News & Editorials
Soundscape Engineering's latest news,tips, and trends in the acoustic engineering and consulting trade.

Mandy Kachur has been selected as an associate editor of the prestigious internationally recognized Noise Control Engineering Journal, a publication by the Institute of Noise Control Engineering. As the Associate Editor of Book Reviews, Mandy's responsibility will be to locate candidate publications on noise control engineering, coordinate volunteers to assess the books and provide a written review, and edit the reviews for the Journal. She will be working for the Managing Editor, James Thompson, and is taking over the position from Richard Peppin. More information on the Journal can be found here.

by Mandy Kachur
Erin Dugan and Mandy Kachur organized and led a special conference session at the Institute of Noise Control Engineering’s 2017 national conference, Noise-Con, which took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan in June. This unique session enabled vendors to present information about their products to a technically focused audience with the responsibility of specifying products or purchasing instrumentation. The session was well received and a similar session is planned for the 2018 international noise control conference, Inter-Noise, in Chicago. More information about the conferences can be found here.
by Mandy Kachur
Soundscape Engineering is pleased to have been part of the design team for the first new downtown Ann Arbor hotel in several decades, the Residence Inn by Marriott. The developer, First Martin Corporation, required that an acoustics consultant be hired for analysis and compliance with Marriott's extensive acoustical specifications for their properties.
We provided the sound isolation design for guest room, meeting room, lobby, fitness center and retail adjacencies, and for spaces below rooftop mechanical equipment. Mitigation of mechanical equipment noise

by Mandy Kachur
Have you ever been in a pin-drop quiet medical waiting room or pharmacy and needed to discuss your medical condition with a person behind the counter? Was it uncomfortable because you knew others in the room could hear you? Technically, this is a situation ripe for HIPAA speech privacy problems, where bystanders are able to overhear your medical conversations.
This situation happens. For example, a pharmacist can violate speech privacy laws by
Soundscape Engineering begins funded research study to assess outcomes of acoustical design for residential nursing facilities and inform the next edition of FGI’s Guidelines for Residential Health, Care, and Support Facilities.
Nathan Sevener, Soundscape Engineering LLC partner and Principal Acoustical Consultant, presented at Noise-con 2013 in Denver. His presentation, entitled “Acoustical design of the perception based engineering laboratory at Ray W. Herrick Laboratories Center for High Performance Buildings,” described...
Mandy Kachur, Soundscape Engineering LLC partner and Principal consultant, recently returned from Washing D.C., where she was participating in the working group, led by the Center for Health Design, that has been tasked with the development, dissemination, and validation of a 'Patient and Worker Safety Risk Assessment' online toolkit that can be used by health care facility planners, owners, and design teams to improve facilities through Evidence Based Design. Noise control is...