A little over twenty years ago, we installed a masking system into the heritage listed Sydney Opera House Box office. The installation featured our second generation transducers which were manufactured in Melbourne’s outer east.

The box office

The Sydney Opera House box office is the call centre for the Sydney Opera House. Before everyone could order tickets on their phone, without speaking to anyone, most people used their phones to call in to the box office and book. As you can see from the picture, the partitions were low, with an open planned design. Like with any call centre, talking into telephones is a large part of the job. It creates a lot of noise and in a space with vaulted ceilings, the sound can reverberate.

This meant that the call centre workers were finding the environment distracting and noisy. Raising the partitions could reduce the problem, but it would be expensive, and would change the aesthetic. Further, there was a heritage listing on the building.

Heritage listing

In Sydney, a heritage listing means that there is an extensive list of requirements for any works to be undertaken. It also means that any works must conform to the heritage requirements.

Fortunately, our system is acceptable within heritage listed spaces, and in the decades since this job we have installed countless systems into heritage listed buildings.

Similar to the weploy case study, the ceiling featured a saw tooth design. Like weploy, the transducers were visually unobtrusive. Indeed, they blended in with the existing light fittings.

Pioneering acoustic disc

It was also the first time our proprietary acoustic discs were used. This allowed us to control the spread of sound, not relying on the ceiling angles which could have unpredictable results.

Since then, we’ve refined the design of the acoustic disc. Instead of using powder-coated aluminium we use ABS plastic. This reduces the cost and allows the discs to be painted to match the decor.

No more distractions

Adding a Soundmask system allowed staff to take customer bookings without distraction from surrounding colleagues and other office noise. We were proud to have our system in one of Australia’s most iconic buildings.