There are many acoustic panels now available to combat the problem high reverberation or echo in rooms with hard surfaces. We would like to put forward our thoughts on the top 5 acoustic panel systems available to the UK market.

We talk impartially and from experience, having used many different acoustic wall panels systems, either specified on projects or used in our own design schemes. This small list takes into account a number of factors including ‘effectiveness’ (most important, we believe), aesthetics, ease of installation, durability and supporting test data.

1. ECOPHON ‘VISTA’ WALL PANEL C

Ecophon 'Wall Panel C' - Class A sound absorbing acoustic panels in Texona glass fibre fabric

When it comes to reducing room reverberation, this class A sound absorbing wall panelling system is incredibly effective. The result of installing this panelling system to echoing rooms is quite amazing. It is the first product we recommend for highly reverberant areas, it looks great, its aesthetically versatile, suiting all spaces from high-end boardroom environments to noisy school canteens. The Texona fabric range is fashionable and timeless.

2. FABRIC WALL

Stretched Fabric Wall | Wall to wall fabric wall panelling

This system achieves the highest possible marks for aesthetics and the look and feel of high quality. In terms of flexibility there is nothing that cannot be achieved. This system is site built by specialist installers. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall stretched fabric with a huge range of hidden track profiles. Very high levels of sound absorbency can be achieved with the right core thickness and fabrics. Certainly not the cheapest option, but with fabrics from Camira to Kvadrat to Paul Smith the design possibilities are endless and beautiful sound control can be achieved.

3. CUSTOM PRINTED ACOUSTIC PANELS

Custom Printed Acoustic Panels

We have now overcome the old issues of reduced acoustic performance and fabric printing quality problems. It is now possible to produce over sized acoustic panels with high resolution printing the fabric with stunning results. Class A sound absorbency can be achieved and we believe this solution should be seriously considered by anyone looking for ‘office art’ or intelligent ways of branding receptions, atria, common parts, restaurants and canteens. It combines acoustic benefits, with high quality art, branding or marketing.

4. OFFECCT SOUNDWAVE

Offecct Soundwave Acoustic Wall Panels

Offecct Soundwave panels are an excellent way of providing acoustic treatment to spaces by way of absorption and specifically diffusion. Although they are not as effective at reducing echo through sound absorbency as the Ecophon panels already mentioned above, they provide an excellent feature and texture and are available in many different textures and designs.

5. ECOPHON SUPER G

Ecophon Super G Impact Resistant Wall Panels

Ecophon Super G panels are a surprisingly versatile solution where durability and impact resistancy is required. They are an attractive way of treating environments such as sports halls, leisure centres and gymnasiums. The woven Super G glass-fibre surface is extremely durable, with the panels achieving Class A absorbency.

For more information on the above acoustic wall panel systems, contact ReSpace Acoustics. Who provide a complete assessment, design and installation service.

We are proud to announce we have been awarded ‘EPIC’ (Ecophon Partnership in Contracting) status by Swedish acoustic product manufacturers Saint-Gobain Ecophon.

Ecophon Partnership in Contracting is a unique relationship between Saint-Gobain Ecophon and a very select  number of contractors within the UK & Ireland. This partnership recognises the high standards of installation finish and service to the end customer.

ReSpace Acoustics are now Ecophon Parters in Contracting

Ecophon have launched a new innovation acoustic product, a hanging acoustic panel and lighting solution all in one called ‘Soundlight Comfort’.

The product uses the phenomenally successful and effective Class A sound absorber called ‘Solo’ by Ecophon with integrated Philips LED lighting to create an ‘all-in-one’ solution for outstanding acoustic performance and high quality lighting.

When suitable, Ecophon Solo is our ‘go to’ product for combating rooms with high reverberation times or echo. Now we can offer an innovative and stylish LED lighting solution in our newly designed spaces and proposals for existing ceiling treatments. Contact us for more information and prices.

Soundlight Comfort > Hanging Acoustic Panels with Integral Lighting

Sound Light Comfort

Sound Light Comfort > High Performance Acoustics & Lighting

With new shapes and sizes we continue to find Ecophon Solo panels one of the most flexible and effective sound absorption panels on the market.

Ecophon Solo - Benefits

The West Mercia Police contacted Respace for an acoustic solution to their noisy, busy call centre.

With a constantly busy call centre, the West Mercia Police Station required a quality call centre acoustics installation to reduce the noise within the office. Respace Acoustic won the contract to implement this acoustic installation.

Ecophon Wall Panel C

The office acoustic solution was found through the installation of Ecophon Wall Panel C and Ecophon Solo Ceiling Rafts. These acoustic panels reduced the reverberation time within the room creating a sound sonic environment for the employees to work in.

Ecophon Solo Ceiling Rafts

Both the ceiling rafts and the wall panels were installed in natural colours to blend in with the neutral design of the office. They were installed to be barley noticeable but acoustically magnificent.

Ecophon Solo Rafts & Ecophon Wall Panels

The installation was successful meeting police departments requirements and creating a sound sonic environment for all employees to work in.

There is now an evident growing demand for complete acoustic solutions in a variety of different environments.

Some of these are Church, Entertainment and Worship Space. As these areas have a variety of activities and purposes to fulfill to their customer/client base the reverberation time within the space needs to be very low for any noise and speech intelligibility to be achieved.

The below Churches and Entertainment Spaces contacted Respace Acoustics for this acoustic solution:

1. Glazier Hall | Entertainment Space Acoustics

Glaziers Hall a large entertainment space over looking the River Thames awarded Respace Acoustics with the project of creating an acoustic solution for their large hall.

Ecophon Master Solo Hanging Acoustic Rafts

Acoustic Products Used & Benefits:

1. Ecophon Solo Hanging Acoustic Panels

2. Lowered Reverberation Time & Echo

3.  Ability to use Hall for variety of activities as sound sonic

4. Complimented design and lighting through installation

2. New Zion Church | Church Acoustics

Respace Acoustics was contacted by New Zion Church for an acoustic solution for their church space. After a complete refurbishment, Respace installed an Ecophon product to achieve the church acoustics solution.

Ecophon Wall Panel A

Acoustic Products Used & Benefits:

1. Ecophon Wall Panel A was installed

2. Reduced reverberation time & echo

3. Complimented neutral existing design

4. Created complete acoustic sound sonic solution

3. Trinity Methodist Church | Church Acoustics

Respace was awarded the project of creating Trinity Methodist Church an acoustic solution for their worship space. Trinity Church had very poor acoustics so Respace installed an Ecophon acoustic product to achieve the solution.

Ecophon Solo Hanging Acoustic Panels

Acoustic Products Used & Benefits:

1. Ecophon Solo hanging acoustic panels installed

2. Lowered reverberation time & echo

3. Increased speech intelligibility & sound

4. Complimented existing design

5. Burslem Methodist Church | Church Acoustics

Burslem Methodist Church contacted Respace Acoustics for an acoustic solution for their worship space. The Church is used for a variety of activities and the poor acoustics was effecting their ability to hold the functions.

Ecophon Wall Panel C & Ecophon Solo Hanging Acoustic Panels

Acoustic Products Used & Benefits:

1. Ecophon Wall Panel C & Ecophon Solo Hanging Acoustic Panels installed

2. Lowered reverberation time & echo

3. Increased speech intelligibility

5. Complimented existing design

Respace were contact to provide an acoustic solution to lower the overall noise level in one of the Pavillion Leisure Centres in South West London.

By installing just ten Ecophon Solo hanging acoustic panels, Respace lowered the reverberation time to an acceptable and comfortable level. Therefore creating a better sound absorbing atmosphere in which gym users and the tutors now have a more pleasant work-out experience.

Ecophon Solo hanging acoustic panels

The above picture shows the spinning room in the Leisure centre which received the most complaints with regards to noise. On the ceilings you can see the hanging acoustic panels that lower the reverberation time and create the acoustic solution.

Hanging Acoustic Panels

Gymnasiums, sports halls and leisure centres commonly suffer from acoustic problems, this project case study shows how easy it can be to remedy.

Corridors and other communicational areas can be the noisiest, busiest areas in a building.

Corridors are the channels between all the different rooms, therefore their function and activity are key to a businesses day to day runnings and critically important in spaces such as hotel corridors.

Numerous meetings, movement and business equipment are held in corridors so the ability to have a clear conversation with reduced noise is key. At the same time conversation or movements throughout the corridor must not disturb adjacent rooms or other areas. The constant use of corridors for multiple activity places extra demands on the sound environment and its improvements.

The hard materials and structure of a corridor are just two of many ways sound can become disturbing for surrounding rooms and areas. The most beneficial way to reduce and absorb sound is using all of the ceiling area for sound absorbing acoustic products. Reverberation time and general hard noise is reduced,  improving speech intelligibility.

For unrivalled sound absorption where vertically hung baffles are required, we would recommend the Class A sound absorbing ‘Master Baffle‘, manufactured by Saint Gobain Ecophon.

Ecophon Master Baffle

This sound absorption product is extremely effective in combating room with echo’s, is easily demountable and available in a range of panel sizes. Like all of Ecophon’s hanging acoustic products ‘Master Baffle’ completely transforms noisy rooms to crisp and comfortable listening environments.

Ecophon Master Baffle in Meeting Room

This product only enhances the aesthetics of plain slab ceiling constructions such as concrete – with a clean minimalist design. Finished with ‘Akutex FT’ surface coating technology in classic neutral colours.

With the Healthcare industry premises constantly busy and always in high demand, hospitals, doctors surgeries and dentists benefit greatly from acoustic treatments.  Reducing the effect that hard surfaces have on sound in heathcare environments dramatically improves the experience of patients prior, during and after any medical treatment.

Respace Acoustics created an acoustic solution for Dapdune Surgery waiting room to reduce the reverberation time and sometimes evident hard sounds that echoed through the room. Using the up-to-date acoustic products, in this case Ecophon Wall Panel C,  patients now sit and wait for their appointment in a significantly quieter room with the sound absorbing wall treatment. This has increased customer satisfaction and comfort.

Communal areas including corridors also had installed a combination of different colour acoustic wall panels to inject colour and create a stylish solution as well as improving the acoustics.

Sound Absorbing Wall Panels

Ecophon Wall Panel C

Am I alone in disliking a noisy restaurant?. I think everyone must agree that an eating environment where you have to shout to be heard, when only sitting opposite somebody, is not the best experience.

Being disturbed by conversations or kitchen noise on the other side of the restaurant in a highly reverberant space is not ideal – whether you realise you are uncomfortable or not.

I believe that good room acoustics are key to a successful restaurant (quality of food is fairly important too – but you know what I mean). We have treated many restaurants with poor acoustics. And I can honestly say with 100% success on every occasion. How did we do this? What was our approach?…

I would suggest the following reasons for our success: -

1. INDIVIDUALITY – We look at every acoustic treatment project individually and treat them differently, particularly in restaurant environments. You can study as many studies and papers as you like… but every eatery is different, every surface is generally different and the clients acoustic goals are generally always different. It is just as important to understand your clients desires for their clienteles experience as is it the understanding of all the behavior of sound all of its nuances. Very exclusive, expensive, high end restaurants, generally but not exclusively prefer to have a very ‘dead’ sound. Supporting that feeling of exclusivity, speech privacy, relaxation. Some restaurants require a buzz and and a youthful excitement. Once we have collated this information we work towards a reverberation time that would best suit.

1. Design is KEY – We use highly effective, attractive acoustic products from discreet sound absorbing black ceilings to feature custom printed wall panels – or textured sound diffusing panels. Enhance the appearance of the space and create a feature from any acoustic treatment is our advice. Design is KEY.

There is plenty more – but with the right meeting with the right people, a good survey and a great design you can achieve fantastic listening environments in restaurants and bars. There is no ‘one size’ or ‘RT fits all’ and over analysis and over-complication in my personal opinion is unnecessary.

Ecophon Sombra - Acoustic Ceiling

When I eat in restaurants with poor acoustics – I ask the front of house, do you realise your restaurant could feel so much better?… often, interestingly, the answer is yes. If I wasn’t so busy eating I might just make some sales…

Matt Bullen
Restaurant Acoustics Critic / Salesman.

Kitchen Acoustic Ceiling - Ecophon Hygiene

Corridors, lunch rooms, offices, conference rooms all of these areas are vital for all businesses. These are the main areas that may require the acoustic sound control products to reduce the unwanted echoey sounds and high reverberation.

ReSpace specialises in creating acoustic solutions for these areas with the use of quality acoustic products and services.

Office Corridors: The discomfort and distraction that can arise from a hard material corridors to other office spaces can be challenging. ReSpace fitted the following acoustic solution using Ecophon Focus Ds XL corridor ceiling system was installed to absorb hard noise and create an acoustic comfort for this buildings corridor area. Now the individual offices hear minimal / reduced noise from the chatty corridor outside.

Ecophon Focus Ds - -Open Plan Office

Lunch Rooms/ Kitchens: Another essential part of any employees day, lunch. This area can become of the most echoey areas of a building due to the large amount of noise emitted from all materials and object around the room.

Respace created an solution for this exact problem for PepsiCo restaurant. Using four types of acoustic treatments:

• Ecophon Acoustic Wall Panel C
• Ecophon Advantage Acoustic Ceiling tiles
• Ecophon Circular Master Solo Rafts
• Ecophon Bespoke Acoustic Artwork

Respace created this acoustic solutions that now allows both customers and clients to enjoy their lunch with the echoey noises and lowered reverberations of others while also making the area aesthetically pleasing to the eye…… Happy eating!!!

Printed Acoustic Panels

Conference Room: With important meetings and discussing held daily in most business w0rkplaces, a quiet echoey free area is vital to achieve maximum satisfaction and complete concentration.

Ecophon Solo Hanging Acoustic Rafts in Meeting Room

Respace created an acoustic solution for this problem at Ryder Architects in London. With the use of quality acoustic products Ecophon ‘Master Solo’ class A absorbent ceiling rafts and Ecophon wall panel A achieved this goal.

Another broad area with an increasing need for acoustic solutions are churches. Their need to significantly lower the reverberation time and reducing the echo within a church due to singing and loud bible classes can increase enjoyment, self satisfaction and general hearing within the church.

Ecophon Wall Panel A

ReSpace was contacted by the New Zion Church to make this a reality. By adding the Ecophon Wall Panel ‘A’ system to the church the reverberation time was lowered and the echo significantly reduced making the time spent in the church a more pleasurable one.

Feedback on this acoustic solution was “I have now attended two Sunday meetings and a bible study, which as you can imagine have very different acoustic requirements. In both cases the installation gave us what we needed. We could hear clearly !!” A few other of the church members mentioned how well the panels blended in and reduced the ‘echoey atmostphere’.

Glaziers Hall, with superb views over looking the Thames, is a large entertainment space that was also in need of acoustic solutions, as the main materials within this space were plasterboard and floor wood planks. These hard surfaces created an extremely difficult environment to be heard in when in use.

Ecophon Master Solo Acoustic Rafts

Ecophon Master solo acoustic rafts were advised by ReSpace as the acoustic solution to this problem. Installed in a line down the centre of the room, these minimalist rafts worked exceptionally well with the current rectangular light fittings. This project created an excellent solution and now with reduced echoey sounds and reverberations this space can be used with increased comfort and satisfaction.

We have found that Ecophon’s acoustic panelling system ‘wall panel c‘ with Texona fabric to be incredibly effective in combating the common problem of reverberation / echo within rooms. This acoustic product truly has stunning sound absorbing qualities. The choice of Texona fabric is sufficient enough to create a striking, high quality feature suitable for high end environments.

Ecophon Wall Panel C - Staff Restaurant

The class A sound absorbing properties of this system mean that less panelling is required than alternative products on the market – this can be a godsend when there are is limited wall space available and means that the cost to performance ratio is superb.

Ecophon Wall Panel C - Boardroom

A room with this acoustic panel system installed creates an excellent listening environment and is ideal for combating office noise in open plan offices, meeting rooms, restaurants and open spaces such as halls.

Ecophon Wall Panel C - Meeting Room

Ecophon ‘wall panel c’ is a highly effective noise reduction system that truly transforms noisy spaces and creates a crisp and deadened acoustic environment.

Ecophon Wall Panel C - Light Beige Texona

Our customers, enter a space treated by this product, make a noise and the next sound is… ‘wow!’.

Cisco’s TelePresence a room build project was awarded to ReSpace by global food & drink producers PepsiCo. The Cisco room build guidelines are strict, this project was managed by ReSpace from design to completion.

ReSpace found that the room acoustics were as important as any other build element while undertaking this project. Precision, quality and strict guidelines are invaluable in order to create this kind of successful TelePresence fit-out room build.

Completed TelePresence Room

All rooms must be built to the exact same size and specification even the paint colour must match. The idea is that you feel you are in the same room as somebody who could be the other side of Earth.

Big companies with a global presence use virtual meeting facilitiessuch as Cisco TelePresence systems. This allows them to have virtual meetings with staff, customers and suppliers anywhere in the world without unnecessary environmental and financial cost of travel. The cost of the equipment and the required room build is significant and the manufacturers insist that the strict room build guidelines are adhered to and ensuring that the client gets the most from the system. Good quality acoustics are imperative for the users experience.

With some scope allowed to enhance the Cisco build guidelines we developed an acoustic solution which provided the perfect acoustic environment for these facilities. The ceiling is out of shot from the cameras so we introduced a sound absorbing floating acoustic ceiling called Ecophon Wing, with Focus Ds concealed grid ceiling tiles. This created a flag-ship feel to the room and also allowed us to introduce feature LED lighting the perimeter and DOT indirect modular fittings into the raft.

Ecophon Focus Ds Wing Floating Ceiling

To the walls we applied Class A sound absorbing acoustic panels by Ecophon. The wall panel C system finished with glass fibre Texona fabric in light beige was a perfect match TelePresence installations already in the US.

Ecophon Wall Panel C Texona Acoustic Panels

Before the equipment can be shipped for installation the newly built room must pass a Cisco CTX inspection test, which includes lighting lux levels and acoustics it was clear that this solution provided both with flying coloursmeaning there is always two wows, one for the equipment and one for the room.

 

The installation was a success with complete customer satisfaction.

 

In our opinion Ecophon Solo is by far the most effective sound absorbing hanging system available anywhere. We have used it to transform noisy, echoing spaces for years. It offers limitless design opportunities and class A sound absorption.

Circular Master Solo

Where increased sound absorption and noise reduction is required in highly reverberant spaces, Ecophon Solo is the perfect solution. We have completed many projects including offices and schools where increased speech intelligibility and speech clarity are important – Ecophon Solo has helped to achieve room acoustic comfort whilst giving the ceiling a new aesthetic dimension.

Square Master Solo

Ecophon Solo can be successfully integrated with lighting, is available with 3 different suspension systems and is aslo available in a huge array of colours including the Akutex FT matte surface finish.

Master Solo Random Installation

Solo is now available in 10 standard geometric shapes and now – you can create you own shape!. This creates a creative freedom in interior acoustic ceiling design which is unique in the acoustic product market place. The option to form virtually any shape in the Solo panel has only been introduced by Ecophon recently (2011) and we expect this create even more excitement around this already hugely successful and popular acoustic product.

Master Solo Square & Rectangular