Why acoustic foam panels are essential for performing arts venues

Jul 19, 2020 by admin

Blog provided by The Foam Factory

Live performances are a rich audiovisual experience where you can be moved by stirring music and inspired by meaningful spoken words. A performance venue’s acoustics are crucial for allowing audiences to hear the performance without any distracting sound fluctuations. Audience members sitting in the back row should have the same opportunity to hear the performers as the people sitting in the front row. This is why performance halls should have a balanced acoustic treatment that eliminates unnecessary echoes all throughout the room.

This can be achieved through the use of sound proofing foam or acoustic foam. You will often see acoustic foam panels on the walls of school lecture halls, concert halls, churches, and in recording studios. These open-cell foam fragments are useful for decreasing echoes and unwanted reverberations because of their structure. Echoes exist because sound waves reflect off hard, flat surfaces and bounce throughout a room. Acoustic foam panels have a soft, porous surface that absorbs energy from sound waves and dissipates it as heat instead of reflecting it. This allows sound to become more clear and focused when it reaches a listener’s ears.

Acoustic foam is ideal for venues such as these because it does not completely eliminate sound. If you eliminate too many echoes, audiences who are further apart from the stage will have a hard time even hearing the performance. For performance venues, it’s a good idea to leave some resonance inside the room, because an acoustically dead room can be as bad as one with excessive echoing. You can also use acoustic foam in conjunction with other sound absorption methods such as adding sound absorbing curtains to your stage. Check Northeast Stage to find sound absorbing curtains for schools, churches, theaters, and arenas.

If you need acoustic panels for your performance venue, browse through The Foam Factory’s collection of acoustic foam products. There are acoustic foam panels with different decorative designs including acoustic wedge, acoustic spade, acoustic wave, and acoustic grid panels. You can also find thicker sound barriers, drop ceiling tiles, and bass/broadband absorbers if you need more specialized types of sound absorption. Contact them today for more information.