How Acoustic Fabric is Tested
At Lamvin, we provide quality panels by using top-quality acoustic fabrics. Third party testing helps ensure the fabrics for our panels do the job they are intended to do.
How do our fabric suppliers test whether the fabric we use to manufacture panels is acoustically sound? The test is called Impedance tube test (ISO 10534-2). Now you might be feeling a little intimidated by words like impedance or anechoic termination, but it is a pretty straight forward and simple process.
During the testing process sound is directed through the fabric and into an anechoic termination, which is just e technical term for saying “the place where no sound can escape”. It acts as a black hole for sound in the way there is no sound reflected back of the anechoic termination.
The amount of sound that goes through the fabric is measured between 0 – a highly sound reflective surface, to 1 – a surface that the sound entirely goes through. This number is called the NRC (noise reduction coefficient) rating. By using NRC numbers, we know that the higher number means the greater sound absorption, and the better it is for acoustically sensitive settings.
With over 50+ patterns of our acoustic textiles collection have an NRC of .85 or higher. This means that an average of 95% of most patterns, sound passes right through the fabric.