is this too good to be true ? (acoustic treatment)

mrleon83

http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/shop/afhs-home-studio-kit

so cheap, good reviews... can it be?

octatonic

Fine for a vocal booth but not designed for a control room.

I've done foam before but I now use rockwool trapping.

I've built some of my own but I get better results from the commercially made stuff.

spark240

I have exactly this kit...thought I would give it a go for the money.

Seems ok actually, they are very light so I stuck the corner traps with a bit of spray tacky stuff, then I stuck the squares in a formation onto some thin hardboard and fixed to the wall with a couple of small screws.

Looks quite cool and seems to add some dampness to the room.    

mrleon83

Yeah , I'm thinking the foam panels will be pretty useless but like the look of the bass traps ....

Danny1969

You can use foam panels for diffusion but they won't trap bass, not dense enough 

 

ProAcoustic

Hi

We made the Home studio kit for small home recording studios. We do have much bigger and better bass traps the AFBT02 and AFBTX and both have independent acoustic test results from SRL Technical Services.

And the reviews are genuine taken form our customers who have purchased our goods via Amazon. We have recently had our tiles tested against the market leaders for an article by Sound on Sound ( due out soon ). The reason we are cheap is that we manufacture the tiles and dispatch direct from our factory and only sell online and via our factory shop.

Cheers
Mike

guitarfishbay

You can pick it up at the factory for cheaper than the price they advertise online. The bass traps won't be as effective as rock wool. I have the thicker wedge panels on the ceiling, all the other traps in my room are rock wool.

mrleon83

Ok cool, think I'll order some if the corner parts and work from there... Look forward to seeing the SOS review!

ProAcoustic

Looking forward to it as well , we submitted 2 tiles the AFW305 and the BLOCK100. We know on the tests SRL did, the BLOCK100 came out with good results. So it will be nice to see how it did head to head against the likes of Auralex and Universal Acoustics.

mrleon83

So @proacoustic do you have anything similar to the se reflection filter in the pipeline?

ProAcoustic

No, we have just concentrated on purely foam components. The acoustic foam we make is just a small part of our business which we run through the factory shop. It would be nice to add to our existing products with microphone reflection filters and monitor isolation pads etc. maybe in time.

ProAcoustic

Microphone Shield /  Reflection Filter almost ready to go online , just waiting for a bracket to be made.

foam part can be seen on the facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.499383970210471.1073741848.310205935794943&type=3

Nerine

Foam is just pointless really.
It does absorb very high frequency content granted, but I doubt much below 1kHz in most applications, which makes for a very uneven sounding, boxy room with maybe an overbearing mid range due to the lack of top.

I did bugger about with foam at one point, and have since moved on to proper trapping. The difference is night and day.

The proper 1200x600mm Rockwool or Knauff traps are faaaarrrr superior to any foam. I got mine from GIK.

Foam is really not a good purchase IMO.

Ché

+1 for GIK

www.gikacoustics.co.uk

ProAcoustic

Hi

We are already looking in to using Rockwool type composites amongst other materials in our bass traps, Its quite easy for me to make sample products in the factory, as we already have upholstery, fabrication, lamination,  foam cutting, screen printing and sewing sections in the factory. and we are underway with developing new bass trapping products.

Having read quite a few SOS articles on making bass traps we are thinking of trying a few new options to see how they work, I know the standard is rockwool and / or the use of heavy layer vinyl material. However I was reading some SOS articles where it was mentioned materials as diverse as sand could well be a good medium as it is both dense yet still flexible as to allow the absorption of lower frequency energy, the analogy “bouncing ball thrown against sand as opposed to a wall” was used in one SOS article.

So we intend to test various combinations of material composites against each other and against some of the most well known products out there.

Obviously Rockwool is the product everyone looks to so we do intend using it however their data sheets don’t look to impressive especially for the density,

http://rwiumbracouklive.inforce.dk/media/395728/rockwool%20rw%20slab%20dat asheet.pdf

It shows the RW5 100 Kgm3 Rockwool as having quite low absorption figures for a 75mm thick section “they didn't show the thicker 100mm results”   I didn't see the Knauff NRC values on their website.
RW5 75mm Rockwool  125HZ  0.40  250HZ 0.75  500HZ  0.90

If I compare this with a slightly thicker foam tile 100mm in 25 kg foam I was expecting vastly better results from Rockwool
foam 100mm thick
BLOCK100 acoustic foam tile  125HZ  0.42  250HZ  1.07  500HZ 1.10

http://www.proacoustic.co.uk/nrc/block100.pdf

both figures taken direct, without an air gap at the back , I do understand the air gap behind the trap alters the figures dramatically

As with all our acoustic products when we get the final test results we will be supplying only online and direct from our factory to keep our prices low.

Regards
Mike

mrleon83

@proacoustic that's cool sounds like u guys are actively seeking ways to improve I will be getting some of ure products once my sudden influx of bills stops ...

mendel

Very interesting!

@proacoustic, would you have / could you develop solutions for adding sound insulation to exterior windows? These are the main route for sound escaping to the outside environment and limiting the amp volume I get to play with at home. I googled into this a bit and some suggest using (removable) window plugs consisting of a foam plug layer with a suitable backing (e.g. MDF), and perhaps an additional layer.

I'd be interested in hearing tips and experiences from TheFretBoard also.

Cheers

ProAcoustic

Windows would be a tricky one we bulk manufacture our foam tiles on CNC machines and windows are all different sizes

You could make frames to fit the windows as you said with MDF and put layers of insulating material on them, we did used to make sound insulation for the floors of cars with our old company, and used recon foam as one layer which is much denser than standard foam similar to carpet underlay maybe this in conjunction with other layers may help along with some thick acoustic tiles Our BLOCK100 have the best overall NRC values

As I said above we make in large quantities.around 1800 tiles each tile we do a run, and now and again we have a blip
15 boxes going very cheap if anyone wants them . posted in the classified section

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/49323/acoustic-foam-slight-seconds-job-lot-15-boxes

ProAcoustic

New product also put online a 12" square acoustic foam Pyramid tile sold in packs of 24 tiles

Pyramid tiles now on sale on Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KNV72H0/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_fcS6...

We have put them in at the same price as our wedge tiles, even though they are much more expensive to make due to the machine time and stripping, the tiles are a smaller version of our standard pyramid tile the AFP45 however are 305mm (12") square,

The microphone screens have also been made and we will have them online next week w/c 7/09/2015
we only made 80 as a trial run, we are not sure how well this new product for us will sell.