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Back in college, did you ever find yourself trying to study with a party going on a few doors down? If you did, then you know how hard it is to work in a noisy, distracting environment. Now bring that problem to an office setting. Office noise, it has been found, affects the productivity of employees. In a study by the Data Entry Management Association, poor office acoustics increased the errors made in data entries by as much as 27%. In recent years, noise levels have gone up in the average office. Cubicles and offices are getting smaller and placed closer together, so that it's hard to tune out the sound of your colleague making a call, or just tapping on his keyboard. Phones and faxes are everywhere, adding to the din of of the workplace. Because of these developments, there has been an increasing demand for sound masking. This practice didn't begin only recently. At the height of the Roman Empire, its wealthy citizens had fountains made indoors so that it would keep out the sound of the busy street outside. Have you ever tried to speak with a person in another room, while you were in the bathroom with the water faucet on? This, in principle, is how sound masking works. Every noise (a conversation, for example) travels at a certain frequency. The human voice is travels at a high frequency. To make it inaudible, you need another sound to offset it: not necessarily a louder sound (which will just drown it out), but another sound with a low frequency that "cancels out" the other sound at the listener's ear. Specialists use this principle to apply masking to your office. With a series of speakers usually mounted in the ceiling tiles themselves, a barely-noticeable sound is generated throughout the workplace. This sound is soft and non-distracting, and it will mask much of the noise in a busy work environment. Not all offices are alike. Sound masking technicians will need to asses how to mask your office noise based on the size and shape of the room, which has an effect on acoustics, and on the usual activity that goes on in the work area, as certain offices are naturally more noisy than others. Get in touch with a sound masking company. There are several out there who will be only too happy to give you a quotation. Their specialists can assess your work situation, and recommend ways to make your office more conducive to good, focused work. They can help you set up systems and place offices and workstations for optimal acoustics. And they can help set up active systems, as well, ensuring that employees are able to work harder, focus better, and increase their productivity.