Consultancy
We have extensive experience in consultancy and product design and would be happy to discuss your requirements. You can contact us here for more details. Skills in this areas include:
- Room design, chambers, listening rooms etc
- Industrial and commercial noise control for all sources of noise
- Product acoustic design and character (NVH)
- Loudspeaker and transducer design
Room design
When designing rooms acoustically, it is important to have a clear view of the end goal. What is the room going to be used for? What frequency range do you need an even response? What level of reverberation is required? Does it need to be isolated from other noise?
Not all rooms need to be “dead” acoustically as they can sound lifeless. However, if you are building a recording studio or a concert hall for classical musicians there is a big difference in terms of appropriate treatment. Some of the rooms we have experience in designing are listed below:
Anechoic and reverberant chamber design for a given specification to accurately measure product noise and sound power. Both techniques work for different reasons but one is very reverberant with many seconds of RT60 (like a cathedral) and the other is very dead with less than 0.2 seconds of RT60 (sound stops nearly instantly). If you are building a full anechoic or hemispherical chamber, it will never be cheap. However, simple test chambers need not be expensive especially if you only want to test the mid and high frequencies. We built one for around £40 including a built in amplifier!
Music studios where sound isolation is important and accuracy of recording is the goal. Reverberation is easy to add but harder to remove! Practice rooms and halls with multiple uses could benefit from having adjustable acoustic treatments rather than fixed panels. This category also includes vocal and drum isolation booths to prevent cross talk between different microphones. Relatively low cost solutions can be applied to existing rooms to minimize noise break out and improve the environment for the musicians.
Home Cinema and Listening rooms including bespoke acoustic treatments to control room resonances without losing the life in the sound. Either a dedicated build giving you the maximum benefits or a conversion of another room at home for your enjoyment at low cost. Hidden treatments are key to maintaining a pleasing aesthetic and allowing it to be “lived in”. Click here for more information on attenuating problem low frequencies.
Noise Control
From the smallest air jets to the largest power station stacks, there is an appropriate innovative solution which may only cost 10% of conventional solutions recommended by a typical noise consultant. However, it is usually the low frequencies which are the hardest to control effectively and create a perceived noise reduction. This is because it is the low frequencies which are not blocked by buildings and hearing protection so still appear intrusive and annoying despite a possibly significant dB(A) reduction.
We have experience with working with many UK companies for noise control, particularly at low frequency where good diagnosis and knowledge of the behaviour of acoustic materials can save you lots of money. Various plant such as fans, ovens, pipe resonances, machine noise, impacts and ballistics using passive (and sometimes active) noise control techniques are used for both reducing noise exposure and annoyance. These include high hygiene approaches to noise control in the pharma and food industries.
Feel free to contact us click here for a free no obligation discussion of your requirements. LFS offers a very competitive rate for design, particularly for local companies in the South West where travel time is minimal. In most cases we offer fixed price quotations for noise control design so it is easier for you to budget for your solution.
Product Acoustic Design
Product acoustic design is important, not just to make products quieter but to make an appropriate sound “character” for the target market. Using psychoacoustic techniques and an appropriate Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) specification, a product can be made to appear more powerful or sound higher quality inline with consumer expectation.
We have experience in the consumer product markets and the automotive market for product acoustic design.
Feel free to contact us click here for a discussion about your requirements including short term contracts and possible collaborative work.
Loudspeaker and Transducer design
Loudspeaker design is our passion as we love music reproduced as accurately as practicable and over the full audible bandwidth. We have experience in the design of transducers and cabinets (including CTL and CCL technology) for Hi Fi, home cinema, pro-audio and automotive sectors as well as for underwater acoustics.
If you are interested in learning more about how we can assist with your own company design, please contact us click here.