Acoustic Panel Room Treatments : Built-in vs surface mount question

Vicoustica makes some large panels that are practically seamless called the VMT panels. various finishes when installed can cover a whole wall with little seams visible. The audio shope that i seen them had them velcroed to the wall and looked very good, they used the concrete look and the whole wall looked like it was a concrete wall seamless. they are about 2" thick. variouls finishes. 

VMT – Vicoustic 

Thanks @glennewdick 

@pindac that is a lot to write. Please do post once you find that book.  
 

( And yes we have REW software and a decent mic.)

You can’t paint over fiberglass and achieve the same results as an acoustically transparent cloth over fiberglass. 

This however seems very interesting to me: 

https://www.armstrongceilings.com/commercial/en/articles/acoustic-drywall.html

However, at this level of complexity I strongly suggest you reach out to a professional architectural consultant.  

@erik_squires thanks very much.  The paint over issue was one i really hoped somebody had advice and experience with.  Very helpful.  And yes.  I would not DYI this.  Just trying to start to gather ideas about what is feasible and what is not.  

Hi Kirk,

Great question!
The one obvious consideration is flexibility of placement.  Due to room asymmetry (sometimes due to geometry, and/or construction materials used), it’s impossible to know exactly in advance where every treatment will go and how much is needed with certainty.  It comes down to a risk avoidance strategy.  What’s the cost of getting it wrong?  For example:

• SPEAKER TYPE - Front wall (behind the speakers) treatments are speaker-type dependent.  Personally, I have found that far fewer treatments are needed when using bi/dipole speakers than conventional box-type (ported or not).
• STRONG REFLECTIONS - Sidewall’s two 1^st order reflection points per wall can be treated or not and the treatment is usually a personal preference.  Want better imaging then use thick absorption, want a wider soundstage then don’t attenuate as much of the sidewall reflections via diffusion or reflection.  And to ensure a balanced timbre from the reflection (i.e. the reflection’s energy from an octave centered at 500Hz is within 4dB of an octave centered at 2kHz), a combination of products can be used at the 1^st reflection point with a diffuser placed in front of a thick absorber panel.
• DECAY TIMES – adding or removing absorption will impact your T30 decay times.  Do you have access to modeling tools to know in advance how much of it is needed, and if not then adding a few pieces at a time is less risky.

My advice is to build-in thick absorption at the 4 room corners and soffit areas of ceiling/walls that you know are needed in pretty much all scenarios, then use hung-on-the-walls pieces to treat the rest of the room.  And when doing this set up a temporary scaffold using long 10-12” wide boards supported by concrete building cinder blocks so that it’s about 2 feet above the floor to allow treatments to be moved laterally, pushed closer or pulled farther from the wall, and angled.  Even using REW you won’t get it optimized the first time so you’ll spend a good amount of time trying out different treatment combinations that measure well AND sound good to you.  If you need assistance deciphering early reflections, frequency response and decay time measurements, then I have a small business that can help you remotely.  Sounds like an awesome opportunity!