Acoustic Panels: What They Are and How They Work!

If you're on your way toward the perfect home theater, there's no shortage of new niche technologies to get comfortable with. But after all that advanced audio and video management equipment, one thing you may be wondering if you also need acoustic panels. You may have already seen our article on just how important acoustic panels are, but do you know how they work?

Acoustic panels are surfaces made of shaped foam and/or fabric covering which improve sound quality by absorbing sound waves, preventing them from bouncing around a room and interfering and reducing the quality of other sound waves.

If that sounds a little strange, that's because it is. After all, it's hard to picture actual sound waves moving around your space, and how much of them can really bounce off of a wall? Would you really notice a difference? To understand if you need acoustic panels for your setup, let's look at how they work, and if they can really get you any results.

Acoustic Panels Explained

Acoustic panels work by trapping sound waves within the foam materials they're made of. Since all sound is vibrations in the air, sound waves act as a sort of cave that the sound waves can travel into, but not out of. For aesthetic purposes, there is usually a fabric covering for acoustic panels meant to be in open spaces.

You've probably seen acoustic panels before, on movies or youtube videos, in the background of sound stages or production studios. Sometimes you can see exposed surfaces that look jagged or saw-toothed. That Triangular shaping forms a funnel to sound waves, which bounce back and forth until they've spent all their energy.

Some panels don't have any “teeth” cut into the face, instead relying on the absorbing properties of the foam itself to do the work. If the panel wasn't there, sound waves hitting a given space would bounce right off the wall, then the next wall, then the ceiling, etc., which is how you can get into a problem with too many sound waves bouncing around your space.

And since different sound waves have different wavelengths, there are actually different types of acoustic panels. But don't worry, there are really only two main categories: “normal” wall panels used to address mid and high-frequency sounds, and “Bass Traps” that are designed to go in corners and have a bit deeper design.

Components of Acoustic Panels

From the description above, you can probably already picture the main components of an acoustic panel: the sound-absorbing material and the fabric covering.

The sound-absorbing material can actually be a few different types of material, but they are all variations on the same theme: the material's job is to be just porous enough that sound can get inside of it, but dense enough that the sound bounces around and “gets lost” inside.

Materials like compressed wool can be a good replacement for the foam because the properties of wool allow it to get the job done. But foam has its own advantages. Be sure to check out our article on acoustic panels vs foam panels to get comfortable with the differences.

Next, there's the fabric covering of the panel, which hides the foam and allows the panel to be more aesthetically pleasing. There's a wide variety of materials that can be used as the fabric covering, so long as it's porous enough to allow sound in. Heavy, thick coverings aren't used because they'd bounce the sound off, defeating the purpose.

Do Acoustic Panels Really Work?

So, it's clear acoustic panels are designed to achieve this goal, but is this all just theory, or is there really something there that can enhance your space? The good news is that you can get very real results from using acoustic panels, but they're a tool designed for a specific problem.

When are Acoustic Panels Effective?

If you've got a nice surround sound system, or maybe a high-end soundbar that has 3.1 or 5.2 channels of sound, you've now got enough channels that sound waves bouncing around the space can cause a problem. We have an entire article about how effective panels can be, but this is one of the times where they have the most effect.

Every speaker you have is putting out sound in one general direction (with the exception of subwoofers which fire a bit differently). And if you look at your walls, there's probably not a lot there except flat surfaces. Even when pictures or furniture block the well directly across from the speakers, it's usually a lot of flat, hard surfaces that bounce the sound right off.

So if you're pumping a bunch of sound into the space, it has nowhere to go other than to bounce around over and over and over again. This wouldn't be a big problem, except when the volume goes up, and the number of speakers in the room go up, it starts to overwhelm the space with sound.

Huite slat wood wall panel and ceilings can quickly transform any modern space. It is the perfect solution for sound absorption, reducing the reverberation time of noise in your space. Contact us if you need them!