Knowledge
The questions a specified room raises
Written against the published test data rather than around it. Everything here is public, without registration, including the full BSRIA report.
Room acoustics fundamentals
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Why the bass is wrong in one seat and right in the next
Because low-frequency sound in a room this size behaves as pressure, not as a beam, and pressure is not the same everywhere. A 40 Hz wave is over eight metres long. It fills the room, reflects off the boundaries, and adds to or cancels itself depending on where you are standing.
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What a first reflection is, and why a room can measure well and still sound wrong
A first reflection is the sound that reaches you off a nearby surface a fraction of a second after the sound that reached you directly. They arrive within a few thousandths of a second of the direct sound: too soon to hear as an echo, early enough to change what you hear.
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What reverberation is, and what actually fixes it
Reverberation is the sound still in the room after the source has stopped. Clap your hands in a bare room and the tail you hear is reverberation: energy bouncing between hard surfaces, arriving late and from everywhere at once. It is measured as reverberation time (how long sound takes to fall by 60 dB), and in a small, hard room it is what makes dialogue difficult to follow. The voice arrives, and then the room repeats it.
Acoustic treatment
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Why is the resonance panel bigger than the other two?
Because corner loading needs area. The reflection and reverberation panels are 300 mm square; this one is 600 mm square and 43 mm deep, and the size is the mechanism rather than the packaging.
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Does this replace bass traps?
Not thin ones, and that distinction is the whole answer. Low frequencies need dedicated, corner-loaded resonance control. A standard wall panel hung on a flat wall is not that, whatever its thickness, and a thin panel sold as a bass trap is the most common wasted purchase in room acoustics.
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Can the resonance panel go anywhere other than a corner?
It can be fixed anywhere, and away from a corner it is a much weaker device. This is the one place in the C-ATS range where placement is not a preference: corner loading is the mechanism, so a resonance panel moved out of the corner is not a slightly reduced resonance panel.
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Checkerboard the panels, or run them continuous?
Checkerboard, weighted toward the rear of the room. The Reverberation Control Panel works above roughly 200 Hz across wide areas of wall and ceiling, and spread coverage does more than a solid block of the same quantity. Distribute it, weight it toward the back of the room, and put it around the surround speakers. A continuous slab in one place is the same money doing less work.
Materials and construction
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Do not pull the resonance panel tight
Fit it snug, not tight. The panel's front face has to be free to move, and the screws have a threadless shank so that it can. Over-tighten them and the panel stops working, and nothing about the wall will look wrong.
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Bond it or screw it?
Both, and the adhesive is the part that matters. Bonded, the adhesive damps the panel so it stays rigid and scatters cleanly, which is the condition every C-ATS design assumes. Screwed without adhesive, the panel is free to flex and adds an absorption peak of its own.
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Is it fire rated?
There is no single answer for "the panel", and the reason is how the standards work. A reaction-to-fire classification is issued against a material in a stated build-up, never against a product name. Certificates are issued against a specification and supplied on a project basis.
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Fitting the Reverberation Control Panel: the warm-room rule
Yes, above 18 °C. The room must be above 18 °C for 24 hours before installation, not warmed up on the morning. The adhesive backing needs a warm, dry, clean substrate, and a cold wall takes the panel and releases it weeks later.
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Can the panels be painted or covered?
No, they cannot be painted, and covered is how they are meant to be installed. No C-ATS panel is painted: that holds for all three. They are designed to sit behind a stretch-fabric wall or ceiling finish, concealed, and any acoustically transparent cover works.
Design and specification
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How many resonance panels does a room need, and where do they go?
Where they go is answerable now: in the corners, flat against the wall, in the corners belonging to the axis that is out of line. How many is a design output, not a number this page can give you: it depends on the room's volume, its proportions, which axis is misbehaving and by how much.
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How closely does the panel layout have to be followed?
Not to the millimetre, but the relative positions matter, and a tidier-looking arrangement performs worse. Set out from the drawing rather than by eye. If something has to shift, shift the whole run rather than one panel. The spacing between panels is doing the work, so the pattern has to survive the install.
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Can the panels go behind fabric?
Yes: behind an acoustically transparent finish is how they are meant to be installed, and no C-ATS panel is ever painted. All three panels sit behind a stretch-fabric wall or ceiling system, concealed, and any acoustically transparent cover works.
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How much of the room needs treating
It depends on the room, and getting the quantity right is a design step rather than a lookup. It is the part we do for you. Tell us the room and the speaker layout and we will specify it. What follows is everything useful that can be said before a design exists, and none of it is a number.