Speech intelligibility harms open-plan office quality, unlike in auditoria

Evidence

The subjective nature of noise is clearly evident in open-plan offices, where most office desktops are located nowadays. Acoustic noise, and especially speech and laughter, is the most significant source of distraction in the physical work environment in open-plan offices … Quite interestingly, in these environments, high speech intelligibility decreases sound quality, which is just the opposite of the requirement in public spaces, drama theatres, and auditoria. Hongisto (2005) suggests that the STI value between desktops in open-plan offices should be below 0.2 to prevent the negative effects of being able to hear each other’s discussions. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2492

Categorization

• QUESTION: The STI threshold of 0.2 is a concrete design rule — worth exploring what acoustic treatments achieve it and how it interacts with audience design.
• XREF: Connects to reading purpose of acoustic applications — this is a direct design specification arising from communication acoustics.