Episode #18 - Improving School Acoustics: Why, How and What - A Discussion With Sound Seal

Tune in to hear Mark Rich and Aaron Duncan of Sound Seal delve into the critical role of acoustics in educational environments and how proper sound management can enhance learning experiences for students and teachers alike. Our guests will provide an overview of industrial and architectural solutions offered by Sound Seal, discuss seasonal trends, and introduce a new fabric line. If your acoustics aren't making the grade, this is one podcast you won't want to miss.

 

 

 

Lisa Morrow, Content Marketing Manager, Catalyst Acoustics Group

Welcome to another episode of Catalyst Conversations. I'm your host, Lisa Morrow, and this episode will focus on noise control solutions in educational settings. My two guests today are from Sound Seal, one of the brands in Catalyst's portfolio.

If you're unfamiliar, Sound Seal has been committed to controlling noise in every environment since 1978. Included in Sound Seal's product catalog are acoustic fabric panels, baffles and sound diffusers, industrial products including curtains, enclosures, and pipe and duct noise control, acoustic floor underlayments, acoustic wood wall and ceiling products, and more. Joining me today is Mark Rich, Sound Seal's VP of Sales and General Manager, and Aaron Duncan, Inside Sales Manager, both of whom will discuss how products in the line are suited to combat reverberation in classrooms, auditoriums, gymnasiums, and other educational spaces. The two will also discuss product and program information specific to Sound Seal that may surprise some listeners.

Thank you both for joining us today.

Mark Rich, VP of Sales & General Manager, Sound Seal

Wonderful, thank you.

Lisa Morrow

Before we dive in, I gave an overview of Sound Seal in our show introduction, but do you mind briefly walking listeners through why acoustics are important in school environments?

Mark Rich

Acoustics in school environments need to be really looked at because, as we all know with, you know, children listening, paying attention in school, having background noises, it's quite distracting. So, having the proper acoustics in the space really leads to a better educational environment. And that's not just in the classrooms. That could be just absent noise in the hallway of kids, you know, going to another school session, in the school gymnasium because of different classrooms going on, you there might be a lot of noise that are spilling over in other classrooms. So it makes it quite loud, obnoxious. You may not have all of the attention that's needed and or required for the student in the front of the classroom, back of the classroom, to hear and understand the teacher. So, with having proper acoustics in the classroom or treated in the entire school to be, quite frank, is really going to help with the attention and with the education aspect of what needs to be happening.

Aaron Duncan, Inside Sales Manager, Sound Seal

Absolutely. Hearing fatigue is a real issue, not just for students, but also for teachers every day, all day, eight hours a day.

It makes a big impact, and hearing fatigue can set in as soon as 10 to 15 minutes in a really noisy environment. So, having a properly treated classroom can make or break-even behavior or responsiveness to lessons and amongst other students. So, a quiet classroom or a well-tuned band room or a well-treated gymnasium are going to make things astronomically different to the learning environment as versus an untreated space.

Mark Rich

It's a good way to put it, especially with the hearing fatigue. So, this is something that's brought up quite often to us. But when we hear about these particular issues, the hearing fatigue, as Aaron pointed out, is one of the major issues that are presented to us. And what does that really mean, right? So, it's not just the students, it's the teachers, right? How is the teacher going to hear the kid at the end of the classroom? Maybe some people aren't as good at speaking up or being quite as voice trippy about whatever's going on. So, to his point, if you tune the room, you tune the space, you make it more enjoyable for everybody involved, the teachers are teaching better, the kids are learning. It's an all-around encompassing aspect of what we do. It's one of our primary senses that we use. And if you improve upon it like anything else, it makes the experience better.

Lisa Morrow

Let's pivot a little bit. Aaron, I know that you spent a number of years in the industrial division. Can we focus on products? Can we talk about some products that you've seen to have good results in school installations?

Aaron Duncan

Absolutely. So speaking from the industrial aspect, you know, we often think about acoustics in classrooms or, you know, gymnasiums or band rooms or even auditoriums, but some of the things that do get forgotten about from time to time are mechanical closets or equipment rooms or even outdoor spaces or HVAC units or even some of the things you don't see when you're in a school, like duct work. So, noise can travel along those, and we have a litany of products that can address all of those noise issues. Anything from blankets to different types of wrap. But there's a good number of areas within a school that can benefit from some industrial noise products, and they're very easy to install, and they're very easy for us to help people figure out what exactly is they need.

Mark Rich

Let me just pivot off of that if you don't mind. So as Aaron kind of mentioned in going into exactly the industrial products that fit that, we also have the architectural side of those products that assist and keep the acoustics, you know, not flowing through, but, you know, mitigating as much as possible. So, what are those? Those are your standard fabric wrap panels that you would see in a classroom. They could be a standard panel, even up to a tackable one. So, you can use it for artwork, whatever's needed in there, so you don't have reverberation in a class.

If it's something you don't want on the walls, we can put them on the ceilings for you guys. Again, as mentioned prior, sometimes you just have exterior noise that's spilling into the classroom from somewhere else, so maybe your hallways need to be treated, right? That could be on the walls, that could be a digital artwork, that could be any type of school slogan that you want to put in to keep the kids excited and happy, change out the artwork. It could all be acoustic, so everything that you see on your walls, we can change and manipulate into acoustics so it's aiding in the space. Think of your gymnasiums. The basketball courts are all very loud.

So, what do you do? You put up maybe some baffles or banners in the ceiling to help mitigate some of the noise moving around and spilling everywhere and bouncing off the walls. We also have high-impact panels and our EchoWool product, which can go right on the walls, take heavy abuse. So, you're treating your school gymnasiums, treating your walls, you're treating your classrooms. And then, as Aaron pointed out earlier, you have your band rooms, your auditoriums. Maybe you need to tune the spaces. So that way the voice can be traveled or the sound could move around in the space properly. So, everybody is hearing it exactly as it's intended.

Sound Seal does all that, as he mentioned before. He's got the industrial side, we have the architectural side, we have a great way of manufacturing products to look like something that seamlessly flows in the walls to where you would never see it, or it could be something that looks like artwork.

Really, it comes down to what are you looking to do and how do you need to be treated.

Aaron Duncan

Absolutely, I like to build off of that. Having the architectural space considered for schools, we've got lots of bright vibrant colors. We can do tons of different shapes. We can do clouds. They don't have to be attached all the time. They can float down from the ceiling. Banners and baffles can be designed in a specific way in gymnasiums. We can even build panels that are, Mark mentioned earlier, almost hidden from plain sight in spaces like conference rooms or band rooms. Having the ability to do digital artwork or custom shapes and even custom sizes makes Sound Seal a really versatile, kind of a one-stop shop for a lot of the acoustical needs within schools.

Lisa Morrow

Looking at the calendar, we're quickly approaching summer vacation, which means schools will be closing their doors to students. Do you find that product inquiries and orders pick up during the spring and summer months, or is it the opposite? Do they slow down? Aaron, why don't you take this one?

Aaron Duncan

I find them to pick up, you know, starting in early spring, right into the middle of summer, project timelines change constantly for contractors and Sound Seal is set up specifically to deal with that. We know that those things can change at a moment's notice. And so, for our estimating team to be able to get back to people quickly, all the way down to our phenomenal production team and our stocking capabilities, so that we can quickly manufacture and get projects back on schedule, or help save a project when things do arise or you have an emergency situation. But Sound Seal really has been exceptional at meeting those deadlines or even dealing with those issues that arise in the contracting world.

Mark Rich

It happens all the time. mean, this is exactly why, you know, when I'm looking at it from my sales team to my operations team, when we know that the busy time is coming up, as we all are aware, especially with school picking up, what we do to help mitigate some of those issues and to meet the contractor's deadlines or the school's deadlines for reopening the classroom or getting certain milestones achieved over the summertime is we staff up.

So, we will bring on more people. We will bring in more inventory. We will bring in a little bit more of the products. So as the certain styles of the schools change, or maybe there is a oops we forgot moment, Sound Seal is there to quickly manufacture, get it out the door, make sure it's delivered on time, so it could be installed on time and nobody's missing a beat. That's one of the great things about our manufacturing style and the fact that we cover so many industries. mean, as Aaron mentioned, you have the industrial side of it for your mechanical closets. You have the architectural side that's inside the classroom. There might be, hey, you know what? We need to treat the underlayment of the flooring in a particular classroom or things like that. So we do that.

Or on the bigger side, we have our masonry division, which does acoustical sound blocks, right? Your masonry blocks that go into the pre-manufacturing aspect side of the business. So, Sound Seal is there from beginning to end. However, where the journey is, whether it needs to be quick, whether it's long term, or if it's something to where we don't know what we need, but we know that we need something, and we got to get it fixed. That's what we do.

Lisa Morrow

You touched upon custom orders and fabric colors earlier. I recently learned of a new fabric line. Mark, can you tell me a little bit about it?

Mark Rich

Due to a lot of demand that's been out there for fabrics, as we all know and as you mentioned, and Aaron said it too, there's a summer surge that kind of happens. So, with that, materials start to become scarce. And what we did as Sound Seal, we decided to come up with our own fabric line.

And why did we do that? We did that so we could be a little bit more in control of what the product is, the stock of that product, how it fits within our current customers' needs, being patterns, being colors. We are not gonna be limited now to stock-out situations with our own Replay line, which is what we're calling it. It's a fantastic new line. Aaron, I want you to give a little bit more details about it.

Aaron Duncan

Yeah, absolutely. Replay, again, brand new for Sound Seal, and we're really excited to get this thing off the ground and launch. Made right here in the USA out of 100 % recycled content material. We have incredible die-lot consistency with it, and it comes in over 30 bright modern finishes that really fit today's design elements. And it's been formally tested for acoustic properties and we've been kind of using it in the building here for the last few months just testing the waters with it and we've some great success and then contractors on the outside world that have come up against some challenges with other materials in the market have come to love us for it and we've already turned a few orders and gotten some repeat orders out of it. With a bit of a soft launch internally with Replay, we're firing on all cylinders, and it's full steam ahead from here out.

Lisa Morrow

Talk to me about the availability and the ship time on this new fabric line.

Mark Rich

Yes, so I'll touch on that one again. So, in order to meet demands and meet the customer's requirements, Sound Seal is stocking materials to make sure that we have them in our own facility. So, a lot of the times, what we can end up doing is getting an order out in two to four weeks. So how can we do that? We have a special program to where you can do an expedite program. That's seven to ten business days, typically turnaround time.

But if we have the fabric in stock, even if we're getting more and more demand, a lot of times it's just the product is coming right in as long as we have materials. That two-to-four-week window is fairly easy for us to hit, you know, and that allows a lot of our installers to have the availability to one work with the schedule. Sometimes, they will do a split shipment because they can only install, maybe a room at a time. So, they want to kind of split up the shipment.

We do that for them because we number, we label every single panel that's going out the door. We pre-install all the hardware to make sure that we don't have any inconsistencies. We wanna make sure that it's fast, easy, and quick to install. So part of that, with the Replay line, you have the fabric, you have the materials, you have the staff, we're ready. Anything to tap on that?

Aaron Duncan

No, I would say that not just with Replay and fabric wrap wall panels, but we have the ability to quick ship or expedite more than a handful of products. So our entire industrial line, we have the access to expedite those in seven to 10 days if we have those products or the facings in stock. Same to what Mark was saying earlier about keeping the Replay line very heavily stocked up on our shelves here allows us to respond quickly to those contractor needs or installer needs to get them out in two to four weeks. And that expedite program has been utilized so many times, day in and day out here at Sound Seal. And then right down to other products like flooring underlayments or some of our quickship WoodGrille products, we have that at the ready to get those out the door in a very timely manner.

Mark Rich

Yeah, we've seen a lot of those WoodGrille requests come across for those, you know, it's a standard one by eight grille based off how many blades you need, particular colors. Again, it's in stock, it's ready to go. And then we have a magnificent theater board that you can put right on top of it. It's just a nice black fiberglass that goes right on top. So, you get the great looks from the WoodGrille. You get that softness from the wood. You get the attractiveness from it. And then you have the sound absorption and the fiberglass that's being right put on top and you can't even see it. It all kind of disappears. But the beautiful part of that is, especially when you're walking into a school, when you're walking into the administrative offices, anywhere inside of there, it's a great add to put into the ceiling because one, you can get it done, you can hang it with your standard T-grid, it can hang very easily, you can add some acoustics to add to the space, but it adds a certain softness to the space as well a certain amount of sophistication.

So, a lot of our customers, meaning the schools, very much enjoy that because when you're walking in, want to, one, you need to get it done. It has to be there. You're not looking for necessarily the most expensive thing in the world, but you want it to look nice and feel nice. And then part of that, when you're looking at it and you're getting that sensory, again, going back to that, know, sight and sound.

Some of your key senses. So when you start to achieve goals in those regards of hitting those aspects of what's needed, really adds to the space.

Good call bringing that up.

Lisa Morrow

So, what I'm hearing is that you can cover interior and exterior schools soup to nuts. One area I think that we could talk a little bit more about are sports courts and outdoor fields. Is there a best time to tackle projects of this nature?

Aaron Duncan

No, actually, anytime is a great time, but of course, you know, throughout the school year, it may be a little more difficult, but we do see a ton of activity in the spring and summer or in the early fall when people are getting ready for the next season. We have a great series of product on the industrial side called Vivid, and then we have a partner product called Aerial with our architectural side. Both of those have some incredible finishes, and again, nice bright colors.

And when we're talking about sports courts and acoustic products, we're looking at things like tennis courts, pickleball courts, outdoor basketball. Sometimes you're going to have baseball or softball, track and field, or you're going to have some multi-use spaces outdoors. But all of those can benefit dramatically from acoustical products like that, especially when you've got schools that are in neighborhoods where you've got residential people nearby. And you want to be courteous of that as well. So, applying these products on some of your fencing that's there, not only does it make it look good, it's nice and safe, and then it sounds phenomenal and it's blocking unwanted noise from other areas while making it a comfortable space to use for everybody that you're using those courts.

It's a good point because even with the courts, as Aaron mentioned, a lot of people are installing them, you know, early on. You've got spring, summer, fall. In the wintertime, you know, due to the acoustical blankets that we manufacture that are specifically designed to hang on, like a chain link fence, as Aaron pointed out, if you wanted to, you can do it with some industrial grade zip ties. Hang it up. It's quite easy. Your standard maintenance guy can go out there, install these items when you need to, take them down.

That's okay too. A lot of people worry about snow or water or rain. You don't technically have to, but if you are worried and you are concerned about it, certainly you can go out there, install them, put them up during the season that it's there, go cut them down, put them back into your storage, and then they're put away. It's absolutely fine. That's one of the great things about that product.

Aaron Duncan

Absolutely, and we can't forget about our other new product launch, is EchoWool, which is the Cementitious Fiberboard, which is both an indoor and an outdoor product. It looks great. We can provide it painted. We can provide it with a natural finish. We can route logos into it, you know, not just looking at our acoustical blanket products or, you know, curtain products as some people refer to them as, but the EchoWool is an outdoor product. And then the Aerial Line, again, another great-looking product that can withstand all the elements, sun, rain, snow, UV resistance, it's all there. Definitely look into the EchoWool if you're looking for something a little different to go both indoors and outdoors for school.

Lisa Morrow

Thanks, guys, so we've just about hit our time here. Mark, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience?

Mark Rich

Yeah, you know, I just like to remind everybody, know, we're constantly evolving and moving over here at Sound Seal. We pride ourselves on developing new products that are coming out regularly because we want to listen to what the customer's demands are. Go to our website, take a look at it on there. You're going to see new products showing up all the time. We just had a complete revamp of our website, which has been tremendous. We've got a lot of great feedback. All the product lines that are on there are simply amazing through how it's being shown, how it's being displayed, and go on there and find reps, distributors. You want to hit up on that layer?

Aaron Duncan

Yeah, and before I get into there, definitely go check out the website and look at the market segments and look at our section dedicated to classrooms or educational spaces. There is a ton more information that we didn't cover on this podcast, but done a great job of including things like case studies. So, you don't have to hear it just from our mouth. You can you can read about it. You can read in-depth about the product. You can look at data sheets if you really need that.

But outside of that, we have distributors regionally around the US and Canada that do also turnkey installations as well. So, if you have a project that is in need of this type of service, please reach out to our team. Again, we're ready to hear from you, and we can direct you to the right products. We can direct you to the right distributors so that you can make the project a slam dunk.

Lisa Morrow

Wonderful. Thank you both again, and thank everyone who joined us today.