Acoustic project of ‘‘Mexico Radio ABC’’ broadcasting rooms

Abstract

Design for room acoustic insulation, reverberation time, and homogeneous diffusion of acoustic field, results in high building budgets for broadcasting and TV stations, theaters, etc., projected in Mexico. For this reason, they are often constructed without an adequate acoustic design. This paper presents the acoustic design applied to the construction of three broadcasting studios for ‘‘Mexico Radio ABC,’’ considering both a low cost project and long life materials fitted for the Mexico City’s environment, and taking into account a new national draft standard. The project was planned for noisy surroundings (sound pressure levels averaged of 78 dB, A-weighted). External noise comes mainly from traffic, nearby schools and helicopters; indoor noise comes from air conditioned and background office noise. The original volume shape was a parallelepiped, which had to be transformed to avoid undesirable reflections. The reverberation time chosen for control rooms was 0.35 s at 1000 Hz, and 0.22, 0.25, and 0.35 s at 1000 Hz for broadcasting studios; these values were achieved in practice. Final costs were low, in comparison with a construction without previous acoustic design.