Studios Use Space to Boost Performance. Businesses Should Do the Same.

Dek: Studios understand the impact of an environment on performance. Business leaders should reflect that in their work spaces.

There’s little that compares to the thrill of a live show. The pounding bass in the chest. The ringing in the ears. The sound of hundreds of people singing in unison. It’s a beautiful blend of imperfection.

But when it comes to a professional recording? Those audible blemishes should be cleaned up. They can then become polished musical works. That starts with a strong performance, but the surrounding environment also plays an important role.

Recording studios are carefully designed with the listener in mind because reflections, echoes, and background distractions can all influence the quality of the final recording.

Offices and shared work spaces similarly rely on people to do equally demanding cognitive work. And yet, despite the demand, many offices are still built with little consideration for how sound shapes thinking and communication.

The connection between the right setting and a great performance is one of the music industry’s oldest principles …and it holds a surprising lesson for the future of work.

The science of listening versus simply hearing

When a musician straps on their guitar or sits down at a drum kit, they are hoping to hear a single, clean version of what comes out of their instrument. Reverberation is controlled and only added in post-production when it helps the final recording. For the live studio setting, though, echoes are often the enemy. They throw off timing and become a distraction.

The thing many leaders and office designers miss is that this same principle is at work in an office where speaking, not singing, is the communication method of choice. When a person tries to listen to someone in a meeting, one-on-one or even at the water cooler, if a setting is set up to echo the wrong way, it can lead to extra cognitive effort.

One study in 2024 found that things like reverberations and general atmospheric noise in “less-than-ideal acoustic environments” don’t just make it harder for someone to understand when someone is talking. The unwanted extra noise often creates a barrier to communication that cuts both ways. It can create an additional cognitive load on the speaker, who has to adapt their communication style to make sure they are understood better.

In other words, similar to a low-quality studio space muddling an otherwise incredible performance, a messy room design can actually create more work to make sure someone communicates well.

One of the first steps in finding a solution is differentiating hearing from listening. Creating a room where sounds will be heard is obvious, but designing one where deliberate listening can take place requires more intention. It doesn’t just mean getting rid of echoes entirely, too. On the contrary, the right kind of echo can actually help.

How reverberation influences communication and fatigue

Another study looked at how reverberation time impacts speech intelligibility in an open office plan, where there are very few barriers to sound. It laid out the Speech Transmission Index, or STI. This is an index designed to help objectively predict how effective intelligible speech can be in a given space, based on the acoustics of an office setting.

The analysis tool is driven by two key parameters: speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reverberation time (RT). SNR is a widely studied factor, and researchers can adjust speech and noise levels within a controlled environment to better understand how they influence listening conditions.

But reverberation time? There is a lot less information around how much productivity is impacted by how long sound lingers in an indoor setting.

The study found that when a single level of speech clarity was used in different RT settings, the results changed — and in unexpected ways. When the RT was longer (i.e., the sound lingered longer in the room), there was less work on the brain. People felt less taxed, mentally speaking. They finished their work faster and even adjusted to new sounds more easily. In contrast, in a room with a short echo and quick fade, people tended to be more distracted by a nearby talker.

What creative industries can teach business leaders

The study around STI did clarify that there were plenty of variables, including gender and noise sensitivity. The big takeaway, then, isn’t that there is one specific kind of room or echo that produces the most in an office setting. Instead, it can clarify that the way sound behaves in a space has an impact on the people working within it.

This is a concept that studio designers understand well. Their goal isn’t just to contain a space or block all noise. Yes, that is part of the process. You don’t want noise crossing room boundaries during a recording session. But it goes further.

The way sound is shaped within that space also matters. Acoustical design is both a creative and technical endeavor in these cases, too.

RPG Acoustical points out that this isn’t easy, and there is a science to getting it right. The designers at the professional sound absorption and diffusion manufacturer add that this is important in “shaping the sound within the room in both accurate and desirable ways that make for the optimal recording experience.”

The way you design a studio space is a critical first step. You need to be thinking about size, shape and construction from the jump. The height of the walls matters. So do the ceilings.

Rethinking office design through the lens of acoustics

For business leaders thinking of how sound impacts performance, the good news is that you don’t need to tear down your building and start from scratch to meet the Golden Mean ideal. Even if an office is already built with non-ideal specifications, there are other factors that come into play that can make a big difference.

For instance, the obvious option is working with what is already within a space. Hard surfaces like concrete and drywall tend to reflect sounds. Others, like rugs, can absorb and diffuse it better.

Even the kind of furniture in a space matters. RPG’s own SoniQ™ Technology reflects that philosophy by converting exposed wood furniture surfaces into acoustic absorbers. This helps reduce reverberation without sacrificing the warmth and beauty of natural materials as part of an office’s visual design.

Finding Low-Lift Ways to Improve Workplace Performance Through Audio

The key in all of this is making sure audible communication in a space doesn’t require work from individuals in the moment. Michael Ostroff, CEO of RPG Acoustical LLC, believes “environments should help people perform at their best without demanding extra effort.”

That means investing in the audible elements of a space beforehand. Hang a tapestry. Put in a carpet on a hard floor. Set up sound-absorbing furniture. That way, when someone starts talking or listening, they shouldn’t have to put in that extra work to communicate.

It may seem like a lot of up-front investment. But just like a studio that can produce a clean recording that can entertain for decades, an audibly optimized office can have a quiet, unseen positive trickle-down effect on productivity that pays off over time.