ANC Acoustic Awards 2024

We are pleased to announce that we have been recognised for our exceptional level of service in the category of Environmental Noise at the 2024 Acoustic Awards.

We have been working alongside Lady's Wood Shooting School since 2015 to help them to control the noises they create in the community.

Our entry for the awards relates to our work, in particular on noise barriers which surround the shooting stands. The intention was to reduce the levels of sound heard in the community, but one of the side-effects of using large plain barriers was that it reflects a lot of sound back at the shooter, and in an alternative direction, potentially where it is not desired.

We investigated alternative shapes for a barrier, including faceted, curved, bowl shaped, wedge shaped and just about every shape imaginable. We also investigated forming the barrier from a variety of readily available materials and we looked into the absorption and reflection characteristics, thankfully which have been well documented.

Even with the best choice of material, the shape was still not ideal, so with agreement from the shooting school we experimented and proposed a multi-edge barrier based on the principles of the acoustic black hole, a concept not considered for outdoor noise barriers before. The idea of an acoustic black hole is that all sound which enters gets trapped and cannot escape (much like light would be in a traditional black hole in space). Whilst we acknowledge the prototype does not offer the optimal performance yet, the multi-layer design has been effective at reducing the reflection experienced from the face of the barrier whilst still helping to reduce the sound levels in the community.

The ANC Acoustic Awards are an annual event. More details can be found here.

Award sponsored by ANV Measurement Systems.