Services and Infrastructure
Services
Support for setting up your acoustic experiments
Thinking about an innovative acoustic experiment with machines, humans, animals, or plants? SOUNDlab can support design of your experimental setup and help you with the selection of hardware and/or software, calibration, or we can lend you specific materials.
Monitoring for noise impact assessment
Are you a consultant that temporarily needs to boost its monitoring capacity, a researcher with challenging monitoring needs, a government agency, or a company looking for an environmental impact assessment? SOUNDlab can help! Our infrastructure includes standardized monitoring (class 1/type 1); infrasound monitoring in challenging wind conditions (typically useful for wind turbine noise); personal exposure equipment for the work floor or recreational settings; class 2/type 2 monitoring nodes for smart city applications; and non-classified recording, typically used for artificial intelligence.
Besides monitoring, we can also aid in your sound planning projects. With our leading expert-knowledge and large arsenal of simulation tools, we can help you with your city planning; predict the effect of your noise reduction measures and even perform a soundscape assessment.
Members of the team are recognized experts on sound and vibrations by the Flemish Government, and certified for environmental impact assessments (“milieu-effect rapportage/m.e.r.”).
Psychoacoustics and sound quality
Are you intending in setting up perception experiments but need additional hardware support for getting the sound assessment correct? SOUNDlab can help! We can equip one or two booths (for interaction experiments) with biomonitoring including EEG (including portable), fNIRS (portable), skin conductivity, heart rate, and heart rate variability. Exposure via headphones, ambisonics or with virtual reality equipment is possible. We can also support on site or living lab setups, guaranteeing ecological validity.
Calibration and compliance testing
Are you looking for an independent calibration or compliance testing or do you temporally need an environment for acoustic design? SOUNDlab can help! We provide standard sound power measurements (ISO 3744/5), measurement equipment calibration, headphone and communication system compliance (ISO 20109), and many more. Don't hesitate to contact us for more tailor-based compliance testing.
Pre-clinical and clinical hearing assessment (UZGent)
At UZGent a full audiological test battery can be deployed including OAE, ABR, FFR, MMN, fNIRS, … The provided equipment is clinical grade while the protocols that can be studied are pre-clinical.
Interested? Please don't hesitate to contact us for more detailed information or tailor-based solutions!
Infrastructure
Fully equipped listening booths (iGent & UZGent)
SOUNDlab supports 3 acoustically and electromagnetically shielded listening booths, one at campus UZGent and two at iGent (campus Ardoyen, Zwijnaarde). These rooms can occasionally be loaned out as bring-your-own experiment, fully equipped with or without operator support. The acoustical and electromagnetical shielding makes them particularly suited for tests that include EEG, but basic audiological testing and fNIRS can also be performed here. Headsets hearing aids can also be evaluated.
Are you interested in piloting new protocols that include technical development and could involve healthy volunteers and smaller numbers of participants? Or even controlled human auditory interaction experiments? The listening booths at Ardoyen campus are ideal!
Do you want to conduct (large scale) studies with patients with clinical grade equipment? The listening booth at UZGent is at your disposal!
A fully equipped anechoic room (iGent)
SOUNDlab’s (semi-)anechoic room in iGent (campus Ardoyen, Zwijnaarde) is used for crucial acoustical research, where echoes and outside noises are reduced to an absolute minimum. The walls and ceiling are covered with 1,20-meter-long, cone-shaped elements made of melamine foam, absorbing sound to prevent any reverberation with a cut-off frequency of 63Hz. The room can be made completely anechoic by adding an absorptive layer on the floor (cut-off frequency of 250Hz). Built as a "box-within-a-box" with a floating floor, the design keeps outside noises from getting in, creating a place of absolute silence. The room measures approximately 9m by 4.75m, and has a useable volume of 180m³.
The anechoic room can be equipped with loudspeakers, microphones, a 48 microphone array, and an automatic positioning system and can be used for sound power measurements, sound perception and virtual reality testing, measurement equipment homologation and many more.
Make a booking (Ghent University only)
You can book equipment and infrastructure through the online core facility management software (CFMS).
For more info on how to make an account, see the information on our Sharepoint.