Acoustic Baffles

What is a sound baffle?

A sound baffle is a free-hanging or free-standing acoustic absorber that treats a space from the air rather than from a wall. Because both faces are exposed to the room, a baffle absorbs roughly twice the sound of a wall-mounted panel of the same size, which makes it the standard solution for rooms where wall space is limited, ceilings are high, or the treatment has to be movable.

Baffles appear in two forms. Hanging baffles are suspended vertically from a ceiling in rows or grids, and are used in warehouses, gymnasiums, open-plan offices, restaurants, school halls and large live rooms. Free-standing baffles, often called gobos, sit on the floor on castors or feet and are used inside studios to separate performers, control bleed between microphones, and create a dead space on demand.

How sound baffles work

A porous absorber converts sound energy into a very small amount of heat as air moves through its fibres. A wall panel can only do this to sound arriving at its front face. A baffle hanging in open air is worked on from both sides and from the edges, so each square metre of baffle removes far more energy from the room than the same square metre fixed flat to a wall.

That geometry is why baffles are specified by total surface area suspended rather than by wall coverage, and why they suit spaces that are physically large but acoustically hard — a warehouse or a hall has enormous volume and very little available wall.

Orientation matters. Hung vertically and spaced apart, baffles intercept sound travelling horizontally across a room, which is the reflection path that causes long reverberation times and poor speech intelligibility in large spaces. Packed too closely together they begin to behave like a solid ceiling and lose the both-faces advantage, so spacing roughly equal to the baffle depth is the usual starting point.

Baffles, acoustic panels and ceiling clouds — what is the difference?

• Acoustic panels mount flat against a wall. One face is exposed, so absorption per panel is lower, but they are unobtrusive and easy to place at first reflection points. See our acoustic panels.
• Ceiling clouds are suspended horizontally, parallel to the ceiling, usually above a mix position or a meeting table. They treat the vertical reflection between ceiling and floor while leaving the ceiling itself untouched.
• Baffles hang vertically or stand on the floor, with both faces working. They deliver the most absorption per unit and require no wall at all — but they are visible, and in a small studio they take up floor space you may not have.
• Diffusers scatter rather than absorb, preserving liveliness. Used alongside absorption, not instead of it. See our diffusion panels.

For a home studio, wall panels and corner bass traps are almost always the right first purchase. Baffles become the better answer once the room is large, the ceiling is high, or the walls are unavailable.

Where acoustic baffles are used

• Warehouses and manufacturing floors — reducing reverberation so that speech and safety announcements stay intelligible.
• Gymnasiums and sports halls — hard surfaces on every plane and no usable wall space below head height.
• Open-plan offices and co-working spaces — lowering the ambient level so conversations do not compete.
• Restaurants, cafés and bars — where hard finishes are a design choice and the acoustics have to be solved overhead.
• School halls and classrooms — speech intelligibility is the specification, and reverberation time is usually the failing metric.
• Recording studio live rooms — free-standing gobos to isolate a drum kit, split a band, or dry up a corner for a vocal take.

What we stock

Our baffle range covers both applications. Primacoustic Saturna and Broadway baffles are hanging panels in 305mm × 1219mm and 610mm × 1219mm formats, 38mm deep, available in black, grey and a paintable finish for rooms where the treatment has to match a specification. Primacoustic stackable gobos are 610mm × 914mm × 254mm free-standing units that lock together to build a portable isolation wall to whatever height a session needs. Jocavi Wallblind baffles are mobile, wheeled units for larger commercial installations, available with or without a glazed section where sightlines have to be preserved.

Specifying a large space is not a matter of counting panels. Send us the room dimensions, ceiling height and surface finishes and we will work out the suspended area you need.