Kate Paradis, sound masking specialist, and acoustic engineer, Francois Gariepy, explore how sound masking transforms modern offices by improving privacy, productivity and wellness while debunking myths about noise and acoustics.
In this episode, host Kate Paradis, sound masking specialist at Soft dB, sits down with Francois Gariepy, a seasoned acoustic engineer with over two decades of experience, to unpack the world of sound masking in today’s office environments. Together, they dive into why noise and lack of privacy remain top challenges in open offices, and how sound masking provides a proven solution that supports focus, wellness and productivity. You’ll learn how these systems work, what sets them apart from noise cancellation and why proper installation and calibration are critical for success. Along the way, Kate and Francois also tackle common myths, health misconceptions and the real impact of sound on workplace experience.
Sponsor:
This episode is sponsored by ODP Business Solutions!
Kate Paradis: [00:00:00] The thing about sound masking systems is that they're relatively low cost, when you're comparing to other acoustic solutions, which involve construction, installation, things like that, so this is a very low cost solution, but it's enormous ROI if we're talking about worker wellness and productivity and a sense of privacy and all of that.
Host: Welcome to Connected fm, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by ifma, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get started.
In today's episode, host Kate parody sound masking specialist at Soft DB sits down with Francois Gari, a seasoned acoustic engineer with over two decades of experience to unpack the world of sound masking in today's office [00:01:00] environments. Together they dive into why noise and lack of privacy remain top challenges in open offices.
And how sound masking provides a proven solution that supports focus, wellness, and productivity. You'll learn how these systems work, what sets them apart from noise cancellation, and why proper installation and calibration are critical for success. Along the way, Kate and Francois also tackle Common Myths, health misconceptions, and the real impact of Sound on workplace experience.
Now, let's get into it.
Kate Paradis: Hello welcome. My name is Kate Paradis. I'm a sound masking specialist with Soft db, and I'd like to introduce you to Francois Gariepy tell us a little bit about your background with acoustics to start off.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, so I'm an acoustic engineer and I've been working with Soft dB since 2003, so it's more than 20 years that I've been doing sound masking [00:02:00] projects all over North America.
Kate Paradis: That's that's quite interesting. So this episode obviously is a must listen for definitely for facility managers, HR professionals, office designers. Business leaders, anyone looking to create a better work environment. So tune in as we demystify sound masking here with myself and Francois, and we can also showcase how it has evolved over the years.
Balancing privacy, productivity, and wellness in today's open office environments is more challenging than ever. There is excessive noise, lack of speech, privacy, and that all leads to distractions. Potential stress among staff patrons of the business. And what if there was a way to control that sound effectively without adding physical barriers?
So today we're exploring sound masking. So this is a proven acoustic solution that enhances speech privacy. It reduces distractions and fosters a more comfortable and productive workplace. So from the per perspective of us leading sound masking [00:03:00] manufacturer, we will describe how this works, why it's essential in the workplace, and the impact that it has on employee wellbeing.
So first question for Francois. What are the biggest noise challenges today in office environments?
Francois Gariepy: You know, one of the challenge I think is that acoustic is often neglected in the design stage is something that you cannot see. So, sometimes visually it's do not stand out. But acoustic conditions are critical for comfort and for people working in office space when they do polls about workspace satisfaction.
Acoustic is always in the top five of the reason why people could, would be uncomfortable. In office space and according to a liman index, there was more than 70 per percent of workers that said that noise issue were sometime distracting, or disrupting their ability to work properly in office.
Kate Paradis: Right. Okay. I can relate as well. I work with many facility managers and definitely everyone is aware of one of the [00:04:00] biggest complaints is temperature but acoustics also is following close behind. So tell us why is speech privacy becoming a major concern for businesses right now?
Francois Gariepy: Well, people have, I think, better expectations of what privacy that they need privacy when they go to banking and when they go in a lawyer's office. There's definitely the expectation that your conversation's gonna be private. This also applies to clinics. They have requirements. So doctors will have requirements for privacy and it's not normal to overhear private conversation in those type of spaces.
Also, I think after the pandemic, people were coming back to the office space and were realizing that there was a lot of distraction, audible distraction in the workspace. So I think we've got a lot of complaints when people were coming back to work to the workspace.
Kate Paradis: Right, agreed. And definitely in you're, if you're in a doctor's visit, you don't want your conversation being overheard, and you definitely don't wanna be [00:05:00] distracted all day long by the conversations of your coworkers. Though we still wanna Maintain collaborative workspaces. So, this is definitely sound masking is a great way to do that.
So how does noise impact productivity per se and employee wellness?
Francois Gariepy: Well, the idea with sound masking is to increase the background sound level and to reduce the ability to overhear conversation. And the ambient noise level also will be distracting. It will, there's a lot of guidelines about that in the design. In design guides such as lead or well guidelines for office space.
So there's different types of noise in the office space. We wanna have like the HVAC noise level from mechanical or from mechanical equipment. Check so it's not too loud. But we don't want also an office that is too quiet, and that's one of the mistakes sometimes that people do.
The design. The architects will design the office so that the ventilation levels are super low. It gets into a very quiet office [00:06:00] and it's kind of counterintuitive, but. If it's too quiet, sometimes you might have very tiny noises that will be distracting and annoying for the people. So I think there's a balance between getting a sound level, background sound level that's loud enough to be comfortable and loud enough to be effective at masking those distracting noise.
Kate Paradis: Right, exactly. I've been in several offices that are, you know, they've got K 13 spray on the ceiling. They've got lots of absorbent materials in the office, so from an acoustics perspective that way, spaces that are designed quite well, but it essentially removes all possible background noise, and so it becomes kind of eerily quiet in some of those spaces.
So adding sound, masking in addition to all those acoustic treatments I've seen in my experience, makes it quite comfortable because the masking, it just ups that baseline a little bit of the ambient noise so that when we do hear that whatever's in the background it's just much less distracting and people's voices also.[00:07:00]
You can hear them talking, but it's reduced clarity of their speech, so
Francois Gariepy: And I remember walking walking in a space once. It was so quiet that just walking in with the client, there was eight people that turned around and say, who's the, who are those people walking in? So definitely just by walking in the space, we distracted
Of seven, eight people in a small open space.
So it's crazy.
Kate Paradis: right. So, let's go back to the beginning here. And for the folks that have never experienced these systems before, what is it? What is the actual system? What are we talking about here?
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, and I think you, you have to hear it to believe it in some cases. But sound masking. It's just a system of loudspeaker that we deploy over the space. Typically, it's installed. Over the ceiling tile so you don't even see the system.
And the speakers will produce a masking sound that is very similar to hvac, so it'll be like a wishing, wishing sound. Many. [00:08:00] Office space, don't even know that they have sound masking. You know, people are working in that space and they think it will be normal background sound from the ventilation system, but it can, it's an artificial sound that we generate in the space. So that's the basic principle of that. People might know sound masking. Sometimes they will sleep better when they put like a fan in their bedroom to cover up some of the traffic noise or whatever. Or it can be air conditioning sometimes will help people sleep better. So those types of sound, regular sound that goes on and on, you can, you are able to ignore that and it might help drown the distract distractions in the background.
Kate Paradis: Right. So essentially it's a very fancy. Fan sounding
Francois Gariepy: Yeah,
Kate Paradis: technology. It's like, kind of sounds like a fan, but a lot of careful thought and research is put into developing the sound curve so that, you know, it's not an annoying fan, let's say. So it's, [00:09:00] yeah, it's designed to be a comfortable sound that largely people don't notice.
And I can definitely vouch for that and folks that don't know about it don't realize that it's there until you turn it off, and then they realize, oh, this place sounds really different now. Now I can hear everything that my neighbor is saying.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah it's when the system stops that you notice that it was ever on. Also it's a matter of control, so like a ventilation sound, natural ventilation sound in the office would be fine in theory, but you don't have any ability to control that.
So if you wanna say, well, it's a bit too loud, or I want to increase that sound level by two decibels. I mean, you just can't control that. It's mechanical. So the sound masking key element, I think it's control and precision in the adjustment that we can do.
Kate Paradis: Very good points. So how is this different from noise cancellation? I get this question a lot.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah. Well, it's completely different technology, so no noise cancellation will generate like an inverted phase sound and we'll be able to cancel noise, but it'll cancel noise at one [00:10:00] space, one location in space. So for example, in your headphones, noise canceling and phones, that's what it does. It cancel, at your ear ear position. But in an open office, you cannot cancel the noise all over the place. And on it's even the opposite. Sometimes noise cancellation can make sounds louder if you are not at the right precise location. So it's not noise cancellation it's just adding a layer of background sound in the office space.
It's a slightly different thing.
Kate Paradis: Right. And I know in some very congested and busy workplaces, some folks do use both. They have sound masking other acoustic treatments, plus also, noise canceling headphones, but that's more of a very user specific, like staff specific type of choice. Yeah, so we've gone over the key benefits of sound masking, it's reducing the speech intelligibility of everyone around you.
That equates to better privacy. Also just more concentration so you can get your [00:11:00] work done easier. Then there's the, the homogenous sound throughout the room. That's the other thing is we were talking about HVAC systems in that the HVAC might work wonderfully for sound masking up to a point when the AC is on, for example.
But then when the vents are off, AC is off. Then it's very quiet. So if you introduce that sound masking, then it's just consistent all day long. And then also consistent from office to office, from offices to open area just creating a space that's homogenous from an acoustic standpoint is is a better, more comfortable workplace.
Yeah. So then, sorry, go ahead.
Francois Gariepy: No, I wanted to add that also your ears will get used to that sound level. So as you walk across the office, you don't notice it as much because after a few second, a few seconds or a few minutes, your ears will get used to that noise level. The analogy that I use often is like the eyes when you go outside and it's very shiny and there's fresh snow and you get, you cannot see anything for a, [00:12:00] it takes a minute and then your eyes will adjust to that.
Kate Paradis: Right.
Francois Gariepy: So the ears do the same thing in the sound environment.
Kate Paradis: Right. Okay. And what types of workplaces specifically do you think benefit?
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot of variety where sound masking can be useful. Any type of commercial office space, so it can be insurance companies, government offices. Banking also benefits a lot for sound masking for privacy reasons. So it can be lawyers office clinics. We've done police stations.
We've done hospitals, hospital rooms also can benefit from sound masking and yeah, the, there's tons of locations, i'm sure you've done various projects over the years, right?
Kate Paradis: For sure. Yeah. Lots of law firms. Really. Any office. Any office. all. All the way to the deck. Even if they do, there's still you know, conversations being heard from place to place. So yeah, I've definitely seen, especially a government [00:13:00] government clients just anywhere where you especially need added confidentiality.
Definitely we see that you know, mandated we must have sound masking at a specific level. So, from the, you know, uses in the government to like more casual uses, it really is effective everywhere where it's, it kind of a quiet space, like it does not work in restaurants or places like that.
Francois Gariepy: Exactly if the noise level is already too much. People ask sometimes to put some mask in shopping centers or cafeterias, and that noise level is already so loud that you do not really benefit from it situations. So I would say more normal office environment. But also one of the key benefits I think, is that when you consider the options that you have, if you have privacy issues, you have traditionally the option of going with architectural treatment, you can put acoustic doors, better ceiling improve the noise rating of the walls or structures. But these are super expensive to put [00:14:00] into place because you have to go in, in construction mode. Sometimes replacing doors are very expensive and it's a time consuming process.
Also, you have to close down the office for a few weeks sometimes to. On the alternate sound masking, it's a quick and easy solution that will be way more cost effective. And you can, in, you can install a system in a day and have it working the next day without disrupting the workplace. And it's gonna provide a good benefit in the environment for much simpler solution to put in place, I think.
Kate Paradis: Right. So you don't actually have to have this as part of the original design of the building. This could be a after day two fix a retrofit. Yeah, it's quite easy to install.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah. But many of our clients will put sound masking in the design stage because they already experienced that the benefits that they have with it. So, although it's a good call, I think to think about sound masking and acoustic at the design stage or construction stage. It can be retrofitted, definitely.[00:15:00]
Kate Paradis: Right, right. So how does sound masking actually improve the speech privacy?
Host: Running a business is no small job. You've got a million things to manage and people to please, whether it's healthcare, hospitality, or professional cleaning, ODP Business Solutions is your trusted source for break room and cleaning supplies from cleaning products to healthier snack. They have what you need to clean, smarter, stock faster, and support your team with trusted products, reliable service, and fast delivery.
Visit odp business.com to learn more.
Francois Gariepy: It's a question of a signal to noise ratio, basically. So you are increasing the background sound. So the signal portion of the sound will just stand out from the background, so you'll be less able to hear the actual. Words on a conversation. So it's a, there's a metric for that. It's a speech [00:16:00] intelligibility index that actually measures the ability to hear words in a phrase.
With sound masking, you will hear like a muffled word salad, like something, like a conversation that you cannot really make out the meanings of the words or the content of the words.
Kate Paradis: The old Charlie Brown the parents
Francois Gariepy: Yeah.
Kate Paradis: in the Charlie Brown. Yeah, I remember that. Okay, so now what makes an ineffective sound masking system? I presume there are many sound masking options out there. So what should a facility manager or buyer kind of look for in terms of what makes a good system versus a not so, effective
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think it's there's many factors. The sound quality of the system is important of course. So, for example the sound quality, is really related to the size of the speakers. If you have tiny speakers, you will have he see sound of sound masking. That can be harsh sometimes.
There's also the issue of control over the sound masking spectrum, [00:17:00] so. For example, the calibration of the system. The calibration actually means going on site and tuning the system, measuring the output from the sound masking system, and adjusting that output to match what we have. The conditions in the office is critical for sound quality and homogeneity.
Many system will have presets that are like. Blanket settings. And these systems, I mean, they may work fine, but they may not. Also, it depends. It's kind of, it's like trying your luck a bit. So, in some cases those system will sound terrible.
Kate Paradis: Right.
Francois Gariepy: that's one of the key factor also, I mean, the experience of the company installing the system is important.
So we've seen a lot of. System that are assembled by by contractors that will kind of randomly take, you know, noise generator, assemble system with amplifiers. And these things are not really optimized for sound masking. So again they lack some of the features and capability or more sophistic [00:18:00] of more sophisticated systems.
Kate Paradis: Right. Okay. And on the calibration note. So my understanding of that is that, you know, the the sound masking will sound different in every single space. So what the calibration does is fine tune the system based on the real, like the actual real acoustics as opposed to what just comes out of the speakers out of the factory.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, absolutely. And every, everything contributes to the sound in an office space. So if you have a different models of ceiling tiles or if you have open ceiling carpet or not, different panels on the wall, all of these factors will influence the sound output from the system. So it's critical to adjust.
I mean, there's no way around it really.
Kate Paradis: So do you have research that supports or aware of research that supports the effectiveness of sound masking?
Francois Gariepy: Yeah. Over the years there's been a lot of research about sound masking. So there's been studies in the early 2000 from the CNRC GS. Bradleys did a lot of studies about sound masking to [00:19:00] optimize the the curve, the sound masking curve. And sometimes we hear about the Brad Curve, which is a specific sound asking spectrum that consultants may wanna have.
Playing in the space. There were studies in the nineties, so the technology is fairly whole. It goes back to the eighties, I think, and maybe I've seen some assemble system that was, were early eighties. So they've, there have been studies I, one reference that I have is a low one and suit fell that said that sound masking offices will provide a better environment and people will work better and will score better in cognitive task with sound masking. So yeah, it's it can help concentration and on a more anecdotal level, I mean, we get that feedback sometimes when they have to turn off the masking for a day or they have an issue.
They they will say, ah, we can work in the space when this, the system is off. So.
Kate Paradis: Yeah.
Francois Gariepy: I definitely received call the same, and please come in right now to
Kate Paradis: Make it work now, [00:20:00] please. Yeah. If so, yes. Absolutely. Well that's the thing about sound masking systems is that they're relatively low cost, as you were saying, when it, when, you know, when you're comparing to other acoustic solutions, which involve construction, installation, things like that. But so this is a very low cost solution, but it's enormous ROI as we're talking more and more about this, like the ROI is huge if we're talking about worker wellness and productivity and a sense of privacy and all of that. So it's definitely kind of low hanging fruit in the world of facility management and office space design.
So I would, oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, but I could add also that. The main place of sorry, spending in an office is the salaries of the people. So if you can improve those people's productivity by just a few percentage points, you get a huge return on over investment.
And also the lifespan of a sound masking system can be 10, 15 years easily. So, it's a system [00:21:00] that you install and then you don't think about it for a decade, and even it's been improving a tiny bit. It's really worth a shot,
Kate Paradis: Right. Absolutely. So big questions that I get for folks that are kind of, they've never used it before or perhaps they've used an older system that kind of follows the older school models of sound masking, are there any health risks associated? Like you said, is counterintuitive.
We're adding noise to noise. I've heard about you know, these frequencies that we can't really hear, but might be affecting our wellbeing. Can you touch on that stuff a little bit?
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, sure. And that's a question that comes up all the time. I mean, again, people have expectation to, to have a safe system. And there's a lot of guidelines for sound masking that are coming from health association. So for example, the Green Guide for Healthcare will recommend sound masking in patient rooms in hospital to help people sleep.
There's also studies, one recent one was, coming from the Netherlands in 23. So I will not name the authors because I'm not sure I [00:22:00] can pronounce the, their name properly, but they found out that the stress level in of people working with adaptive sound masking was a bit lower in those types of office compared to the standard.
So there's really a, there's really a lot of benefits and the noise level is very low compared to any anything that can, could create a health hazard or health problem. So for example, in a normal city, quiet city, outside, you get those same levels of then the sound masking system, which is between 40 45 db range.
So it's not something that's like in your face, it's still in the background, and you can ignore that most of the time.
Kate Paradis: Right, and at very safe levels. Now, what about hearing aids? Hearing aids? Is that impacted
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, we've never had comments about people with earring. Hates having problem with sound masking. And I mean, we've installed thousands and thousands of speakers in all types of office. I think a lot of these device will have. [00:23:00] Noise rejection system. So I don't even think they can hear the actual sound masking.
It's like, a video conferencing system. Normally the sound masking will not pass through those systems and you can hear anything at all.
Kate Paradis: Right. And I imagine if by chance there were folks, specific folks, you know, there may be a one or two in an office who have you know, like an extreme sensitivity to certain types of sound. You know, there is a always the option, depending on your sound masking system, but to potentially turn that one person
Francois Gariepy: Yeah. Of course, yeah. All, every speaker can be turned off, can be turned down or up. So there's always adjustments that are available. And I mean, again, the goal is to help people work and concentrate and have better privacy. So the, that's the end goal for our system,
Kate Paradis: Exactly.
Francois Gariepy: Not to shove it in your face.
Kate Paradis: Exactly, yeah. To have it barely noticed. If we don't, generally, if we don't hear no. Like generally no news is good news . So we've already talked that it can be integrated into existing office layouts. You did [00:24:00] mention ADA, you did mention the adaptive system.
So what's an adaptive sound masking system?
Francois Gariepy: Yeah, so, so that's a very very good feature of our system. The adaptive system is a system that relies on sensor that will automatically adjust the sound masking level in the office space according to the noise activity. So when you have a quiet office, let's say it's a Friday afternoon and there's not a lot of people in the office, then the sun masking will be at a lower level.
And it'll be a bit quieter, more comfortable. But if it's a busy day, everybody's on the phone and yelling, then the sound masking will automatically ramp up and be a little bit more a bit, a little bit louder, but this will be more effective also when you need it. So it's a system that adjusts in real time to the noise activity.
Kate Paradis: Right. So the office manager, facility manager wouldn't be assigned that task of, you know, adjusting, having
Francois Gariepy: And and most of our clients, recurring clients will use that option because they can see the benefit that adaptive system will provide for them.
Kate Paradis: Right. [00:25:00] Right. So myths about sound masking any specific myths that you hear that you wanna clear the air on? I've heard a myth my, the myth that I've. Heard frequently is that sound masking causes headaches. So there's definitely no evidence that supports that. You know, the reasons that you previously mentioned.
Any other myths that you're aware of?
Francois Gariepy: Well, I don't know if I would call it a myth, but one idea that I see sometimes is that there's a best unmasking curve possible, and I think. It's not true. It really depends on the office, so there's a lot of customization that you need to think about. The ideal sound masking for an office will depend on the natural background noise in that office space.
It'll depend on the configuration. So I think every office might benefit from sound masking, but not necessarily at the same level. We've in install system that we're running at 40 db, which is a fairly low level. But that's what they needed for a quiet office and it was just enough so [00:26:00] people were comfortable in seeing improvements.
And some office will wanna have 48 DB, 49 DB of sound masking, which is a louder level, but it's comfortable for them and it's so. There's there's a customization aspect. I mean, it's it's a kind of an expertise to go in, in a space and put on a good sound masking system.
Kate Paradis: Right and. Delivering a good system is one thing, and then ultimately, I've heard you say this before, many times, is comfort. Comfort is key. So we can install the sound, masking the, you know, the supposedly the perfect curve for the space, but ultimately it, we want the client to be happy and comfortable.
So, it's nice to have a system where the client has the keys to be able to adjust to their own comfort level.
Francois Gariepy: absolutely. Yeah. And the clients also have the ability to adjust their own system afterwards. So there's a software for. Control. It's very easy to adjust. It's intuitive to use. So, [00:27:00] facility manager can have control over their system. You can control a multi-floor system from your location for many office desks.
So, yep. There's a lot of options also that we can do with sound masking.
Kate Paradis: Awesome. So, any final closing thoughts you have before we wrap for our listeners?
Francois Gariepy: That's a hard one. I would say that yeah, thinking about acoustics is something that I mean, we do all the time, so we take it for granted maybe. But if you can contact your specialist for sound masking, get advice, ask for demonstration. This will give you, I think, a better office office space.
Kate Paradis: Right, and a sound masking specialist will be able to determine very quickly whether your space will actually benefit from sound masking. 'cause not all spaces. Do but definitely most office spaces will. So if you'd actually like to hear sound masking for any of the folks that will be attending the IFMA World Workplace this year, September 17th to 18th 2025.[00:28:00]
We will be at our booth number seven 18 and we'll have a small demo sound masking system there so you could actually hear what it sounds like. But overall, thank you so much for having us on this podcast.
Host: Thanks for tuning into the Connected FM podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show because it really helps us reach more listeners just like you. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. See you next time.