The whole world of room acoustics has been evolving ever since sound was studied in a closed space by people of science. They discovered that sound has properties that they hadn’t known about earlier and that sound can be stopped or absorbed through various fibers or fabrics/ materials. In addition, different materials have different sound absorption abilities.
We discussed such sound-absorbing material – ‘Acoustic Panels’. In this blog, Gharpedia shares the basic information about acoustic panels.
Basic Information about Acoustic Panels
Here, you will know the following details about the acoustic panels.
- What is an acoustic panel?
- Impact of Acoustic Panel’s Placement Position
- Things to Keep in Mind before Acoustic Panel’s Placement etc.
What Is An Acoustic Panel?
Simply put, acoustic panels can be defined as sound-absorbing panels that can be used to mitigate all background noise and eliminate reverb and echo from a space.
Now there are three parts to good acoustics, namely, absorption, diffusion and attenuation. And these factors heavily contribute to the acoustic performance of the acoustic panel.
Impact of Acoustic Panel’s Placement Position
The position of acoustic panels plays an important role as it influences the panel’s functionality. And you must know it as it’s the most basic information about acoustic panels. You can place panels either vertical or horizontal. You can choose the position by your requirement of exact function in acoustic sound dampening.
Vertical Acoustic Panels
The vertical acoustic panels help mitigate sound transfers in space, preventing that sound from going from one closed space to another closed space. These vertical panels also aid in bringing down the background noise levels. And these acoustic panels are now more important than ever as several office places have set the accepted noise levels to be under 45-50 decibels, whereas the current statistics say that most office places maintain a level of 75-80 decibels.
Therefore the goal here is to bring down the noise, echo and reverb using either suspended panels, wall-mounted acoustic panels or standing panels to bring the noise down to desired levels. Alternatively, these panels have now evolved into sound-absorbing wallpapers that can be put around the entire room along with other acoustic dampening apparatus to get even greater results. Acoustic floor to ceiling partitions can be used to dampen the noise levels even further and is really ideal if you’re staying near a noisy place or where the noise levels are higher than usual.
Horizontal Acoustic Panels
However, horizontal panels are usually used for direct absorption. By stopping the sound waves from spreading, absorptive panels convert sound energy into heat energy through the friction that’s continuously there. Same way as vertical acoustic panels, these horizontal panels are also essential in noisy neighborhoods or if you have professional needs from these panels. Employing a solution consisting of both vertical and horizontal acoustic panels can produce even greater results in terms of sound dampening, which means both stopping outside noises from entering a room and vice versa as in stopping excessive noise from leaving a confined, closed place.
Things to Keep in Mind before Acoustic Panel’s Placement
Suppose someone wants to eliminate all perceivable noise completely. In that case, that is, sound transfer, reducing background noise and reverb time, it’s crucial to determine exactly where to put these panels or their exact placement. And this can be influenced by more than one factor, such as,
01. Room Type
The room type can influence the impact of the acoustic panel. Like, your room is big or small. And the other most important thing you have to check before choosing an acoustic panel is, whether the room has some preexisting soundproofing or not.
02. Purpose of the Room
It’s crucial to know, what is usually getting done at the space, for example, a room repurposed as a music recording area has to have way more soundproofing because entire bands might have to play in there-whereas; the requirement for soundproofing of an IT process office might not be that much because the potential for a noise level sound coming out of there is much lower.
03. Existing Stuff of the Room
You have to consider the existing stuff in the room, such as furniture or other materials present in the room. For instance, in a smaller room, like a dedicated office or a meeting area, you can bet that the sound is going to bounce off the closest hard surfaces to you. Thus, it would be advisable to mount the sound-absorbing panels on the walls for the desired results. And it is essential to put such panels in an office space due to reasons ranging from not letting background or ambient noise enter the meeting area and any sort of noise leaving the room for privacy and security reasons.
04. Bigger Room Size
In bigger rooms, sound waves behave differently as the sound can’t properly bounce back the hard surface of your walls because sometimes the sound is just dropping dead even before hitting a solid element. But typically, these sound waves do hit a hard surface before dropping but just not the walls; these sound waves often go for the ceiling. To eliminate the reverb and echo, suspended acoustic panels are hung from the ceiling and remarkably make the sound of space better. When suspended from the ceiling, these horizontal panels absorb sound waves, and for even better results, one can hang these panels on varying heights so that the air pockets between these panels also hold the sound by not letting it travel any further.
Concluding, one of the fewer desired byproducts of a modern and evolved world is the noise that comes with it. And while it can never be asked of humans to keep it down, postponing their very important work, those humans can employ the use of these acoustic sound panels so that they’re not disturbing any other people as a byproduct of their work.
I hope, this basic information about acoustic panels proves very very helpful to you when choosing the one for your sweet home or energetic office.
