A fitness studio fixed without losing the music
Education & Leisure · Sport England-guided target, treated around a working sound system, not against it
Illustrative worked example. This is a realistic brief run through Echo using the same method a real report uses — not an account of a named past client. See every case study for more, including which of these are real, permissioned projects as they're added.
The brief
The owner of a boutique fitness studio, converted from a single-storey warehouse unit, asked for options after repeated feedback that instructor cueing — safety-relevant during a fast class, not just coaching — was getting lost under the room's own sound system rather than carried by it. The brief was explicit that the sound system and its energy were not up for discussion; only the room around it was.
Studio floor, single storey warehouse unit
12 × 9 × 5 m, about 540 m³ — painted concrete block walls, polished concrete floor, exposed steel-deck ceiling.
Concrete block, a polished slab floor and an exposed steel-deck ceiling — chosen for the industrial look, not the acoustics — put the room at roughly 1.6 seconds, close to double what a room running spoken instruction over music can tolerate before cueing turns to mush.
The standard, and the target
There's no single mandated reverberation figure for a fitness studio the way there is for a school hall; Sport England's general sports-hall guidance was used as the nearest honest reference rather than inventing a number, applied as good-practice direction rather than a hard limit.
The constraint
The exposed steel deck and block walls were the stated look of the brand across every studio in the small chain, and were explicitly not to be covered or hidden — any fix had to sit within that industrial aesthetic rather than disguise it.
The decision
Suspended acoustic baffles — vertical panels hung below the steel deck rather than a solid ceiling raft — kept the industrial ceiling visible while doing most of the absorption work, paired with a band of wall panels at head height that reads as a design feature (branded, backlit) rather than a retrofit.
Every route considered, vendor-neutral — we don't sell any of it.
- Suspended vertical baffles below the steel deckabout 60 m² equivalent
Keeps the exposed ceiling genuinely visible between and above the baffles.
- Backlit branded wall panels, head heightabout 20 m²
Doubles as a design feature rather than reading as a retrofit.
- Full-height curtain across the entrance lobby glazingabout 8 m²
A smaller contribution, mainly to stop the studio's own noise carrying into reception during a class.
The outcome
The baffles and panels together brought the room to roughly 0.9 seconds — within the guidance range for a room running spoken cueing over music — with the exposed steel deck and block walls still fully visible.
Indicative figures for this example, from the same method a real report uses. Not a measured survey and not a compliance certificate — where one is required, that's a survey to BS EN ISO 3382-2.
Now do it for your room.
Four questions, sixty seconds. Free to see whether you have a problem.
Check my room →Questions people ask
Won't absorbing the room kill the energy of the music?
The target here was cutting the excess ring, not deadening the room — 0.9 seconds is still a lively space; it's roughly half of where it started, not silent.
Why baffles instead of a solid suspended ceiling?
A solid ceiling would have been faster to size and cheaper per square metre, but it would have hidden the steel deck entirely — ruled out by the brand's stated look across the whole chain.
Does this apply to a studio running classes without a live instructor?
Less so — if nobody's cueing live over the music, speech clarity isn't really the problem being solved, and the brief would be about something else (bass control, neighbour noise) instead.