UKH

New house has extended kitchen from dining room. And sound reverberates and echoes. ( I think sensitivity to this is an old man's problem). It's modern, kitchen cabinets,  vinyl floors. Not a lot of room (or aesthetics)for soft furnishings. Any ideas. You can buy acoustic panels I've noticed. But can you put them flat on top of cupboards to hide them away? Of any other ideas. Thanks

Draw the curtains, dim the lights and put this on the hifi

youtube.com/watch?v=ISXnYu-Or4w&

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Put a rug on the floor?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acoustic-Soundsbay-Double-sided-Absorbing-Recordin...

Basically you have a room with a lot of hard surfaces and parallel walls that will reflect most sounds a lot.

You are unlikely to want to re-configure the room to reduce echoes and reflections so we'll focus on absorption.

Soft things will abosor sound and produce less reflection.

Rugs and curtains are good for mid to high frequencies.

For bass (boomy sounds) you'll want something bigger i.e. a sofa.

you can get into accoustic panels (;erhaps hidden bhind pictures etc.) if you want - but starting with curtains, rugs and other soft furnishings is where I'd start.

Good luck.

Thanks. Very useful

If you put anything on top of the units make sure it's either washable or can be covered in kitchen roll or cling film. It's crazy the greasy crap that collects on to of kitchen cupboards.

You would need to have a think about which frequencies are most annoying. Lower frequencies are harder to control.

You can get acoustic panels on amazon. Some look very nice, sort of like a felt material. You can build a frame and put these on the wall as a decoration. If you mount them slightly away fro the wall so there's an air gap, they are more effective. Sound goes through once, bounces off the wall and goes through again. In a frame you could even stack them so they are twice as thick. Then cover in a nice material, to make them look less industrial. You could also mix and match different densities or move the frames around to best effect.

I'd look at parallel surfaces, as theses will reflect sound at certain frequencies, as a standing wave. If you can break these up, with curtains, panels, or furniture, that will help. As well as top of cabinets you can mount them under tables. That will stop some of the sound bouncing off the floor.

My sister is a hearing consultant, and her advise to patients re this issue is to use soft fabrics wherever possible - even a fabric table cloth and seat pads will help. Basically, any additions of these will have an impact - good advice above in the thread such as rugs, wall hangings etc.

You can also use ceiling drapes too

A fabric style dog bed made loads of difference to ours and come to think of it, fabric place mats on the table too. Also a wooden shelf unit in an alcove helped too, I think. 

Is it a particularly high ceiling?

As others have said - anything o break up flat hard surfaces - rugs, bookshelves, furniture, curtains. The ceiling/floor reflections are likely the worst. You can bond acoustic panels to the ceiling to cut this (remember you only really need to treat one of the two parallel surfaces to cut reflections down)

You can get printable acoustic panels  - so you could even hang these like pictures if you have room.

The good news is you'll be surprised what a big difference relatively little treatment can make.