XIX Acoustics is very excited to announce a new partnership with Finland’s Innofusor! Innofusor makes custom acoustic absorbers from renewable surface peat fibers. The most exciting thing about peat fibers is that they do not need to be covered by fabric like fiberglass and mineral wool, so the color can be dyed into the fiber itself. Innofusor will also be manufacturing the Acoustic Ramp for the European market, both in standard and custom formats. Innofusor’s 1500 sqft manufacturing space is the perfect specialty facility to build Acoustic Ramps to service Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.
Peat Fiber Absorber from Innofusor
XIX Acoustics and Innofusor will be sharing ideas, materials, technology and intellectual property. We are very excited to see what this unique collaboration will yield!
In addition to offering the Acoustic Ramp diffuser as our flagship diffusion product, we are now offering BBC-style 2D Diffusers. At $299 each or 4 for $999, these Tiny Cities are a tremendous value.
We just finished build a set of 12 custom 2D diffusers for a client in the Pacific Northwest based on the awesome BBC article. When they are all laid out they look amazing and they sound great too! The diffuser frequencies from around 1Khz and above and can be special ordered for $299 a piece or 4/$1000. They are 4″ deep and 18″ x 18″ square with a grid of 144 blocks and wells.
You may have noticed that our website looks completely different. It actually is completely different. We are trying different types of web designs to see what works the best for our customers and for the robots and spiders that hangout on the site. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch!
Echo Boston was designed in 2010 and completed in 2011. The studio is in Brighton, MA and is managed by Head Engineer, Robie Rowland. This is an excerpt of an interview that Hendrik did about the studio design and construction.
I was contracted by J.M. Forbes & Co to solve acoustic problems in three of their conference rooms in the historic Charles Street Meeting House that they have converted into executive office suites. The conference rooms were in reflective and generally extremely tall spaces and echo and reverberation were problems for both people in the room and people on the other end of conference calls.
The reflection of the 121 at the main atrium entrance of the Charles Street Meeting House.
Due to the historic nature of the building, a great deal of the common areas were designed to take advantage of classic architectural details like original moldings, arches and the restored clock and bell.
Meeting House Offices Clock and BellCharles Street Meeting House ExteriorView from inside the “Tall Conference Room”
The extreme height (19 foot ceiling) of the “Tall Conference Room” was both an important architectural hook, but also the cause of many of the room’s acoustic issues. MBI Products was contracted to manufacture custom 4 inch thick 6 foot tall 6 lb fiberglass panels with a special off-white acoustically transparent fabric.
The Tall Conference Room acoustic treatments and the restored clock and bell mechanism.
The Atrium Conference Room was designed as another signature feature of the Meeting House offices. The room is around 12 feet tall with a large original arched window looking on onto the sidewalk below.
An absorber treatment centered on the exterior wall above an original arched window.The Atrium’s longest wall with accent coloring is home to two additional absorbers.The long accent wall of the Atrium intersects with the classic brick wall with its custom projection screen absorber.Another image showing the Atrium Projection Scree during install.
XIX Acoustics designed and manufactured a set of custom 5′ x 3.75′ projection screens for the conference rooms at J.M. Forbes & Co’s Charles Street Meeting House offices. The screen includes 4″ of 6 lb. fiberglass acoustic absorption to absorb room echoes and reverberation. The building is a historical site in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.
XIX Acoustics’ custom-made sound absorbing projection screen in the atrium conference room at the Charles Street Meeting House.
The following images are custom acoustic treatments that have been designed and assembled at XIX Acoustics.
Custom Absorbers: 2’x4′ 4″ in oak veneer and custom fabric.Custom Absorbers: 2’x4′ 4″ in oak veneer and custom fabric.Custom Absorber: Piano Rehearsal RoomInexpensive 1″ AbsorbersTiled Corner for Recorded AmbianceTiny Quadratic Residue Diffuser (QRD)Stack of 2D QRD Diffusers
According to the Internets, the average sized bedroom in the New England area is 10 feet by 11 feet with 8 foot ceilings. Typical historical construction is rough cut spruce studs, lath and horse-hair plaster. Horse-hair plaster is very heavy and acts as a very effective isolating material. Unfortunately many rooms have been remodeled using lighter-weight gypsum board at only 5/8″ or even 1/2″. In order to improve the isolating properties of the gypsum board, double and triple layers are quite common.
Some of the most common problems with small room acoustics are as follows:
1. Low frequencies have loud spots and quiet spots in the room (AKA Low Frequency Buildup / Room Modes / Nodes)
2. Ringing, pinging or strange reverberation and flutter echoes
3. Comb filtering problems with walls and other surfaces
4. Outside noises (like traffic) and inside noises (like fans and AC) are distracting
10×11 Bedroom (top view)
Small rooms, like our average bedroom, are too small to allow low frequencies to be completely expressed. It is extremely likely that there will be significant problems with frequencies that are longer than the dimensions of the room. For our average bedroom we expect to have problems with frequencies corresponding to the dimensions of the room and to multiples of the dimensions of the room. (λ = wavelength)
One of the problems with uneven loudness of lower frequencies is that these lower frequencies are very important musically. All of the bass notes are in this range obviously, but also all of the notes to the left of Middle C on the piano and all the string on the guitar except the highest. This range is the foundation of the structure of most of our music.
Currently a number of volunteers are submitting photos and dimensions of their rooms to include in the testing of the Bedroom Acoustics treatments.
