The newly constructed Four Seasons Hotel in New Orleans, LA required acoustic treatment in its multiple Ballrooms. Commercial Acoustics was contracted to install Acoustic Stretched Fabric Wall in the Grand Ballroom, Junior Ballroom, and Ballrooms A, B, C, & D.
Ballroom Acoustic Treatment – Stretched Fabric System
Event spaces such as ballrooms typically require acoustic treatment, especially when speech amplification is used during events. Without the fabric walls, it’s very likely that the spaces would have lost a significant amount of speech intelligibility, resulting in complaints from guests at these events.
Related: Determine Target Reverb Times
Fortunately, the architect for this project anticipated the ballrooms having longer reverb times, and specified stretched fabric wall be added during construction. Although the target reverb time for multipurpose event space ranges from 1.3-1.9, the client wanted to keep this one on the lower end of the scale.
The client furnished specialty acoustically transparent fabric to cover the 1″ thick, tackable fiberglass at the core of the fabric wall. Our team in New Orleans worked over the course of a few months to install acoustic fabric wall in each of the 6, large ballrooms. Each section was installed within the recessed area of each ballroom wall (pictured below).
Benefits of Acoustic Fabric Wall
Fabric Wall is beneficial in multiple ways:
- It can be made larger than the largest available acoustic wall panel (typically a 4’x10′ is the largest size for an individual panel).
- It can be cut around penetrations such as outlets, light switches, lights, speakers, etc.
- Sizes can be modified in the field to fit edge-to-edge in a specific space, as opposed to pre-fabricated acoustic wall panels, which are quite difficult to field modify.
The Four Seasons Hotel in New Orleans opened in the beginning of September, 2021. If your hospitality project has reverberation or echo issues, consider Commercial Acoustics’ Ekko Eraser Acoustic Fabric Wall to reduce your reverb time. In situations where your hospitality project requires STC 50+ between guest rooms, or between guest rooms and corridors, consider Commercial Acoustics’ Wall Blokker.
