Acoustic Treatment Design

Overview

This part of the process is about specifying the number, type and placement of acoustic treatments. Two factors contribute to the complexity of this phase:

• The balance between commercially available and custom designed acoustic treatment. Using commercial products reduces design time whilst heavy use of custom bass traps and other architectural acoustic treatment increases design time.
• The level of documentation required. Simple 2D sketches or Google Sketchup models are relatively quick to create whereas full construction CAD drawings are time consuming.

Acoustic treatment options

Commercially available

The vast majority of treatment needs needs can be met by combining products from our four suppliers: RPG, RealTraps, Golterman & Sabo and Primacoustic. The acoustic treatment market is confusing for customers, since there are many products, suppliers and competing marketing messages. Our suppliers have been carefully selected to provide high quality products that work. We help you understand the different options available, their advantages / disadvantages and find the ideal products to meet your balance of aesthetic, performance and budgetary needs.

Custom designed

Some circumstances require acoustic treatment to be custom designed. In these cases we design the treatment to meet a particular need and provide suitable construction / bill of material documentation.

• Custom bass traps. Sometimes a significant amount of absorption is needed to combat room mode resonances. In these cases commercial products must be supplemented with custom designed bass traps such as panel and Helmholtz resonators that are tuned to problematic frequencies.
• Architectural acoustic treatment. Occasionally we have clients who require integration of acoustic treatment into the interior design or architecture of their room. This can mean building structures to contain acoustic treatment or finding ways to 'hide' it within the interior design.

Documentation

The Acoustic Treatment Design report contains the following:

• Tabular specification of number, type and purpose of acoustic treatments
• 2D CAD drawings or 3D Sketchup models showing placement of acoustic treatments

For more complex projects and if required by the client we also provide:

• CAD construction blueprints
• CAD construction drawings / bills of materials for custom designed acoustic treatment

Pricing

Design, acoustic treatment engineering and documentation costs are charged at our hourly rate of $125 - see our pricing policies for more details. 

90% of our clients choose commercially available products and have basic documentation requirements. In these cases this phase takes normally takes 2 hours or less.