Quite a few of our customers have asked for a less visually intrusive way of incorporating acoustic treatment within their room. Some lucky people may live alone or have partners or families that do not mind the visual intrusiveness of the standard black, grey or beige colored panels. Some of the even luckier may have a dedicated listening room or home theater. Most of us, however, have our systems set up in a shared space that is also utilized for entertaining, eating or relaxing. We can hide most equipment such as amplifiers, source equipment and the like in entertainment centers or racks. We can find small standmount speakers or narrow width floorstanders that still have good performance. The problem with acoustical treatment is that by necessity the surface area coverage needs to be large and often panels need to be placed in very specific locations (e.g. ceiling first reflection points) to have the desired effect. Finding a balance between aesthetics and performance in these situations is difficult. The best solution we have had until now is the fabric covered RPG panels. RPG makes everything to order so they can offer a very wide selection of fabrics. We sell RPG with over 80 fabric choices. Quite often one can find a close, if not exact match, by using these panels.

Recently we became aware of a well established company called Golterman & Sabo (or G&S for short) out of St. Louis who offer paintable acoustical panels. The panels are called 'Pinta' and they are available in sizes up to 4' x 10' in thicknesses from 1" to 4". G&S can color match their panels to any color in the Sherwin Williams collection. Indeed there are over 1,500 colors to choose from, so now your acoustical panels can be exactly matched or contrasted with your room decor! Needless to say we signed up straight away as a reseller, so for more information or a quote for your job please contact us.

A couple of the color palates are shown below; they also have many more on the Sherwin Williams site so be sure to take a look if you are interested.

Sherwin Williams Blue Palate

Sherwin Williams Green Palate

Sherwin Williams White Palate

The way the process works is as follows:

• You select the Sherwin Williams color that you want to have the panels painted in
• G&S create a sample and send to you for approval
• After approval they manufacture the panels to order

There is no standard pricing on these panels, and the high setup and cleanup costs make larger quantities much more economical than smaller ones. As a guide 16 2' x 4' 3" thick panels would retail at $196 each wheras if you ordered only 4 it would be $360. Here is one example of a typical installation. Here the panels were color matched to the ceiling of the Shure critical listening laboratory. The panels were also CNC machined for the light fittings in the ceiling.

G&S Pinta panels on ceiling of Shure critical listening room