3 Cs of Audio Quality: Designing Intercoms for Real-World Noise

Audio quality of building intercoms is a critical factor for conveying accurate information and avoiding misunderstandings or misinterpretations. It relies on three key elements: Crisp, Clear, and Concise. The 3 C’s play a crucial role in ensuring information is delivered accurately and efficiently.

However, maintaining clear communication in all environments - at all times and everywhere - is not always easy. Some spaces are naturally louder or have more disruptions.

Take an entry point, for example. It serves as the first line of defence in security systems, often in a noisy environment with street traffic, truck drivers attempting to enter a facility, and other background noise. Whether it’s a building intercom at a warehouse or a multi tenant video intercom system in an office complex, poor sound quality at the entry point can quickly become a security risk.

How Does Audio Quality of Building Intercoms Affect Security?

Imagine this scenario: it’s late at night, and a security guard at an industrial warehouse hears a buzzing sound from the building intercom. A delivery driver stands outside, waiting for access to drop off a package.

The guard presses the intercom button and asks for identification, but the response is garbled, distorted by poor audio quality. Frustrated, the driver repeats their name, but the security guard still struggles to understand. With no clear confirmation, the guard hesitates, creating a bottleneck in the building’s security process.

This scenario is not uncommon in many buildings - mixed use buildings, in particular - where door entry communication is often an afterthought. In reality, audio quality of building intercoms is a critical component of security, influencing how efficiently personnel can verify visitors, detect potential threats, and manage access control.

A simple misunderstanding due to poor sound can lead to security breaches, unauthorized entry, or even dangerous situations.

The Zenitel Way: Enhancing Audio Quality of Building Intercoms

Creating a high-quality audio product requires careful attention to multiple design factors. With 125 years of expertise in sound design, Zenitel takes a fundamentally different approach to product development compared to others in the market.

A perfect blend of premium hardware, advanced software-driven audio processing, and precision engineering ensures that our products deliver the most realistic-sounding intercom experience available.

Our core components are designed to adapt and deliver consistent performance regardless of the environment.

For example, in noisy environments like a bustling train station or a mixed use building intercom system placed at a busy entrance, a door entry intercom must cut through significant background noise to enable clear conversations. In outdoor settings, the intercom must maintain consistent audio quality of building intercoms even in extreme conditions such as snow, heavy rain, or strong winds.

Inside the Design Process: Crafting Audio Excellence

Building on Zenitel’s world-renowned audio expertise, our engineers take a bottom-up approach to sound design in all our products. We listen to our customers and partners to better understand their needs - considering the acoustic environment, use cases, and types of users.

With these insights, we manage the entire product development process in-house, working closely across mechanical, hardware, software, and user experience teams.

For example, our latest addition to door communication solutions, the Zenitel Display Door Intercom (ZDD-1), is engineered to provide an immersive audio experience - even in acoustically challenging environments. It’s a high-performance solution ideal for settings like multi tenant video intercom systems in residential towers or building intercom deployments in large commercial facilities.

Mechanics Designed for Optimal Intercom Sound

The speaker and microphone design play a critical role in audio quality of building intercoms. Optimized microphone placement and a wider microphone opening minimize performance issues caused by environmental factors such as rain or snow. A well-designed microphone channel enhances frequency response, significantly improving echo cancellation for seamless full-duplex communication.

Additionally, proper sealing between the speaker and microphone reduces acoustic feedback, further enhancing echo cancellation performance.

Hardware that Complements the Mechanics

The Zenitel Display Door intercom features multiple vertically arranged speakers, ensuring a flat frequency response that preserves natural, undistorted sound across the full spectrum. With superior power handling, it achieves a continuous SPL of 100dB at 1 kHz, making it an ideal choice for noisy outdoor environments.

Additionally, its array of speakers and microphones provides built-in resilience against single points of failure, ensuring reliable performance at all times.

This makes the Zenitel Display Door intercom an optimal solution for modern building intercom systems - especially in mixed use buildings where retail, office, and residential spaces coexist and demand crystal-clear communication at every access point.

The Final Touch with Software

While hardware and mechanical design distinguish a good intercom from a bad one, what truly elevates a product is its software.

Our custom-built speaker and amplifier drivers are designed to maximize audio performance in harmony with our hardware and software. Thanks to advanced audio processing capabilities, the ZDD-1 delivers outstanding voice intelligibility, featuring Dynamic Range Compression, Automatic Volume Control, and Active Noise Cancellation. These software features allow the ZDD-1 to adapt to the environment and deliver exceptional audio in all conditions.

With each intercom we create - whether for a multi tenant video intercom, a commercial facility, or a mixed use building intercom—we ensure that mechanical, software, and hardware components complement each other, allowing our customers to hear, be heard, and be understood—at every door.

Read more about Zenitel's Door Entry Solutions.