If you’ve ever sat through a video call where someone’s HVAC system drowned out half the conversation, or tried to troubleshoot why a conference room sounds like a parking garage no matter what you do to the gain settings, you already know the frustration. It shows up across industries where clear communication isn’t just a preference. The good news: there are real solutions. The complicated part is knowing which tool actually solves which problem.
AI noise suppression has become one of the most talked-about features in modern AV and unified communications. And acoustic treatment has been the backbone of good room design for decades. Both matter. But they’re solving different problems, and using one as a substitute for the other is where a lot of spaces go sideways.
What AI Noise Suppression Actually Does
AI noise suppression works in the digital domain. Using machine learning models trained on thousands of audio samples, it learns to distinguish between speech and unwanted sound, then filters out the noise in real time. HVAC rumble, keyboard clicks, background chatter, chair scrapes: the algorithm identifies them and suppresses them before the audio ever leaves the room.
Platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and dedicated DSP hardware now bake this processing directly into their pipelines. Some do it at the software level, others handle it in purpose-built AV hardware. The results, when the technology is applied correctly, are genuinely impressive. A remote participant on a noisy construction site can come through clearly. A presenter in a busy open office can be heard without distraction.
Where AI noise suppression earns its place:
- Reducing transient background noise in spaces that can’t be fully acoustically controlled
- Cleaning up remote participants’ audio when you have no control over their environment
- Improving intelligibility during hybrid meetings where ambient noise is unpredictable
- Supplementing (not replacing) good microphone placement and room design
The key word there is supplementing.
What AI Noise Suppression Cannot Fix
Here’s where a lot of deployments run into trouble. AI noise suppression is a processing layer. It operates on audio that has already been captured. If the room has serious acoustic problems, like excessive reverberation, flutter echo, or parallel hard surfaces that smear sound before it even reaches the microphone, the algorithm is working with compromised input from the start.
Garbage in, garbage out. No amount of post-processing fully compensates for a room that mangles speech before it’s captured.
AI noise suppression struggles with:
- Long reverberation times (RT60). In rooms where sound decays slowly, speech piles on top of itself. The algorithm can’t cleanly isolate voice from its own reflected energy. The result is often muddy, over-processed audio that fatigues listeners quickly.
- Flutter echo. Two parallel hard walls bouncing sound back and forth creates a rapid repetitive echo. AI can dampen some of it, but the fundamental pattern persists.
- Low-frequency buildup. Bass frequencies accumulate in room corners and along boundaries. They’re physically present in the space before any digital processing touches the signal, and suppression algorithms aren’t designed to address them.
- Room geometry problems. A long, narrow room or a space with an unusual ceiling angle creates directional anomalies that no software layer resolves.
If an AV technician is troubleshooting a persistent intelligibility problem and the instinct is to turn up the noise suppression, that’s usually a sign the underlying acoustic environment needs attention first.
What Acoustic Treatment Actually Addresses
Acoustic treatment works in the physical domain. It changes how sound behaves in the room before any signal processing occurs. That’s a completely different intervention, and for certain problems, it’s the only intervention that works.
Absorption panels, diffusers, bass traps, and ceiling clouds each serve distinct functions. Absorption shortens reverberation time by converting sound energy into heat. Diffusers scatter reflections to prevent harsh echo. Bass traps target low-frequency buildup in room corners. The combination, when sized and placed correctly, results in a room where speech is clear, imaging is accurate, and every microphone in the space captures what it’s supposed to capture.
Acoustic treatment is the right call when:
- RT60 exceeds recommended values for the room’s intended use (most speech-focused spaces benefit from an RT60 between 0.3 and 0.6 seconds)
- The room has hard, parallel surfaces creating noticeable echo
- Low-frequency resonance is affecting music playback or broadcast audio
- Recording or broadcast quality is a requirement, not just meeting intelligibility
- The space is newly constructed or recently renovated, and acoustic design was an afterthought
The downside is that acoustic treatment requires physical intervention. It takes planning, material selection, installation, and sometimes a meaningful portion of wall or ceiling. For retrofit projects, that’s a conversation worth having early.
When to Use Both
The most effective AV spaces use acoustic treatment to establish a controlled baseline, then apply AI noise suppression as another layer for unpredictability. A well-treated conference room with good RT60 values and minimal flutter echo will also respond dramatically better to AI noise suppression when it’s applied, because the algorithm has cleaner input to work with.
Think of it this way: acoustic treatment sets the foundation, and AI processing builds on top of it. Neither is a shortcut around the other.
The combination shows up across almost every environment we work in. A church sanctuary with hard concrete walls and a vaulted ceiling needs physical treatment to tame reverb before digital processing makes the spoken word intelligible from the back row. A courtroom requires speech clarity precise enough to support accurate transcription, and no suppression algorithm compensates for a room that smears syllables before capture. A school classroom with HVAC noise and unpredictable ambient activity benefits from both: treatment to control the room, AI processing to handle what the room can’t.
For AV technicians evaluating a space, the diagnostic sequence matters. Measure the room’s RT60. Listen for flutter echo with a hand clap. Check for low-frequency buildup in corners. If those fundamentals are off, address them first. Then layer in AI noise suppression for the dynamic, unpredictable noise that acoustic treatment was never designed to handle.
Putting It Together for Your Next Project
Whether you’re designing a new conference room from scratch, retrofitting an existing space, or troubleshooting a hybrid meeting environment that just never sounds quite right, the answer almost always involves both disciplines. The challenge is applying each one correctly, in the right sequence, for the specific acoustic problems the room actually has.
At Marshall Industries, we’ve been solving these kinds of problems for over 45 years, across commercial offices, schools, churches, courtrooms, and healthcare facilities. Our team evaluates each space individually, designs systems that address the physical and the digital, and supports clients through installation and beyond.
Ready to get the acoustics and the technology working together? Contact us today to get a quote, and let’s build something that actually sounds the way it should.