Acoustic sound panels for Australian studios

Acoustic sound panels control the reflections that make a room sound boxy, cluttered and hard to mix in. They do not block noise from getting in or out — they change how sound behaves once it is already in the room, which is what makes a recording sound like the source rather than the space around it.

We stock Primacoustic and Sonitus treatment for home studios, commercial rooms, podcast and streaming spaces, and offices: broadband absorbers, bass traps, ceiling clouds, diffusers, stackable gobos and complete room kits. Everything ships Australia-wide, and if you tell us your room dimensions we will tell you what you actually need rather than what fills a cart.

How many acoustic panels do I need?

The honest answer is fewer than most people are sold, and placed better. As a working rule, aim to treat 15–25% of your total wall and ceiling surface area for a mixing or recording room. Below 15% you will hear very little difference. Above about 30% in a small room the space starts to sound dead and unpleasant to work in.

A worked example. A typical Australian bedroom studio at 3m × 4m with a 2.4m ceiling has roughly 34m² of wall and 12m² of ceiling, so about 46m² of treatable surface. Twenty percent of that is a little over 9m². A standard 610mm × 1219mm broadband absorber covers 0.74m², so you are looking at twelve to fourteen panels — plus corner bass trapping, which is counted separately and matters more than any of them.

If you are working to a budget, spend it in this order: corners first, then first reflection points, then the ceiling, then the rear wall. A room with four good bass traps and four well-placed absorbers will outperform a room with twenty panels scattered evenly across the walls.

Where to place acoustic panels

1. Corners. Low frequencies build up where two or three surfaces meet. Floor-to-ceiling corner treatment does more for a small room than anything else you can buy. Start with our bass traps.
2. First reflection points. Sit in your listening position and have someone slide a mirror along the side wall. Wherever you can see a speaker in the mirror, that is a first reflection point. Panel it. Repeat for both side walls.
3. Ceiling. The reflection point directly above and slightly in front of your head. A suspended cloud such as the Primacoustic Stratus handles this without losing wall space.
4. Rear wall. Behind the listening position, where reflections arrive late enough to smear the stereo image. In small rooms absorb; in larger rooms a diffuser often sounds better.
5. Vocal and instrument positions. Treat the wall the performer faces, or use a portable solution such as a wall-mounted vocal booth or a stackable gobo.

Absorption, diffusion and bass trapping — which do you need?

Absorption converts sound energy into a tiny amount of heat inside the panel, reducing the level of the reflection. This is what broadband absorbers and sound absorption panels do, and it is the bulk of what most rooms need.

Diffusion scatters a reflection in many directions instead of removing it, so the room keeps its sense of space and liveliness without the harsh slap-back. Diffusers work best on the rear wall and in rooms large enough for the listener to sit well away from them — typically 1.5m or more.

Bass trapping is absorption engineered to work at low frequencies, which need far more depth and mass to control. A 25mm panel does essentially nothing below 300Hz. If your low end is boomy or disappears when you move your head, the problem is bass, and a thin wall panel will not fix it. See our bass traps and corner traps.

Thickness, density and NRC ratings

NRC (Noise Reduction Coefficient) is a single number from 0 to 1 describing how much sound a material absorbs on average across the mid frequencies. An NRC of 0.85 means roughly 85% of the sound energy hitting the panel is absorbed rather than reflected. It is useful for comparing like with like, but it tells you nothing about low-frequency performance, which is where rooms actually go wrong.

Thickness matters more than the number. As a guide:

• 25mm — controls high frequencies and flutter echo only. Useful for offices and voice booths, not for mixing.
• 50mm — the practical minimum for a studio wall panel. Effective down to roughly 250–300Hz.
• 75–100mm, or 50mm mounted on a standoff with an air gap behind it — noticeably better in the low mids. The air gap trick is free and works.
• Corner traps and columns — depth in the corner is what buys you real low-frequency control.

All the Primacoustic panelling we stock uses high-density glass wool with a rigid resin-hardened edge, so panels hold their shape and edge profile over years rather than sagging or shedding. Paintable versions are available where the treatment has to match a room's finish.

What we stock

Our range runs from single mounting hardware through to complete rooms:

• Broadband absorbers — square and bevelled-edge panels in 610mm × 1219mm and larger, including paintable finishes.
• Control Columns — narrow floor-to-ceiling panels for corners and narrow wall runs.
• Bass traps and corner traps — MaxTrap, FullTrap, Cumulus and the London bass trap.
• Ceiling clouds — Stratus, Nimbus, Halo, Hexus and Altos, in suspended and surface-mount formats.
• Diffusers — the variable-pitch Flexifuser and Scatter Blocks for rear-wall scattering.
• Portable and vocal treatment — the FlexiBooth wall-mounted vocal booth and stackable gobos.
• Room kits — the London and Clarity series, matched sets sized to a room rather than bought panel by panel.
• Mounting hardware — Impalers, Rotofast, Corkscrew and Cobra anchors for plasterboard, brick and rented walls.

Not sure which of those your room needs? Send us your dimensions and a photo and we will tell you where to start.