in order to continue to provide service to the fans in this case.

It's always good to hear that collaboration there is a willingness to provide you know the right solution and now I'm excited to hear that you know even though it was a 90 percent success on that first trial, that you know it was a little bit more to fix and that need to be done but at the end, it provided the product and the service that the customer was was looking for.

Steve Dutton

Yeah absolutely.

Another challenge we had on this room, or I should say this project was the very low ceiling height and we actually lowered the height of the rooms all of them by one inch by lowering by one inch all the rooms between an inch and a quarter and an inch and three-quarters of clearance between the top of our rooms and the top of the ceiling.

So, all the electrical, all the ventilation packs, all the stuff, a lot of stuff that normally you'd find on the ceiling on these rooms, we had to put on the sides for access and then of course, that kind of led into my idea of doing the ventilation with internal access because you know you just weren't going to get clean these rooms and you couldn't certainly get on the top of them.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

Looks like innovation at its best.

Steve Dutton

You know the one thing that I think that you know with QuietStar we try to be Mr. Good Rep, what we really we really think that we want to be the eyes and ears in the field.

We spent a lot of time walking the path that the product has to come in. We spend time measuring the elevator if we need to for the elevator. We spend time making sure that the customer gets what you know the customer needs and you know sometimes if I have 30 years’ experience doing this and the customer is buying their first set of practice rooms, then you know, I'm going to have some insights of stuff that they might not know about.

We did spend a lot of time on this I think it's one of the reasons that again I'm particularly proud of this project and my relationship with the Berklee College of Music because in the end, the manufacturer and ourselves and everyone wants to have a successful project that is successful not only to the day it's finished but successful 25-35 years from now where they're still using the rooms and they're well maintained.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

Yeah, there's a lot of pride to take on that and like you mentioned you know we want to make sure that all our products are built up so they can last, and they can perform and guarantee that performance.

What were the results after the project was completed and what kind of feedback did you hear from Berklee?

Steve Dutton

Yeah well, I mean again everything was really positive. The customer’s key point person on site was very very accommodating in terms of listening to what we had to say and following it and, for example, I remember at one point he was saying why do we need to do 20 deliveries, and I'm making up a number, was like  20 deliveries right for rooms, we did 14 rooms, we did 20 deliveries, and you know when we were budgeting it, I budgeted the cost of those deliveries and I was like why don't we just do two deliveries.

And it's like well, let's not go down the same path that happens every time because that's what we tried to do in the last one and it was difficult and as a result, no students were less happy in our midst so they were really good at listening and so I really have to applaud the owner's rep on this.

And then when we got done, you imagine these rooms are, we used a color called first star which is my favorite standard IAC color and not quite white, it's not it's a little darker than white a little a very light, light gray, but it looks whitish, especially when you have some good lighting on it.

So, you can imagine that it went from this dim area with 40-year-old rooms that were falling apart that weren't isolating very well. We took all those down, they finished off some of the ceilings that were crumbling, they got a new carpet, and they put in our rooms, and then we put little closer plates between the rooms to smooth them out and then you take a look at it and here's a row of beautiful white, well-lit practice rooms and you're like well this is a really nice a nice looking area.

And then you open the door, you're like oh there's someone in here practicing, so you know the real rewarding part and the success of it, the customer's happy and really the goal is hopefully they'll use this and build on it and do some more.

The students, I think, one of my favorite stories was with the 14 rooms we had obviously some were done ahead of others still a construction site and the guys would come in and there'd be kids practicing in the rooms. It's like oh you guys you got to go out this isn't ready yet; we haven't even hooked up the electricity, so the need for practice areas.

It's one of the things that schools of music are judged by. I think that there's a certain ratio – I think someone once told me that for every student that a school of music has, or 6 or 7 students, they should have at least one practice area, and so with the Berklee College of Music, they want to tout as many practice areas for the students as possible because the students, they don't want to wait in line or reserve practice rooms at each one, you to go in there and grab them so we were able to get these in there.

We were able to use more space so some of the rooms were bigger than previous ones and the students always loved that and so everyone was happy in that end, and like I said hopefully, they'll update some of the more areas because, as far as I know, the Berklee College of Music has well over 100 music practice spaces in their campus, which comprises a lot of Boston downtown.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

Yeah for me, I saw pictures of before, during install, and after, and aesthetically it's just very pleasing to see the results.

I'm yet to go and see it and experience because one of the things that like you had mentioned is you walk in, and you don't realize that somebody's already you know one of the rooms and practicing because the level of sound attenuation is there.

Steve Dutton

Years ago, we had an installer and whenever he did a row of practice rooms, let's just say there's six of them all in a row, he'd bring the owner down and he'd play a game that he called hide the boombox. And what he would do is he put a boombox in one of the rooms and then he would turn it up as high as he felt that he could he could without having it be heard outside, and then when the owner came by or the owner's representative, he'd say all right well here's this row of practice rooms, we finished them all, and he goes oh by the way which room has the boombox playing in it and you know and then of course, he couldn't hear the boombox because he had it turned to exactly the level of isolation that the room provided.

And then he'd go down and he'd open up all the rooms and finally one of them to open up, and he'd get this blast of music, and it was always fun and in a way to impress the customer of the value of these rooms.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

That's amazing, I love to hear that story.

Are there any other details or information you'd like to share about this project?

Steve Dutton

Yeah, I mean I think that it's always a challenge every one of the things I learned in this industry is that every project is unique and what we didn't learn at The Berklee College of Music doesn't necessarily apply to other projects, but you know you learn some methods and you apply those methods to other projects.

I think every guy in my shoes has learned to be very careful of measuring an elevator. I can't tell you how many times that we've had rooms laid out and it's like, oh guess what, it doesn't fit in the doorway or it doesn't fit in the elevator, and then you're making these concessions and of course all that just costs the project time and money and obviously you don't want to do that, so I think that regarding comments on this one, I'm really hoping that that Berklee will continue to sort of update all their other rooms.

I think that we've proven to them that we're the team to, as far as the product and the services for them, to go to. And I will also say that we weren't the cheapest, we were more expensive than the other company that they looked at and the other company that they looked at was the company that had put the rooms in years ago.

And it was interesting because I had heard that we were high priced and I kind of thought, well that might, that means this project's probably not going to happen. And then they decided to do just five the year prior and we did that, and I alluded to that earlier, and I was asking them, well okay I appreciate your business and now we're all talking, and I was like, why didn't you go with the other manufacturer, and they're like well you know the guy who came down to look at the space and give us the quote, he didn't know anything. He didn't bring up and he just obviously was just a warm body to go see a customer but didn't have the depth of knowledge and experience that evidently, and Rodrigo, I apologize I have a reputation of being long-winded, but you know we talked about this stuff and they were like, we had a lot of faith in you being able to manage these challenges because we're not the only person who has or the type of vendor who has problems dealing with downtown historic Boston.

I think they've had a lot of disasters in trying to service their buildings, whether it's craning up an air conditioner onto the roof or upgrading some stuff where plumbers are like, I can't you know. They have a lot of issues with being year-old buildings and what have you, not just us but for us to be able to recognize them and address them and say how we're going to address them, and I think that gave us the confidence.

And in the end, you want to provide value. You don't want to just provide the cheapest price and I think that we provided a value here. We were on time, we were on budget, and there were, and look there's always a few you know things that change, but we didn't have to, we didn't go back and ask for any change orders. We didn't ask for any extra considerations, and the truth be known is the project was a delayed a little because the carpet folks and the other trades couldn't keep up with us, and so it's always, I always say that you know it's okay if a project runs a little late, just never let it be our fault.

And this one, and it was I think they ended up being a couple weeks late on their choice, but it didn't impact anyone and certainly it wasn't because of us.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

Well, that's great to hear and, yeah I agree with you, I'm pretty sure their confidence in you and your team is there, so hoping for more work in the future as well.

And that being said, you know I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us and it was a pleasure to hear from you and looking forward to working on more projects together.

Steve Dutton

Thanks very much. You too.

Rodrigo Muzquiz

That's it for today. Thank you for joining us and see you on the next episode.

Closing

Thank you for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you’d like to learn more about IAC Acoustics and QuietStar Industries, you can visit the company websites at IACacoustics.com or QuietStarIndustries.com. 

 

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Stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to explore noise and sound control advancements shaping the future of industries worldwide.