A SOUND PROPOSITION

Nathaniel Bailey of the Artnovian R&D Department addresses some of the acoustic treatment sector’s key questions.

A genuine hot topic this one, how has the market evolved in recent times?

Confinement brought about a few sudden trends - a lot of us were confronted with the need to create a comfortable environment to work from home - this means not just creating a level of privacy, but improving speech intelligibility to hear and be heard in all those zoom meetings.

Exploring new forms of home entertainment also highlighted a lot of issues in home cinema and listening rooms, not to mention simply creating more relaxed living spaces that had to suddenly deal with more people, all at once.

This was especially harsh for Pro Audio professionals, that had to suddenly find a way to create the same quality of output as their professional studios at home.

All in all, confinement forced us to interact with our homes in new ways and showed us that with a little effort we can really improve our home systems, our comfort, and ultimately our wellbeing.

The acoustic treatment market has seen a paradigm shift over recent years. There has been an increase in the use of acoustic treatment products and services in a wide range of settings, including office buildings, restaurants, retail stores, and residential. This has led to a greater awareness of the need for acoustic treatment and the benefits it can provide.

Are aesthetics equally important now?

As equally important as performance? Short answer, no. Or at least, they shouldn’t be.

Acoustic treatment is a science. There are quantifiable issues that need addressing in specific ways. We can have the best-looking products and designs in the world, but when the lights go out and the room sounds awful, what’s the point?

A good example: when we are watching a film, we don’t really mind a bad picture – broken pixels or reflections off the screen, or a lack of colour depth. It’s not ideal, but our brains learn to ignore it. Having bad sound makes it immediately unwatchable.

Hi-Fi listening rooms can be very technical spaces, but it is more about creating a full experience – the same can be said for residential spaces – we work towards creating a full ambience. What we experience in a space is the result of all of our senses, mainly what we can see and what we hear, each part is important. A well-designed room takes everything into account to create a space that is both beautiful and functional.

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At Artnovion, we focus on creating highperformance products, which means you don’t need to use as many to get the same result. This combines with using creative designs and premium finishes to create an acoustic solution that adds to the design of the space – you can treat your acoustics with a tailored design centrepiece. Long gone are the days when acoustic treatment is something ugly and technical that needs to be hidden behind stretch fabric.

What are the main principles when trying to improve a room’s acoustics?

The objective is to design for sound quality. This means creating a balanced, predictable environment.

Each room is unique and requires a studied approach, but there are always common issues to address, such as treating first reflections and controlling the overall reverberation time and the low-frequency response of the room.

If you imagine a listener in a room, in the instant after a speaker emits sound they are first going to perceive the direct sound from the speaker. A few milliseconds after this, they will perceive the first reflections from the wall, floor and ceiling. A bit later, they will hear high-order reflections - waves that have bounced multiple times off different surfaces before reaching the listeners’ ears.

All of the energy that reached the listener within the first 50ms will be perceived as a single sound. This means that we hear the result of the interaction of the direct sound and all of these reflections.

At any given frequency, there is a possibility that the sound reaches our ears in the opposite phase. This creates destructive interference, cancellation at the given frequency, and all of its higher harmonics. This can lead to more severe cases of flutter echos, but normally it has one main effect - destroying speech intelligibility.

Reflection is usually treated with absorption. Porous or fibrous materials convert the kinetic energy from sound waves into heat, reducing the amount of energy reflected back into the room. Dedicated absorbers, and bass traps, are used to control low frequencies.

Diffusion is also used, but for a different effect - they are designed to reflect energy evenly over a larger area, which helps to create a more balanced sound field and larger sweet spot.

Most projects are created using strategically placed absorption and diffusion, but the goal is always the same - creating good sound quality in those first milliseconds.

A properly treated room will sound better because?

If you’ve ever been in a room with tile floors and bare walls, you’ve probably noticed how live it sounds. Your voice echoes and every little noise is amplified. Now imagine that same room with carpets, drapes, and furniture. The sound is completely different. The room feels warmer and more inviting.

I like to use an analogy for home cinema: You can buy a top-of-the-range 4K projector, set it up in your room and then project it onto an unfinished brick wall. We can all imagine it’s not going to go very well. You’ll lack definition and have a bad overall picture. You need to project onto a screen.

Acoustic treatment works in very much the same way. No matter how good your system may be, your perception of the sound is dictated by the quality of your room.

It can be easy to identify certain issues in a bad room. We’ve all been through the experience of turning the volume up to hear a conversation, and then having to turn it down again at the next action sequence. More likely than bad mixing, this is likely caused by poor speech intelligibility.

What does a good room sound like? It should be immersive. You should perceive a rich, full sound, with good intelligibility and a strong bass ratio. You should be able to enjoy exactly the same experience, no matter where you are in the room.

It isn’t so much a case of how a good room sounds, a perfect room is completely neutral, allowing the rest of the system to shine.

Large and more compact spaces can benefit from treatment

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