---

Let's all go out and SHOUT!!!

When friends and family decide to visit a restaurant or location-based entertainment center (LBE), the occasion is typically more about socialization than it is about the entertainment or food and beverage. It';s about socializing while breaking bread together or playing together. Sitting at a table or bar or playing together becomes the facilitator or pretext for the socialization. In fact, in our increasingly wired culture, such occasions are often among the few times that friends or family socialize together in the real rather than in the digital world.

A major prerequisite for socialization in a real world setting is the ability to conduct a conversation. And that is where a large number of restaurants and most indoor LBEs totally fail to offer the environment that fully supports socialization. Instead, you either have to raise your voice to be heard, or more often than not, SHOUT.

Here';s the problem. When the noise level at the facility exceeds the speaking voice level, the speech becomes hard to impossible for the listener to decipher, so the speaker has to raise their voice to a sound level greater than the overall sound level in the area in order to be understood.

The sound level of speech declines the further you are away from the speaker. At one foot away, face-to-face, normal speech is around 70 decibels (dB) [Speech levels of course will vary depending on the speaker, as some people talk more softly and some louder than average.] But if you are roughly three feet away, across the table from your companion, the sound level of what you hear drops to around 60dB. So if the room';s sound level is 70dB, the speaker will have to talk very loud, louder than normal to be heard and understood. And if the room';s sound level is 75dB, then the speaker will need to SHOUT to be heard and understood.

The problem becomes even worse if the listener is greater than three feet away from the speaker. At six feet away, a normal voice is heard as being around 54dB. (Maybe this explains why we are now seeing people in restaurants texting each other.)

And the problem isn';t limited to all the guests in the party. It affects communication with staff. With a room noise level of 76 dB, a wait staff would be unable to understand a dining guest speaking in a normal voice at one foot away. This can easily result in incorrect food or drink orders.

Several research studies have examined noise levels in restaurants. One early study found an average noise level of 71 dB. A 2012 study examined 30 casual dining and fast food restaurants in the Orlando, Florida area when the restaurants were only 50% full (less noisy than when they are full). Noise levels were found to vary from a minimum of 58dB to a maximum of 97dB. The majority of the restaurants (21 of 30) had maximum levels between 75 and 85dB. At those sound levels, a speaker would have to SHOUT to be heard at three feet in a 75dB sound level restaurant and won';t be understood at all at sound levels above 78dB. Eight of the restaurants had maximum levels over 85dB. Forget about conversation at those restaurants unless you know sign language. And for getting your order correct, good luck.

The bottom line was that only 23% of the restaurants surveyed had noise levels low enough to allow people to converse in normal conversation tones. And remember, this was when the restaurants were only 50% full. When full, the study authors determined the background sound levels would increase by 4.6dB.

The situation gets even worse for indoor LBEs. Our company has surveyed sound levels in indoor FECs throughout the country. In most, the constant background sound level is in the 80-90 decibel range or even higher, and on top of that, the FECs are very reverberant. At 80dB, even shouting won';t work at 3 feet from the listener. And at 85dB, you won';t even be understood when you SHOUT if you are more than one foot from the listener. Keep in mind that 85dB is the maximum sustained sound level permitted by OSHA for workers over a typical 8-hour work day unless they are wearing hearing protection. People build cars in factories that are less noisy than most FECs.

In addition to its negative impact on socialization, loud and reverberant environments have a direct negative psychological and emotional impact on the guests and staff inside an LBE. Loud, noisy places induce physiological stress in the body, increasing adrenaline flow, blood pressure, and heart rate. That is just the opposite of the affect restaurants and LBEs should be offering guests - a stress-free and relaxing time. Instead guests become stressed, irritable, and grumpy. They don't have fun, will probably leave early and they probably won';t return. And your staff members, who have to stay, are just as miserable. Service, productivity, and even safety deteriorate.

None of this has to be this way if attention is paid to acoustics throughout the design process, no different than the attention paid to the design of heating and air conditioning or lighting. Once a facility is too loud with bad acoustics, it can become very expensive, sometimes impossible to correct. If acoustics is a consideration in the design process from the very beginning, a great acoustic environment, one where guests won';t need to SHOUT, one that guests will want to return to, can be created at minimal additional cost.

Our company is proud of the careful attention we pay to acoustics in our design of LBEs for clients and how it contributes to our clients'; increased attendance and profits. We have even received recognition for how acoustically enjoyable the centers we produce are.

Alan Hess, the architectural critic for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote the following about Bamboola, a 25,000 SF children';s edutainment center we designed and produced a number of years ago in California:

". . . Usually the entrepreneurs who create these places and services add value to make it worthwhile. At Bamboola, they add supervision by khaki-clad staffers, a variety of choices for different ages, an educational overlay and a comfortable place for adults. . . This is where Bamboola's well-crafted design makes it stand out from places with similar activities. . . Bamboola's designers, White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group of Kansas City, create a place where adults can take their kids without being driven crazy by the noise, the dreary "are we having fun yet?" atmosphere and the lack of places to sit down.

"This is smart. This is very smart. They did this through careful attention to basic design.

"On a small scale, Bamboola did what Walt Disney did 42 years ago. Walt Disney took the hopelessly tawdry, sleazy amusement parks of the 1950s and reinvented them as clean, comfortable, wholesome Disneyland. [White Hutchinson] took the tawdry, noisy fun centers of the 1990s, added a dash of the children's discovery museum, and created Bamboola. . . . It has taken the pleasure and comfort of its customers into account with intelligence and care. It uses design to make a better product and a better environment."

This is the standard of care to design of the guest experience we have practiced with every project our company designs and produces.

Yes, acoustics is just as important a consideration to the design of an LBE, FEC or restaurant as lighting, the HVAC system or the other design disciplines. In fact, faced with the competition today of social media, it is even more important to success to create a real world atmosphere that supports real world socialization. Otherwise, there is no reason to leave home and spend money when technology provides us with so many other socialization avenues, the majority of which are basically free.

---