Feature walls can be an effective way to enhance retail displays and attract customers. A feature wall is a specific area of a retail space that has been designed to stand out and draw attention to a particular product, collection, or brand. Feature walls can be created using various materials and design techniques, and they can be customized to match the specific needs and branding of a retail space.

One of the key benefits of a feature wall is that it provides a focal point for customers, helping to direct their attention to a particular product or collection. This is particularly important in a retail environment where customers are often overwhelmed with choice and may not know where to start looking. By creating a feature wall, retailers can guide customers towards products they want to promote, increasing the chances of a sale.

When designing a feature wall for a retail display, it’s important to consider the materials and design techniques that will best suit the products being showcased. For example, a clothing retailer may opt for a textured wall featuring different fabrics and textures, while a jewelry retailer may choose a sleek, minimalist design that complements the delicate nature of their products.

In addition to enhancing the visual appeal of a retail space, feature walls can also help to create a sense of brand identity and continuity. By using consistent colors, patterns, and design elements throughout a feature wall, retailers can create a cohesive look that reflects their brand and makes it easier for customers to recognize their products.

Another advantage of feature walls is that they can be easily updated and changed to reflect new products, seasons, or promotions. This allows retailers to keep their displays fresh and relevant, encouraging customers to come back and see what’s new.

Pro-coustix have the expertise and experience in delivering innovative 3D profiles for use in retail store, car show rooms and other sectors where impactful displays are needed. Our products have been featured in  the fast and furious and Straight shooter ( Netflix).

If you are looking for a any profiled sheets or panels made out of our purple or range panels please do not hesitate to contact us.

Podcasting has become a popular and accessible medium for anyone with an interest in sharing their thoughts and ideas with the world. Whether you want to build your personal brand, share your expertise on a particular topic, or simply have fun talking with friends, podcasting can be a great way to do it.

The ease with which podcasts can be distributed and consumed means that there is growing demand for new, unique content. So whilst you may not be a subject specialist, simply telling your story can attract listeners. It is said that every one has a story to tell. You would be surprised at how many people would be interested in the story you have to tell, borne out of your own unique experiences.

If this sounds tempting, read on for our top tips on getting started.

1. Develop a concept for your podcast
The first step in becoming a podcaster is to develop a concept for your podcast. This should be something that you are passionate about and knowledgeable in, and that you think will be of interest to others. Some popular podcast niches include: news, politics, technology, health and wellness, personal development, and entertainment.


2. Invest in podcasting equipment
To create high-quality audio for your podcast, you’ll need to invest in some equipment. This includes a good microphone, headphones, and a computer with editing software. The cost of this equipment can vary widely, but you can find good options for under £100. As you gain experience and your podcast becomes more popular, you may want to invest in more advanced equipment.

3. Acoustically treat your space
One area often overlooked by upcoming podcasters is acoustic treatment. Recording audio content in spaces that are not acoustically treated results in content that sounds boxy, bright and reverberant. This degrades the quality of the audio captured and final mix of any podcast you publish. Materials such as acoustic foam panels are a great start to taming the sound in your recording room.


4. Record and edit your episodes
Once you have your equipment and concept, it’s time to start recording and editing your episodes. You can record your podcast in a variety of ways, such as using a digital recorder, your computer’s built-in microphone, or even your smartphone. When you’re finished recording, use editing software to clean up the audio and add any additional elements such as background music or sound effects.


5. Find a hosting platform
Next, you’ll need to find a hosting platform for your podcast. Some popular options include Soundcloud, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. These platforms allow you to upload your episodes and make them available to listeners. Many hosting platforms also provide analytics to help you track your listenership and engagement.


6. Promote your podcast
Finally, you’ll need to promote your podcast to attract listeners. This can be done through social media, your website, and other online platforms. Additionally, you can reach out to other podcasters in your niche and ask them to feature your podcast on their show.


As you become more experienced with podcasting, you may want to consider monetizing your podcast through sponsorships or merchandise sales. Podcasting can be a fun and rewarding experience, and with a little bit of time and effort, you can create a successful podcast that resonates with listeners.

Create the perfect space for work, hobbies and leisure with Pro-coustix professional acoustic treatment.

Most garden rooms are multi-use spaces with a majority being used as office, multi-media rooms or music practice spaces. However the clean contemporary finish with glass doors, wooden flooring and flat ceilings that these rooms contain don’t lend themselves well to interior acoustics. This creates an unpleasant listening and working environment affecting end user satisfaction and use of the rooms. Often owners of brand spanking new garden rooms come to us seeking help to improve the acoustics in their spaces.

Our expertise in improving interior acoustics puts us in the best place to help you attain the optimum acoustics for your space wheter you are using the room as an office, listening room, home cinema or a chill out lounge.

Our acoustic treatment solutions start from the basic acoustic foam options in dark grey, white, light great and purple to the high end reall wood veneer diffuser panels and fabric covered acosutic panels.

How much acoustic treatment do I need?

Every room is different and the use you are going to put the room to once it is complete will determine how the nature and amount of acoustic treatment you will require. Some rooms e.g. home cinemas, music studios or listening rooms will benefit from a combination of absorption, diffusion and bass traping whilst others used as office space or home gyms will do just fine with absorption.

The type of acoustic treatment you choose will mainly be determined by your budget, the space available and decor you are looking to achieve, maintain or complement.

Broadly speaking acoustic treatment options range from;

• Entry level – Acoustic foam bass traps and panels cut in a variety of profiles.
• Mid level –  Acoustic foam panels combined with fabric covered panels with the fabric covered bass traps giving better performance on the lower mids and lowe frequence is.
• Premium –  Fabric covered panels, fabric covered bass traps and diffuser panels.

Our team is on hand to provide you acoustic treatment advice whatever stage your garden room is at. In our article on home cinema acoustics we advise that engaging our team of acoustic treatment experts at design stage and incorporating our solutions into your build will result in  acoustic treatment that blends with your room, reducing the clunky, industrial look that retrospectively adding acoustic treatment can sometimes create.

If this is something you are interested in please call us on 01442 899 294 or use the form below to get in touch and we will be more than happy to help you get the most out of your garden room.

For help with your home cinema or listening room acoustics please scroll to the bottom and complete the form.

The next time you visit your local cinema make it a point to observe and touch the surfaces of the walls of the cinema.

Acoustic treatment plays a great role in making spaces functional and proper application of acoustic design principles will ensure you create a truly immersive space in your home cinema.

Many home cinema enthusiasts keen to bring the big cinema experience home will spend thousands of pounds on the latest projectors, speakers, amplifiers and cables and completely omit the room all this equipment is going to be sat in well apart from ensuring they have the most comfy cinema like seats.

Infact many times home cinemas are built by contractors who may have great design and build skills but have absolutely no idea about how to make spaces acoustically functional for the intended use.

We would always recommend engaging an acoustics expert in advance of your build. However not many people have the luxury of new builds/extensions for their home cinemas, instead resorting to converting an existing room for this purpose.  New build, extension or conversion the importance of interior acoustics is often only realised once the space is in use. Bright reverberant spaces, muddy low ends or excessive bass boom degrade the quality of sound in your home cinema and result in a poor listening experience.

If you are looking to bring the home cinema experience home here a few things you must do!

1- Reduce excessive reflections

The reason why your local cinema has absorbent walls carpets and ceilings is because excessive reflections from hard reflective spaces colours sound and impacts on the sound waves being generated by loud speakers. Home cinema 5.1 and  7.1 systems are designed to reproduce sound in a sequence that  creates an immersive spacial effect to the listeners, with mirco-second delays and effects introduced to create the illusion of space and distance. In rooms that are not adequately treated these precise effects are drowned out by secondary waves reflecting off the surfaces the sound is bouncing off. Creating a listening experience which can be overwhelming and unsatisfactory.

Treating your walls

Introducing absorption is absolutely critical to improving your listening experience. Ideally you should be aiming to completely eliminate flat reflective surfaces with absorption however in many cases the practical multi-use nature of home cinema rooms makes this impractical. Users should aim for as much absorption as their interior decor will allow anywhere above 40% of the reflective spaces.  Acoustic treatment for these vertical reflective surfaces doesn’t have to be thick, 30mm foam panels or 25mm fibreglass panels will more than suffice with 50mm panels strategically placed at primary early reflection points.

Treating your ceiling

For home cinema systems with atmos technology,  ceiling treatment should be omitted as the speakers use the ceiling to create depth in the sound being replicated by the speakers. Ceilings in rooms where non atmos speakers are installed should look to introduce absorption equivalent to about 40% of the ceiling area. Again 30mm panels will suffice complimented by 50mm panels at primary reflection points.

Treating your floors

Avoiding hard wooden or reflective surfaces is recommended but where this i not practical then introducing medium pile rugs will help reduce reflections off the floor.

2- Control that bass

Low end rumble in movies is essential in creating  an immersive cinema experience. The vibrations of the bass as it fills the room can be used to great effect. However small rooms are not particularly suited to low frequencies. The dimensions and characteristics of the room in many cases interact with sound waves creating standing waves. These waves can be more dominant than sound waves being created by your speakers, which can result in;

Muddy low ends when listening to music or rumbles that aren’t as deep as the sound designer and producer intended them to be.

Excessive boom in your room, creating points where the bass is reinforced and others where it is cancelled out. This excessive boom is created by the presence of bass modes which can degrade your listening experience.

Issues with bass propagation to neighbouring spaces and rooms causing unnecessary disturbance to occupants of neighbouring rooms.

Introducing bass traps into your home listening space will help soak up the energy of these low end modes creating a much more accurate and pleasant listening experience.

The choice of bass traps one goes for will depend on among other things budget, space and decor. At the cheaper end of the bass trap spectrum are acoustic foam bass traps and corner kits which work well and have the added advantage of being easy to mount and available in various profiles. The down side of most foam solutions is, colour options are limited and the dark grey foam creates a studio like feel in rooms which is an issue in multi-use spaces.

Fabric covered fibre glass or mineral wool bass traps perform better and are more expensive, however, offer the user a choice of colours of the fabric which can be used to  complement or match existing decor. Bass traps of up 100mm thick will suffice with typical lengths of between 900 and 1200mm.

Placement of bass traps

It is a well know fact that bass energy builds up at points where two or more significant surfaces meet. The significance here being in relation to the wavelength of the bass frequencies. As such bass build up happens in corners and edges of rooms. It is important to install bass traps in or as close as possible to corners first and then work your way along the vertical and horizontal edges of the room.

Quantity of bass traps

Whatever option you choose the idea is to try and get as many bass traps into your corners and edges as are required to improve the low end in your room.

It has been said you can never over bass trap a room and this holds true for most home cinemas especially if your bass traps are concentrated at the points of maximum bass build up i.e. corners and edges.

3- Diffuse your sound

Diffusers are acoustic treatment elements that scatter sound waves that are incident on them. This has the opposite effect of  absorbers in that, instead of absorbing the sound and converting it into heat energy and reduce the overall sound energy in a room. Diffusers on the other hand scatter incident sound waves reducing their significance whilst maintaining the overall sound energy in a room. Diffusers have an acoustic effect of broadening sound out creating an acoustic effect of spaces that are larger than they actually are.

Scatter plates may be combined absorption cores to create a diffuser that absorbs and scatters sound. These diffusers work really well in small spaces where both effects are desirable.

Placement of diffusers

Diffusers work best at their optimum listening distances however in our experience we have found that our diffuserflex panels are best placed in areas where the reflective surface is less than a meter away from the listener. This creates a spread of sound around the listener transforming they listening experience when compared to having absorption or no treatment on these surfaces.

Some diffuser panels can also be straddled across vertical corners, where the air gap between the panel and the corner lowers the frequency at which they start to be effective acting as bass traps.

Quantity of diffuser panels

Once the surfaces closest to the listening position have been identified a run of diffuser panels placed just above listening height or above the height of seating will suffice. If used as bass traps a vertical run from floor to ceiling works well. If used to treat early reflection points it is important to maintain symmetry in the room with panels on the left mirrored on the right.

Aesthetics

A final word on acoustic treatment of home cinemas. It is important to note that a room that is optimally treated is a listening paradise however if done post build or retrospectively this comes at the cost of aesthetics in the room. Acoustic treatment can look clunky and industrial. The user will have  to strike a balance between quality of sound in their home cinema and aesthetics, working to balance the two especially in multi use spaces.

If you are fortunate to be at the stage of embarking on building or converting a space into a home cinema then many solutions can be incorporated into the build. Bass traps, absorption panels and even speakers can be mounted flush with your walls introducing optimum acoustic treatment without intruding on the aesthetics and decor of your room.

If you would like to see how our acoustic treatment can be incorporated into your build project fill out the form below and we will be only too happy to help you.

 We are pleased to say that all our commercial, education and public sector installations now come with a 30 day Try It For Yourself Guarantee! 

We will install our solution and give you 30 days to see if the improvement is really true to the hype. If you don’t like the results we will not charge you a single penny.

We have developed innovative acoustic treatment products which are easily installed in a fraction of the time traditional fibreglass panel products take and can be installed without drilling your wall surfaces. doing so allows us to install and uninstall our panels quickly without damaging your wall surfaces.

• Do  you have any classrooms or  learning spaces that have too much echo affecting the learning experience of sutdents especially students with special needs?
• Do you have multi use workspaces e.g. dinning halls that suffer from poor acoustics with excessive echoes and reverberation?
• Do you have meeting rooms that sound really acoustically bright and cause listener fatigue or projecting and unprofessional image
• Do your board rooms and meeting rooms project the right image to clients and do they sound executive?
• Are your reception areas too loud and bright sonically creating an impression of disorganisation and chaos?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then our three step process to get your acoustics sorted is a no brainer and yes did we mention it? You will not pay anything upfront and only pay should you decide to keep the products we offer you.

All our products are acoustically tested and conform to the highest fire rating required for UK commercial buildings

To get the process started click on the link below and book a virtual survey today and let us help you improve the acoustics in your room.

BOOK YOUR ACOUSTICAL SURVEY

Chances are you haven’t had much choice when it comes to deciding the structure of your studio. Like most urban artists you have probably ended up using a converted out building, garage or a room in your house as your studio.Nevertheless It is essential to understand how best to adapt the room, carefully position acoustic foam, and get your room sounding better.

With a bit of luck on your side you will have a room with one longer side. For purposes of this and other text we shall refer to this side as the length. The shorter wall of your room will be refered to as your width and the distance between the ceiling and the floor will be refered to as the height.

Step one  – Deciding where to place your mixing console

Determine which side of your room is the longest side. It is against the walls on one side of this axis that you will place your mixing console desk and chairs.

Step two – Choosing your sweet spot (The point where you will sit to evaluate your music mix)

Now that you have decided where to place your mixing desk we will get on with deciding where your sweet spot will be. This will be the point where you will sit when evaluating your mix during the mixing phase. You may wonder why we have decided to position the chair before accurately placing the mixing table and speakers, this will become clear later.

The sweet spot is an area where the interferance from reflected waves and standing waves in your room are theoretically least therefore allowing you get an accurate image of the sound being produced by your speakers.

The dimensions of your room will almost innevitably have an impact on the nature of standing waves generated in your room. Put simply, standing waves are waves whose frequency is such that half of it’s wavelength is the lenth of your studio and whole multiples there of.

Therefore a room of  10m in length will create a standing wave a frequency where by half the wave length of the frequency is equal to the length of the room i.e.  a frequency of about 17Khz.  The human ear is generally regarded as capable of hearing sound between 20Hz and 20KHz as such this first standing wave will not be heard and for our purposes can be ignored. Reducing the wave length by 1/2 sequenctially gets us to the first standing wave of significance which has a wave length of 5m or frequency of about 68Hz, most of the bass energy of music can be assumed to exist around this frequency. Simplistically put this standing wave, bouncing off the walls of your room will exhibit maximum sound pressure at the following points along the length of your room, 0m, 2.5m,5m, 7.5m 10m or 0L, 0.25L,0.5L,0.75L & 1L where L is the length of your room. Because the wave causes maximum compression and hence maximum sound pressure at these points you should avoid placing your sweet spot at any of these points.

Similarly this standing wave will exhibit minimum sound pressure at the following points 0.125L,0.375L,0.625L & 0.875L you are probably getting the idea by now. Any one of these points is theortically ideal to place your chair however, practically you will need enough space between the wall and your chair to place the mixing desk so that your speakers are at a position equidistant from the wall and your ears. This point is normally at 0.375L. It is highly recommended that, space allowing, this is where you chair is placed.

Step Three- Refining the position of mixing desk ad speakers

You probably figured this out in the previous paragraph, you will need to place your desk so that your speakers are equidistant from you and the wall when you are in your listening position or at your  sweet spot. Given that you have placed your chair at 0.375L then your speakers would be placed at  0.1875L along the length of your room.

Step Four – Dealing with early reflections

Early reflections also called primary reflections are reflections that would theoretically reach your ears second quickest after the original sound has hit your ears. These reflections are generally created by sound waves bouncing off the wall on the back of your mixing console, the side walls, the floor and the ceiling. Treating these first reflections adequately will significantly improve the acoustics in your studio and hence the accuracy of your mix.

Now that we know who the culprits are the question is where should you place your acoustic foam panels. It as this point that some keen producers will panic and plaster the entire studio with acoustic foam panels. Poorly planned acoustic treament will instantly deading the sound in your studios by shortening the reverberation time.

The ideal location for your acoustic foam panels would be half the distance between your ears and the  speakers. We already know that your speakers are placed at 0.1875L and your sweet spot is  at .375L therefore an acoustic foam panel placed at 0.2813L will be slap bang in the middle of your ears and the speakers. An alternative way of determining this position is called the mirror method, where by sitting in your sweet spot you get a friend to hold a mirror against the wall first on the right hand side of your mixing desk and as the mirror is moved towards the back of the room a spot is identified where you can just see the right speaker reflection. This process is repeated on the left hand side to obtain the position of your side panels. The size of the acoustic foam panels is really a matter of choice but we recommend a 3×2 vertical panel of our 12″ tiles arranged so that the centre line is on the line that is at the centre of the distance between your ears and the speakers. In chosing what studio foam to use for your treatment be sure to purchase foam that has be tested with accompanying reports.

To deal with early reflections from the ceiling you would need to place a cluster of acoustic foam panels in our case a 3×2 horizontal array along the line joining the centres of the panels on the left and right wall.

This then leaves the front wall. As a minimum a horizontal panel of 3×2 acoustic foam tiles across the back of the mixing console at ear height will suffice however some people may go further and completely deaden the whole back wall, it all depends on how much you have to spend. You can then proceed to place another 3×2 horizontal panel along the back wall. Our 30x studio pack gives you just enough tiles to deal with early reflections in your room.

If you have a bit of cash to spare you can repeat the process for the back of your room mirroring exactly the same positioning at the front with the back however  depending on the length of your room this in the first instance isn’t absolutely necessary.

Step Five – Dealing with modal points and low frequencies.

Low frequencies generally exist in the sub 500Hz region and a good idea of your room size will enable you better understand what frequencies are going to cause you problems. In our 10m length room we identified 68Hz being the first audible standing wave generated. Any mix created in such a room would almost certainly suffer from amplification at around this frequency and subsequent modes thereof. Unfortunately for us standing waves do not only exist in one plane but  in the horizontal, vertical , longitudinal, tangential and oblique planes but for simplicity in our studio setup we will ignore the oblique standing waves and focus on the other three.

Standing waves by their nature exhibit maximum sound pressure (Maximas) at the extreme ends of the room they are generated in, applying this to our room then you would have a high sound pressure level created where two walls meet (edges) and even more where three walls meet (Corners). It is for this reason that bass traps are introduced into corners of the room. The thickness of the bass traps helps absorb some of the modal energy generated by standing waves at the corners as well as distorting the dimensions of the room to affect the formation of standing waves.

Ideally you would want to place bass traps allong all edges top, bottom and sides as well as all corners, however the cost of doing this far outstrips the benefits in completely treating all corners. The minimum you will need is two corner traps for the top/bottom  left and top/bottom right and you can proceed to fill out other corners and edges as you get more money.

That’s it! Following these steps will go a long way in improving your studio acoustics and once done you should now be ready to mix.