How to overcome the acoustic constraints of modern meeting room design

In modern interior design, aesthetics often take center stage. Sleek glass walls, polished concrete floors and soaring open ceilings create visually stunning meeting spaces that reflect innovation and transparency. However, these same design elements can introduce significant acoustic challenges, especially in spaces where clear communication is critical - like meeting rooms.

The AV/IT professionals we talk with will often comment on this very challenge, indicating they are looking for products that will resolve poor audio pickup in their beautiful, modern meeting rooms.

Their core issue lies in reverberation. Hard, reflective surfaces like glass, concrete and metal bounce sound waves around the room, creating echoes and muddled audio. High ceilings exacerbate this issue by increasing the distance sound must travel. The result is spaces that may look impressive but sound chaotic, making it difficult for in-room participants to hear clearly and even more frustrating for remote colleagues relying on microphones and conferencing systems for both calls and transcription.

When design undermines function

This conflict between form and function is a growing concern in many organizations. While interior designers and architects often prioritize visual harmony and brand expression, audio clarity is essential for productivity and inclusivity. A beautifully designed room that hinders communication ultimately undermines its purpose and frustrates users and staff managing the spaces.

Bridging this gap requires collaboration between design and technology teams. Acoustic treatments (such as sound-absorbing panels, ceiling baffles and soft furnishings) and the installation of carpet and drop ceilings can be subtly integrated into the design without compromising aesthetics, but designers need to acknowledge they have a role beyond just the creation of beautiful spaces.

At Nureva, we're acutely aware of this tension. Our systems include advanced features that go a long way to mitigate a broad range of audio issues in challenging environments (whether related to room design or not). These features include: 

• Microphone Mist technology - With multiple patents from the US and EU patent and trademark offices, Microphone Mist technology is our breakthrough approach to audio that solves the long-standing challenges of mic pickup in dynamic, collaborative spaces. Instead of relying on beamforming or fixed mic arrays, it creates a dense grid of thousands of virtual microphones to capture voices clearly - wall to wall, floor to ceiling - in a huge range of room types and use cases.
• Continuous autocalibration - All of our systems automatically adapt to changes in a room's acoustic profile, so even when changes are made to the décor or the furniture or layout is adjusted, the audio will still sound great.
• Intelligent Sound Targeting - HVAC components like ductwork, fans and blowers can seriously affect audio performance. Our Intelligent Sound Targeting feature uses adaptive learning algorithms to preemptively ignore unwanted sounds (rather than trying to suppress them after the fact).
• Divisible room automation (coming soon) - For rooms with movable dividers or walls, built-in divisible room support is a feature of our new HDX series (coming in 2026). This feature means rooms can be divided and combined without making manual adjustments to the audio system. 

In addition to these features, we offer an acoustic check tool to measure background noise and reverberation, which assists in determining where best to place our integrated mic and speaker bars in a space.

A call for collaboration in room design

Even with these advanced features in our audio systems, there are some impossibly reverberant spaces with issues we simply can't overcome. We need the active participation of designers in the creation of acoustically sound spaces to allow our products to perform as intended.

Ultimately, the most effective meeting rooms are those where aesthetics and acoustics are treated as complementary, not competing, priorities. By involving acoustics specialists early in the design process and embracing discreet acoustic solutions, organizations can create spaces that are both beautiful and functional, where every voice is heard clearly, no matter where it originates.