Sustainable Radio Studio - Antena 1 RTP

Performance and sustainability

Vicoustic designed a pioneering broadcasting studio with sustainable and eco-friendly solutions for the Portuguese national radio station Antena 1 RTP. This project was done in Studio 3, the main newsroom integrated in the national television and radio complex HQ of RTP, in Lisbon.

By outlining new acoustic solutions with Virtual Material Technology (VMT), Vicoustic was able to increase performance integrated with sustainability goals, such as human health (air quality), human safety (fire), use of recycled materials (VMT is made of VicPET Wool, produced mostly from recycled plastic) that are also recyclable.

A 3D surface wall

To achieve the 3D surface in the main wall, our team of Acousticians developed an entirely new acoustic solution combining VMT with an aluminum frame and a modern design with a sloping front, which allows generating attention-grabbing patterns by rotating each panel.

The wall became a symbol for Antena 1 station, by using a Flat Panel VMT tailor-made with the name of the radio. Today Studio 3 is the main newsroom used for broadcasting news and interviews to the main figures of the country, both for radio and television broadcasting.

Panels for the future

It ends up the new VMT panel developed with an aluminum frame was able to achieve an absorption performance so high it deserved to be used worldwide among other Vicoustic's solutions. This led to the development of the Cinema Family of acoustic solutions, composed of 3 new panels: Cinema Piano VMT, Cinema Forte VMT, and Cinema Fortissimo VMT.

Inspired by the Dynamics of a music piece, they present solutions that go from a standard sound absorber (Cinema Piano VMT with 60mm thickness) up to enhanced sound absorbers (Cinema Forte VMT and Fortissimo VMT reaching 120mm thickness). With the combination of the 3 Cinema panels, you can create several 3D surfaces, with endless creative design options.

Custom-made VMT

Another front wall of Studio 3 was treated with Flat Panel VMT in a custom-made solution that allowed to dye the radio station's logo trademark. This shows VMT's ability to be customized and replicate a symbol at the client's request. The panels were fully integrated with the television displays required for a newsroom.

An acoustic study

For this project, Vicoustic was contacted in order to study the acoustic behavior of Studio 3. To this end, the Vicoustic team of Acousticians went to the premises of the space, in order to carry out measurements of the reverb times.

Based on the analysis of the results, it was recommended that the acoustic treatment solutions to be implemented in Studio 3 are designed to: maintain or reduce current reverberation times at medium-high frequencies and reduce the reverberation times of the mid/low frequencies in order to get closer values ​​recommended by the BBC standards for good practices.