FAQs

Yes — through bidirectional containment. When a call or meeting is conducted inside a HIGHKA pod, its noise contribution to the surrounding open floor is attenuated by the pod’s 29.4 dB isolation. As pod utilisation increases, successive high-amplitude conversations are contained within pods rather than contributing to the open-floor ambient — the open floor becomes

Research-supported baseline: one enclosed acoustic space per 10–15 knowledge workers. For a 50-person team, 4–5 pods in a mixed configuration (2 single/paired pods for individual focus and calls; 2 small meeting pods) covers the primary use cases. Monitor utilisation data after 60 days: peak-hour utilisation above 70% signals additional capacity is needed. HIGHKA’s 1–4 hour

The 12-sign diagnostic checklist in this article is the fastest assessment tool. If your primary problem is echoing, reverberation, or excessive ambient without privacy concerns, passive treatment is likely sufficient. If employees need individual private speech — for focused work, calls, or confidential conversations — acoustic pods are the appropriate intervention. Most well-designed offices benefit

Identify the shortest distance between any two hard surfaces in the space — glass-to-concrete, wall-to-floor, table-to-wall. Sound waves bounce between these surfaces, creating the reverberation and echo that increase perceived noise. Treat one or both surfaces with sound-absorbing material: acoustic wall panels, ceiling baffles, carpeting, acoustic furniture. For enclosed acoustic pods, see the placement framework

No — they are fundamentally different interventions addressing different problems. Sound masking raises the broadband ambient to reduce speech intelligibility across an open floor; it does not create enclosed private spaces or provide bidirectional speech containment. Soundproofing (specifically, acoustic pod enclosure) provides physical containment of sound — inward isolation protecting the occupant from open-floor ambient,

DS,A is the A-weighted speech level reduction metric produced by ISO 23351-1 testing — the international standard for enclosed office furniture acoustic measurement. It directly quantifies how much an enclosure reduces speech-frequency sound levels. When evaluating acoustic pods, DS,A from a named independently accredited laboratory is the only verifiable performance claim. HIGHKA’s DS,A = 29.4

Intelligible background speech — human conversation that the brain’s language system can partially parse — is consistently identified in the research as the most cognitively disruptive form of office noise. The Irrelevant Speech Effect (ISE) means that intelligible background speech automatically consumes working memory capacity regardless of the listener’s intent to ignore it. This is

Acoustic partitions and screens are passive treatments that reduce reverberation and partially attenuate sound transmission — they improve the open-floor acoustic environment but do not create enclosed acoustic spaces with certified bidirectional speech privacy. Their DS,A equivalent is typically 8–15 dB — below the 25 dB minimum that meaningfully reduces the ISE for focused work.

Yes — HIGHKA pods are specifically designed for internal-team repositioning. All models assemble and disassemble using standard hand tools, by a 2–3 person internal team, in 2–4 hours. No specialist acoustics contractors, no electricians (beyond confirming power outlet availability at the new position), and no building permits are required. This internal repositionability is the core

The acoustic gradient of an agile office — the combination of open collaborative ambient and enclosed certified acoustic spaces — scales through pod addition rather than construction. When pod utilisation data shows that existing pods are above 70% during peak hours (the signal that demand is exceeding supply), additional HIGHKA pods can be deployed in