Case Study

Pearl River High School – Auditorium Acoustics

Posted on by Rachel
Auditorium Acoustics
31
Oct

Auditorium & Band Room Acoustics

Pearl River High School in Mississippi contracted Commercial Acoustics during its initial construction in August of 2021 to provide to acoustical room components (DIV 09 84) in their performing arts hall, auditorium and a number of their music classrooms.

The acoustic components consisted of over 450 2” thick fabric wrapped acoustic wall panels and custom sized, barrel shaped sound diffusers installed from ground level up to 30’ high. Numerous fabric colors from Guilford of Maines FR701 line were selected across the various treated spaces, and over 20 panel sizes were used on the project.

auditorium acoustics
Acoustic wall panels and barrel diffusers are often used in auditoriums, band rooms and choir rooms to improve the acoustics. Diffusers absorb the low frequency sound waves that panels cannot, which helps to produce a balanced acoustical environment where a variety of instruments will be played.

The submittal process consisted of numerous revisions of shop drawings to achieve desired panel widths to achieve maximum panel sizes. Many acoustical fabrics have a maximum width of 54″-66″, and in order to cover different panel sizes, the fabric will either run vertically or horizontally. If the fabric is non-directional this is fine and the panels will all look the same. However, if a fabric is directional (and most are), the panels will appear different when wrapped vertically versus horizontally. This is very noticeable when two panels wrapped in different directions are mounted right next to each other.

Due to the acoustical fabrics directionality on this project, railroading was not preferable, since some texture difference may be visible by running fabric sideways. Therefore, panels were adjusted and relocated, and in some case broken into 2 equal sized panels to allow for a clean look that met the architects intent.

auditorium acoustics
The nominal size for a barrel diffuser is 2’x2′, but in reality they are one inch smaller in both height and width. The acoustic wall panels that would be touching diffusers were resized to be 23″ wide prior to production so they would match the adjacent diffusers.

Acoustical Diffusers for Auditoriums & Band Rooms

Panel fabrication began in September, and was completed by the new year. The barrel diffusers were also fabric wrapped and included acoustical infill to further improve their acoustical performance. The installation team used numerous scissor lifts as large as 24’ and 3 axis laser guides to allow for a perfect alignment and finished product.

Rachel