Every figure, checked against something real.
Echo sells everywhere, and every report states plainly which standard its figures are being compared against. To be straight with you about what that means today: Echo's own targets are set against UK and international design guidance — BB93, BS 8233, CIBSE Guide B4, and the ISO/IEC methods underneath them — whatever country your room is in. The national standards below are here so you can see how your local requirement compares, and every report carries the full octave-band table so you can make that comparison yourself. Echo does not yet switch its own target automatically by country.
The two international methods
The measurement method underneath almost every reverberation-time figure quoted anywhere in the world, including the ones above it on this page. Echo predicts to the same method a measured survey would confirm — which is the honest relationship between the two: a prediction and its measurement, not two different things.
The method behind every speech-clarity figure Echo produces. Used internationally — it isn't a British, American or European standard, it's the one nearly all of them point to when they talk about intelligibility rather than reverberation alone.
Room-type and country-specific standards
Where a room type has its own recognised UK guidance, Echo checks against it directly. For the national standards below, compare your figure against the requirement yourself — the octave-band table on every report is there for exactly that. Where it doesn't — restaurants, retail, hotel lobbies, co-working floors, in most countries — that's stated honestly on the room's own fix page rather than invented, and the nearest genuinely comparable guidance is used instead.
The UK's own schools standard, and the one Echo's classroom figures are set against by default for a UK room.
Classroom fix page →The North American equivalent of BB93 — a lower background-noise ceiling and its own reverberation-time targets, covering core classrooms specifically; it explicitly doesn't cover music rooms, gyms or pools, which need their own treatment.
Classroom fix page →Groups rooms into three classes by function rather than by name — A for music and critical listening, B for speech communication (classrooms, meeting rooms), C for general communication where acoustics matter but aren't the primary use (sports halls, cafeterias, lobbies). Useful precisely because it classifies by what a room is for, not what it's called, which is close to how Echo itself reasons about a room.
The reference standard across Australia and New Zealand, covering recommended background noise levels and reverberation times for a wide span of building interiors in one document.
The open-plan-specific member of the ISO 3382 family — distraction distance and spatial decay of speech, not just a single reverberation figure, because an open office's real problem is usually how far one conversation carries, not how long a handclap rings.
Open-plan office fix page →Not an acoustic standard in the traditional sense — a wellbeing certification with acoustic requirements inside it, increasingly what a workplace fit-out is actually being measured against, especially in open-plan offices.
Open-plan office fix page →The one standard on this page where the concern isn't primarily reverberation — it's privacy: how far a conversation at reception carries into a waiting room full of other patients.
GP/dental waiting room fix page →Worth being precise about: for a SCHOOL sports hall there is a mandated figure. BB93 Table 7 sets it by floor area — 1.5 s under 280 m2, sliding to 2.0 s above 530 m2 — and meeting BB93 is the normal way of satisfying Requirement E4 of the Building Regulations. Echo applies that scale. Outside schools there is no equivalent hard limit, and Sport England's guidance sets good-practice direction rather than a requirement.
Sports hall / gym fix page →When there's genuinely no standard for your room
A restaurant, a boutique retail floor, a hotel bar, a co-working space — none of these have a mandated reverberation-time figure anywhere Echo has checked. That's not a gap Echo papers over: the fix page for that room type says so directly, and the reverberation figure is compared against the nearest genuinely equivalent guidance (an open-plan office for co-working, general good practice for hospitality) rather than a fabricated target. Knowing there's no formal number is itself useful information — it means the decision about whether to fix it is entirely about comfort and reputation, not compliance risk.