Weight

Why the weight of acoustic cubes is important

The weight of an acoustic cube is not only dependent on its size but also correlates strongly with the degree of sound insulation. Good sound insulation can only be achieved with a lot of insulating material - a lot of material means a lot of weight.

You could almost say that the weight is a much more accurate indication of sound insulation than the decibel rating used by many manufacturers. We have explained here why the sound insulation values should not always be trusted and why they are usually not suitable for a direct comparison of products: Selection criterion sound insulation.

The weight of a good telephone box

Let's take a classic telephone box with a footprint of approx. 1×1 metre as an example: depending on the model and manufacturer, the weight varies between 210 kg and 428 kg - that's more than twice as much! The differences in weight can be explained in detail:

• At 428 kg, the HOLA telephone box from Studiobricks is the heavyweight among telephone boxes. As you would expect, this goes hand in hand with the best sound insulation values on the market (in our categorisation ★★★★★).
• The second heaviest telephone box in our range comes from MUTE and is the Space S model, which weighs in at 347kg. This still results in excellent sound insulation, which corresponds to our categorisation ★★★★☆.
• The "Chatbox Single" telephone box from Silen is relatively heavy: its 300kg indicate very good acoustic values!
• One of our bestsellers is the Bosselino telephone box with a weight of 275kg. With approximately the same external dimensions, this is around 70 kg less (insulating) material than in the above-mentioned telephone box Space S. The sound insulation is nevertheless good and more than sufficient for many purposes. In our categorisation, we rate the Bosselino with ★★★☆☆ for sound insulation.
• At 210 kg, the Jetson S1 telephone box is the lightest telephone box in our range due to its lightweight aluminium construction. However, the weight saving compared to the Bosselino telephone box mentioned above is not at the expense of sound insulation: the savings here are not in the insulation material but "only" in the supporting structure - the Jetson S1 uses a lot of aluminium instead of steel. Our rating for sound insulation: ★★★☆☆.

The weight of a good meeting box

The same principle applies to meeting boxes as described above for telephone boxes: a lot helps a lot! Good insulation requires a lot of material - and that goes hand in hand with higher weight and higher prices.

To obtain a simple guide value for sound insulation, the absolute weight of a meeting box should be set in relation to its circumference ("weight per metre of outer wall"). This is a good way of estimating how much material is used in the side walls. By standardising to 1 metre of wall, this calculated figure can also be used to compare models of different sizes.

Here are some comparative values for the various product series in our range:

• Meeting boxes from Sedus: Approx. 90kg weight per metre of outer wall
• Meeting boxes from MUTE - Jetson series: Approx. 67kg weight per metre of outer wall (lightweight aluminium construction)
• Meeting boxes from Silen - Chatbox series: Approx. 80 kg weight per metre of outer wall (Chatbox Quattro even over 100 kg)
• Meeting boxes from MUTE - Space series: Approx. 100kg weight per metre of outer wall
• Meeting boxes from Studiobricks: Approx. 110 - 120 kg weight per metre of external wall

Meeting boxes from different manufacturers can be compared even more easily - and without doing any maths - by looking at the telephone boxes from the respective product series (see top). For all manufacturers, telephone boxes usually have a base area of 1m x 1m (or a circumference of 4 metres) and are therefore automatically standardised. Acoustic cubes within the same product series vary only minimally in terms of sound insulation values, as they are designed identically.

Conclusion

The weight of telephone boxes/meeting boxes and all types of acoustic cubes is an important quality indicator for their sound insulation and leaves little room for interpretation.