Loosely coupling spaces is a design technique that was developed by Russ Berger to sculpt high quality live recording spaces out of rooms with otherwise small—some would say almost unusable—footprints. Berger has been using the technique for close to 20 years to create truly unique acoustical environments in his studio designs.

To understand how the Space Coupler noise control material works in a loosely coupled configuration, let's start with a small home studio, just cozy enough to fit a drummer and a kit, say, 14' long by 12' wide with a 15' high ceiling. The lower portions of the walls—say up to about 8' high—are treated with a good broadband absorber such as Realtraps Bass Traps, with the absorber coverage as close to 100% as can be achieved. The upper portion of the walls are "hard," creating a live reflective area.

Acoustic Couplers placed horizontally at just above the 8' high mark separates the height of the room into two areas with a controlled aperture. The Couplers in the aperture redirect sound energy into the upper portion of the room where it is diffused. Sound then returns—again redirected by the Couplers—to provide a "big room" reverberation tail that sounds exceptional. The quality of the resulting tail is smooth, without any acoustical artifacts or anomalies that would be difficult to work with in the post-processing and mixing phases.

The loosely coupled space application is just the beginning. The Coupler can be used over flat absorbers to increase their efficiency. Two popular applications of the Coupler are over absorbers above the mix position and over deep absorbers on the rear wall of a control room. The former is a very efficient, space-conserving method of eliminating the floor-ceiling first and second order axial modes that plague basement and bedroom studios. A relatively small area of Couplers over a few inches of noise absorption on the ceiling can greatly increase the low frequency "punch" in the room and allow for better mixing decisions for low frequency content. Bye-Bye Mud. Hello Translatable Mixes!

The latter application—Space Couplers over deep sound absorbers on the control room rear wall—is most often found in "neutral" room designs. Mixing the Couplers with other diffusors over deep absorbers can provide high frequency scattering, yet still allow the low frequency sound into the deep absorbers to control modal build-up and noise cancellation in the room.

The Acoustic Space Coupler is made from solid Douglas Fir wood. 2' x 2' x 2.5". New applications for these Couplers are being discovered all the time. Coupled spaces, increased absorber efficiency, well-scattered (diffused) sound and its high-end appearance all make the Acoustic Space Coupler one of the most exciting soundproofing products introduced in the past decade.