We often come across home cinema installations where all walls are covered in fabric. The fabrics used in these dedicated home cinema systems are classed as “acoustic.” Acoustic fabrics are solely covering the acoustic treatments used in the cinema room, while providing a more pleasant visual appearance. They are used solely for aesthetics. Acoustic fabrics must allow sound to pass through in order to maintain full functionality of all wall treatments used; absorptive and diffusive.

Home cinema designers, architects and interior designers must consider how well the fabric will look after installation. The choice is usually done based solely on the way it looks, ensuring it complements the interior decor.  Home cinema installations can have pre-fabricated panels covered with acoustic fabrics, or fabric stretched on-site over custom made acoustic wall treatments. The choice is endless.

However, there are a lot of fabrics that are not suitable for covering acoustic treatments. Backed fabrics are not recommended because they tend to resist any stretch, plus the extra backing limits its acoustic transparency. Another thing the home cinema designer needs to consider is the material of which the acoustic fabric is made of. 

The use of Synthetic fabrics is more suitable for fabric-stretch applications in home cinema systems. Synthetic fabrics can sustain high humidity without sagging and rippling, maintaining their original shape when stretched over acoustic panels. A fabric that has a maximum of 30% natural fibres would be suitable in case a fully synthetic acoustic fabric is not used.

VIP Cinemas has hundreds of suitable acoustic fabrics one can choose from. Choosing the correct fabric in a home cinema installation will ensure an excellent visual result that will please the client for many years to come.

Home cinema installations usually suffer from problems due to low frequency modes. At low frequencies, the standing wave modes of the cinema room are separated in frequency. The frequency response in a home cinema is uneven meaning that some frequencies are emphasised, where modes are strong, and some suppresses, where modes are weak, leading to colouration of the received sound. This is most critical for a dedicated home cinema installation, particularly with the increasingly widespread use of subwoofers, and material with high bass content.

Common solutions include choosing appropriate home cinema room dimensions, speaker locations and listening positions, to flatten the frequency response of the cinema room as much as possible and avoid degenerate modes. Even when the home cinema room dimensions have been carefully chosen, however, the frequency response of the room will still be uneven and acoustic treatment is needed.

Particularly prominent room modes in a home cinema installation are usually treated with bass absorption often referred to as bass traps or bins. It is not possible to treat this problem with diffusion because the sizes of the diffusers become prohibitively large. Porous absorbers are not usually used or specified in the home cinema design stage, as they would have to be extremely thick to provide significant bass absorption. In practice, many people place porous absorption in corners of home cinema rooms, thinking this will absorb the modes. The particle velocity in the corners is very low, so the absorption is ineffective.

For these reasons, dedicated home cinema designs would include resonant absorbers. Home cinema installations require some kind of low frequency modal treatments, and it is the home cinema designer’s responsibility to accurately model and integrate such devices.