Why Buy Acoustic Panels

Acoustic Panels are used in environments to sort out problem sounds and give your space an overall better sound and an overall more balanced and even frequency response. Needed in environments such as studios, live rooms and cinemas/home cinema rooms. It is important to have a clear precise sound in these types of environments to hear a true representation of the sound that you’re hearing.

For example:

Mixing- When mixing in an untreated room it gives you a false perspective of how your mix will sound “when you try and mix in an untreated room, you may end up with a mix that sounds acceptable in your room, but totally wrong and unbalanced when played else where.”.

Recording- When recording you will be able to hear the characteristic booms, rings or echoes of the room, in your recording. This will leave your overall recording sounding messy.

Remember it doesn’t matter how good your equipment is if your room isn’t right!

“No matter how much you spend on instruments, amps, speakers and recording gear, you still need to pay attention to the space in which you use them.”

How do they work?

A sound wave will emanate from a source in all directions around your space, when these sounds reach one of the rooms boundary’s (walls, floor or ceiling) it will reflect from the surface back into the room, this will carry on bouncing around the room and bouncing off of the rooms surfaces until the sound wave eventually loses energy and dies out.

These reflections are what cause problems such as echoes (also known as reverberation) this is because the listener is hearing both the direct sound (from example a speaker) and the reflected sound. The reflected sound will arrive at the listeners ears slightly after the direct sound. This can also be picked up by microphones during recording sessions; if in a studio.

Smaller rooms will have a shorter reverberation in comparison to larger rooms, this is because within a smaller room reflections are shorter and the energy loss is greater. The time that the reverberation takes to decay 60db in level is known as the rooms ‘RT60 Time’.

Placing an acoustic panel at each main reflection point will help to eliminate the chance of reflection, by absorbing some of the sound and allowing less of the sound energy back into the room. This will decrease the rooms RT60 time and producer a ‘Dryer’ sound.

What treatments do I need?

Smaller rooms, have an issue with bass frequencies; leaving the room sounding ‘Boomy’. Bass traps can be installed in ‘key’ areas to control and breakup the bass frequencies as these are “specifically designed to absorb low-frequency energy.” Especially within smaller rooms the bass frequencies gather within the corner of the room and this is knowing as ‘the boundary effect’. With careful positioning of these bass traps within the corner of the room and between the wall/ceiling joist with a small variety of Mafia Panels Corner bass traps will give your room an over all better sound. Leaving an air gap between the pack of the bass traps and the wall will make these more efficient.

Square rooms, have huge issues as they have many parallel surfaces, “mid and high frequencies, flutter echoes occur between parallel walls or between hard floors and ceilings”. This can be easily treated by positioning 50mm panels on the offending surfaces. This stops a constant reflection from the parallel surface and a ‘standing wave’ occurring.

Larger rooms, will need a good balance of bass trapping along side with panels strategically placed to help eliminate problem sounds and frequencies.

All of our products are made using high quality Rockwool from the Pro Rox RW range this “is a strong but flexible stone wool board”. The materials used to make acoustic panels is extremely important and is crucial to the way the panels integrate and brake up sound.

But why is rockwool a good material to use?

Rockwool is a material which is used to insulate houses, which essentially stops heat from escaping out of the walls. This makes it an excellent material to use when working with sound as an acoustic panel is used to ‘dampen’ sound; to stop it reflecting around the room and causing problems. When the sound waves hits the panel the rockwool helps to break up the sound wave and stop as much of the sound energy from escaping back into the room.

This process “Soaks up the sound energy, turning it into heat, through friction.”

Materials

Sizing

Made in a variety of different shapes and sizes, each order is custom to your requirements. As no two rooms are the same, different shapes and sizes, different construction materials used and different surface types within the room, this is why we don’t follow the ‘one size fits all guide to acoustic treatment’ rule.

A standard rule regarding thickness of a panel is; the thicker the panel is the more effective it is in regards to lower frequencies. This is why our bass traps are double the thickness to our normal panels at 100mm. These are specifically designed to address problem frequencies below 300Hz.

Our 50mm panels are designed to address problems with the mid-high frequencies as these will start to brake down frequencies of around 300Hz and above.

Insulation

Key Points to consider:

Don’t cover too much of the rooms wall surface.
“Acoustic panels placed at the mirror points either side of the monitoring positon will help to prevent mid and high frequency reflections from reaching your ears.”
Place a panel on the mirror point on the ceiling.
Bass traps mounted in the corners and wall/ceiling joints.
Place a 50mm panel in each main reflection point. An easy way to find your reflection points is: by positioning a larger mirror flat to your wall sliding the mirror very slowly across your surfaces until you see a clear reflection of your speakers and positioning a panel in this position, repeating this on each wall.

Other things that will help improve the sound in my room:

Carpeted flooring not hardwood.
Speakers placed on stands not onto your work surface.
Properly positioned speakers.
Set up position within your room.
Rugs.
Soft furniture such as sofas positioned on the wall directly behind the speakers.