GIK Acoustics - 20 Years Of Free Advice and Exceptional Acoustic Treatment
by Scott Jay
23rd October 2024
Sponsored by GIK Acoustics
Simple white acoustic panels and bass traps in the control room at The Lost Ark Studio, San Diego
The Hard Sell
Getting people in pro audio and music to buy stuff that doesn’t make a sound of its own has historically always been a bit of a mission. There is a bit of a trope in the Gearspace forum world where if someone asks “what should I buy next?” - the most learned (and usually quick) replies are from forum and industry veterans who immediately ask if the room or workspace is acoustically treated. With the many newcomers that GS hosts, the answer is rarely “yes”. The advice is then to consider saving one’s money for that shiny new box or device later down the road and instead think about picking up some bass traps, acoustic panels, or both, or more! The idea being that all the best equipment in the world won't help you if your recording and listening environments are acoustically way off.
Acoustic treatment isn’t usually “sexy”. It’s not the same social media show-off buy that microphones, converters, monitors or expensive outboard hardware inspires. But anyone who has been in the producing, recording, mixing or mastering game for any length of time is generally now fully aware what an essential investment it is - and without it, you won’t be able to fully realize your vision without having to make seriously compromised decisions in every stage. Yes, you can “learn the weaknesses of your room” and figure out how to compensate as you go. You can use software tools to “fix it in the mix”. When it comes to acoustic recordings in lousy environments, there are always workarounds and bandages - but it’s not ideal, is it? Whether you are client-facing or not, having a room that sounds great is going to instill confidence, help you work faster, more accurately and just make your final recordings sound better.
Solving artistic problems with science
How do you do it then? It’s easy to listen to microphone or compressor or guitar pedal samples on the internet and decide what to buy. It’s less easy to imagine your space with acoustic improvements, because you have to recognise where you might have issues - some will of course be obvious. Comb filtering, standing waves, many of those sorts of things stand out like a dog barking in the night if they are significant enough. But it might be trickier to work out nodes and antinodes, specific frequency problems and all sorts of other small things. And the fine-tuning is something that’s often best left to experts.
There is a scientific side to acoustic treatment, as well as an interpretive artistic one. After all, you don’t want a “dead room” in the end - reflection free anechoic chambers might be good for testing microphones, but they aren’t good for recording or mixing hit singles or feature films. GIK Acoustics’ founder Glenn Kuras - a real Gearspace “Original Gangster” - recognized this problem when he founded GIK two decades ago in 2004 in Atlanta, GA. Glenn, an avid musician, started up the company because he knew he was working in a room that didn’t sound very good, and he wanted some acoustic panels. There were no cost-effective DIY solutions on the market at all, so he did some research and built them himself. When it turned out that they worked really well, he started making more, and selling them - on eBay, of all places. Thus GIK’s toehold in the acoustic treatment business was secure.
GIK Acoustics products in a smaller room - Cristian Paul Sasserman’s studio room, Germany
The Soft Sell
Companies, especially new ones, have to sell things to survive. In the early days, marketing strategies become ridiculously important. Nick Hepfer, who is currently the marketing & development manager at GIK spoke to me from his Frankfurt (Germany) home office about building their success from the ground up.
“Gearspace was an important cornerstone for GIK in the early days simply by giving us a place to educate people on acoustics. That's kind of how our ‘free advice’ service that we're currently offering started. The origin was the forums - telling people what works, what doesn't, just educating people. What Glenn spent a lot of time doing on the forums in the early days later evolved into our informative blog articles, videos and of course our free personalized direct advice service,” Nick observes.
Sound Advice
David tells me more about the philosophy behind the ‘education and advice’ aspect of the business. “When we came to Europe originally, it wasn't just about the acoustic panels, it was really about the education. We spent a lot of time doing education, making videos, making articles, going around on tours and doing lectures at universities, talking about acoustic, we did it all,” he says.. “But what was really important as well is that we wanted to provide a service. At the time, especially in Europe, we were still kind of stuck in a 1970s level of customer service.
You know, someone answers the phone and says, "What do you want?” he laughs. “At the time the US was definitely leading the way in customer service and we wanted to bring that attitude into Europe.”
“We really wanted both a pre-sales and a post-sales service, which obviously over time we've succeeded at and expanded on. We only had acoustic advice originally, but now we’ve expanded our offerings to have things like the Room Acoustics Visualizer. You can even use one of our partner companies and they can come out to you and test your room,” he tells me proudly. This is all before anyone spends a single penny with them, so it’s an impressive commitment to knowing one’s customer and making sure they are selling the right products.
Very nice, how much?
Nick is pleased to tell me that the cost of entry into GIK products for your room doesn’t have to be ridiculous. And you can work on upgrading your space in phases, with help from their specialists.
Expanding on that, Nick explains “I mean, the good thing is - with small spaces especially - everything you do will immediately benefit the sound of your room. So even if you start off with just two panels, that will still do a lot. The point of entry is actually pretty low because even if you can't afford to build out your entire room, you can start somewhere and you will definitely be able to hear the difference,” he smiles.
“And that's what we recommend, you know?” he suggests. Talking of the typical home studio, he describes a common scenario. “If somebody doesn't want to drop 3 or 4 grand on a room, which is often what it takes to fully build it out, they can start with just 200 bucks worth of panels, maybe between two and four panels and then just take it from there, upgrade later and then do it step by step,” Nick suggests. “Whether you just want to start out and build out your room slowly, or maybe you just say ‘okay, that's all I can do, that's all I want to do, I don't want to spend more in the future’ - we still can't find the best solution in that scenario.
But usually what happens is people want to start small, and then once they hear (the results) and what it does to their room, they just want to add more to it,” he states. “The last 20%, you know, you can spend 80% of the budget on it. But that’s really when you start getting the bass right, you know, and then you kind of move in small improvements. Fine-tuning,” he underpins.
So where does one begin if they decide to go down the path of acoustic enlightenment? A great thing about science-based acoustic advice is that the physics don't change, especially when it comes to small rooms. So the advice you seek out on the internet, especially on Gearspace.com - as long as it comes from a reliable source - will still be broadly valid to this day. All those posts Glenn made on GS dating back as far as 2004 will contain a goldmine of information, all of it useful. Once you’ve got an idea of what you want to achieve, all you have to do is give GIK a call or write them an email.
Sonic Certification
To prove that the presales advice and the products themselves weren’t just hype, GIK has all their products certified by third-parties - Riverbank in the USA, and the University of Salford in the UK independently measure everything GIK makes and issues paperwork certifying that the panels and traps actually do what they say they do. Nick tells me about this, “this is something that sets us apart, because nobody else really has their entire product catalog tested and documented like that - it’s an objective proof-of-performance. So, that's another extra step we always take to make sure that our products stand out and perform like we would expect them to perform.”
Today and tomorrow
GIK’s expansion since Glenn Kuras started building panels by himself in his basement has been nothing short of extraordinary. “Office staff, we’ve got about 25 people now,” Nick confirms.
“And then, once you include the staff on the manufacturing floor, it's probably closer to around 80-100 people!” This is across three factories too - one in Atlanta, the one in Bradford, as well as a new factory in Poland purpose-founded to better serve the EU market. GIK have gone from three panels in two different colors to a whole range of panels, traps, and more available in a rainbow-range of fabrics and finishes and also the ability to custom-print your own designs or images onto your panels.
Nick comments -”obviously, our educational approach, conveying that this is actually really important and that you've got to have it, is one facet. The other one is with product design and, offering not only black and white, but, essentially making it fully customizable. Offering a wide range of colors, offering nice-looking face plates to choose from and having (the products) fully configurable to your personal taste.”
“They will always be made to order because of the countless options we offer. But that’s what makes our approach so interesting. You can really fit (your panels) to your style, to the vibe you want your room to have. Whether it's, you know, just clean white panels on the wall or just some moody wooden ones or darker fabric colors. That’s how we at least try to make it sexy!”
The past few years in manufacturing have not been without challenges. The war in Ukraine, Brexit and of course the pandemic have thrown up wrenches to all aspects of the business, but the company has been resilient and mostly been able to mitigate those issues with exceptional forecasting - and a great team of people.
Advisors, not salespeople
Manufacturing companies such as GIK are more than patents and CNC machines and purpose-built factories. They are, at their heart, about the people. Nick has an important thought about that to conclude with. “The beauty of GIK is that we are all engineers & musicians. We all came from that industry. We've all worked different jobs in the industry. Literally everybody here has that connection to sound and music. That's why we don't want to call our (customer-facing) staff salespeople. Internally we call them advisors, because that's what they do. They advise people,” he states.
“They don't reach out and sell to people. And all of them really understand what matters in terms of sound, because of where they came from. I and many others still have our studios from our previous lives. We still have that as a side hustle or as a hobby,” Nick reinforces.
“So there's really just so much experience and expertise inside our salesforce - sorry, our advisors! Recording engineers, musicians, live engineers. Pretty much everybody knew what's important about music and sound before even working for GIK. And then it's pretty easy, obviously, to show them what our products do, and train them on the ins and outs of acoustics.
But the general understanding of it is already there - and probably more importantly, so is the passion. Everybody who ever worked for us all went through the same thing at some point.”
I'm sitting in an empty room.
It sounds like sh*t.
What do I do about it?
… and now, just like they did 20 years ago, GIK Acoustics has a solution.
For more information on GIK Acoustics products and to get advice on treating your own space please visit https://gikacoustics.com (USA) or https://gikacoustics.co.uk (UK/EU)
Simple white acoustic panels and bass traps in the control room at The Lost Ark Studio, San Diego
The Hard Sell
Getting people in pro audio and music to buy stuff that doesn’t make a sound of its own has historically always been a bit of a mission. There is a bit of a trope in the Gearspace forum world where if someone asks “what should I buy next?” - the most learned (and usually quick) replies are from forum and industry veterans who immediately ask if the room or workspace is acoustically treated. With the many newcomers that GS hosts, the answer is rarely “yes”. The advice is then to consider saving one’s money for that shiny new box or device later down the road and instead think about picking up some bass traps, acoustic panels, or both, or more! The idea being that all the best equipment in the world won't help you if your recording and listening environments are acoustically way off.
Acoustic treatment isn’t usually “sexy”. It’s not the same social media show-off buy that microphones, converters, monitors or expensive outboard hardware inspires. But anyone who has been in the producing, recording, mixing or mastering game for any length of time is generally now fully aware what an essential investment it is - and without it, you won’t be able to fully realize your vision without having to make seriously compromised decisions in every stage. Yes, you can “learn the weaknesses of your room” and figure out how to compensate as you go. You can use software tools to “fix it in the mix”. When it comes to acoustic recordings in lousy environments, there are always workarounds and bandages - but it’s not ideal, is it? Whether you are client-facing or not, having a room that sounds great is going to instill confidence, help you work faster, more accurately and just make your final recordings sound better.
Toni Pellegrino’s home studio in Berlin, Germany with GIK Acoustics treatment
How do you do it then? It’s easy to listen to microphone or compressor or guitar pedal samples on the internet and decide what to buy. It’s less easy to imagine your space with acoustic improvements, because you have to recognise where you might have issues - some will of course be obvious. Comb filtering, standing waves, many of those sorts of things stand out like a dog barking in the night if they are significant enough. But it might be trickier to work out nodes and antinodes, specific frequency problems and all sorts of other small things. And the fine-tuning is something that’s often best left to experts.
There is a scientific side to acoustic treatment, as well as an interpretive artistic one. After all, you don’t want a “dead room” in the end - reflection free anechoic chambers might be good for testing microphones, but they aren’t good for recording or mixing hit singles or feature films. GIK Acoustics’ founder Glenn Kuras - a real Gearspace “Original Gangster” - recognized this problem when he founded GIK two decades ago in 2004 in Atlanta, GA. Glenn, an avid musician, started up the company because he knew he was working in a room that didn’t sound very good, and he wanted some acoustic panels. There were no cost-effective DIY solutions on the market at all, so he did some research and built them himself. When it turned out that they worked really well, he started making more, and selling them - on eBay, of all places. Thus GIK’s toehold in the acoustic treatment business was secure.
GIK Acoustics products in a smaller room - Cristian Paul Sasserman’s studio room, Germany
Acoustic Alchemy
A few years on from those first sales, David Shevyn, a musician from the north of England, was perusing the internet in search of a solution to essentially the same problem Glenn had originally - the need for quality, cost-effective room treatment - and he discovered GIK. Although he loved the idea of what GIK was doing, shipping the panels overseas turned out to be a lot more expensive than he had hoped. Seeing an opportunity, he got in touch with Glenn and they hammered out an expansion plan that would see GIK open a factory and an office in Bradford, in the UK, which would serve as their European base for the next decade and a bit.
“One of the first challenges was making people aware. Not that they needed GIK Acoustics products necessarily, but that they needed acoustic treatment at all. The second challenge - and the biggest one - is why GIK came about. There just weren't any reasonably priced panels in America or Europe at the time,” he recounts.
“Back in 2008 I was playing in a band called The Hoover Dams and we needed a new guitarist and we got a fella who was living in Wakefield called Doug. Doug used to work for Glenn in Atlanta and at the time I was looking for something else to do and he told me ‘well, I know this fella called Glenn in Atlanta, he makes these acoustic panels,’”
He continues. “So we contacted Glenn. I said we'd be interested in setting up a European branch. And at the time he was getting queries from Europe but the cost of shipping from the US to Europe is quite prohibitive. He was (only) selling a little bit. Glenn then flew over, I put up some money and we decided to do it, and we went into partnership from it.”
“When we first started (the UK factory) we bought an antique compressor with 50 quid and it was in a tiny little room and we started with three panels and we could either buy them in black or white,” he chuckles, listing the entire launch product catalog in a single sentence.
A few years on from those first sales, David Shevyn, a musician from the north of England, was perusing the internet in search of a solution to essentially the same problem Glenn had originally - the need for quality, cost-effective room treatment - and he discovered GIK. Although he loved the idea of what GIK was doing, shipping the panels overseas turned out to be a lot more expensive than he had hoped. Seeing an opportunity, he got in touch with Glenn and they hammered out an expansion plan that would see GIK open a factory and an office in Bradford, in the UK, which would serve as their European base for the next decade and a bit.
Founder Glenn Kuras (L) with UK partner David Shevyn (R), c. 2008, photo GIK Acoustics archives
“One of the first challenges was making people aware. Not that they needed GIK Acoustics products necessarily, but that they needed acoustic treatment at all. The second challenge - and the biggest one - is why GIK came about. There just weren't any reasonably priced panels in America or Europe at the time,” he recounts.
“Back in 2008 I was playing in a band called The Hoover Dams and we needed a new guitarist and we got a fella who was living in Wakefield called Doug. Doug used to work for Glenn in Atlanta and at the time I was looking for something else to do and he told me ‘well, I know this fella called Glenn in Atlanta, he makes these acoustic panels,’”
He continues. “So we contacted Glenn. I said we'd be interested in setting up a European branch. And at the time he was getting queries from Europe but the cost of shipping from the US to Europe is quite prohibitive. He was (only) selling a little bit. Glenn then flew over, I put up some money and we decided to do it, and we went into partnership from it.”
“When we first started (the UK factory) we bought an antique compressor with 50 quid and it was in a tiny little room and we started with three panels and we could either buy them in black or white,” he chuckles, listing the entire launch product catalog in a single sentence.
Companies, especially new ones, have to sell things to survive. In the early days, marketing strategies become ridiculously important. Nick Hepfer, who is currently the marketing & development manager at GIK spoke to me from his Frankfurt (Germany) home office about building their success from the ground up.
“Gearspace was an important cornerstone for GIK in the early days simply by giving us a place to educate people on acoustics. That's kind of how our ‘free advice’ service that we're currently offering started. The origin was the forums - telling people what works, what doesn't, just educating people. What Glenn spent a lot of time doing on the forums in the early days later evolved into our informative blog articles, videos and of course our free personalized direct advice service,” Nick observes.
A GIK Acoustics booth at a tradeshow (Bristol, 2023)
David tells me more about the philosophy behind the ‘education and advice’ aspect of the business. “When we came to Europe originally, it wasn't just about the acoustic panels, it was really about the education. We spent a lot of time doing education, making videos, making articles, going around on tours and doing lectures at universities, talking about acoustic, we did it all,” he says.. “But what was really important as well is that we wanted to provide a service. At the time, especially in Europe, we were still kind of stuck in a 1970s level of customer service.
You know, someone answers the phone and says, "What do you want?” he laughs. “At the time the US was definitely leading the way in customer service and we wanted to bring that attitude into Europe.”
“We really wanted both a pre-sales and a post-sales service, which obviously over time we've succeeded at and expanded on. We only had acoustic advice originally, but now we’ve expanded our offerings to have things like the Room Acoustics Visualizer. You can even use one of our partner companies and they can come out to you and test your room,” he tells me proudly. This is all before anyone spends a single penny with them, so it’s an impressive commitment to knowing one’s customer and making sure they are selling the right products.
Very nice, how much?
Nick is pleased to tell me that the cost of entry into GIK products for your room doesn’t have to be ridiculous. And you can work on upgrading your space in phases, with help from their specialists.
Expanding on that, Nick explains “I mean, the good thing is - with small spaces especially - everything you do will immediately benefit the sound of your room. So even if you start off with just two panels, that will still do a lot. The point of entry is actually pretty low because even if you can't afford to build out your entire room, you can start somewhere and you will definitely be able to hear the difference,” he smiles.
“And that's what we recommend, you know?” he suggests. Talking of the typical home studio, he describes a common scenario. “If somebody doesn't want to drop 3 or 4 grand on a room, which is often what it takes to fully build it out, they can start with just 200 bucks worth of panels, maybe between two and four panels and then just take it from there, upgrade later and then do it step by step,” Nick suggests. “Whether you just want to start out and build out your room slowly, or maybe you just say ‘okay, that's all I can do, that's all I want to do, I don't want to spend more in the future’ - we still can't find the best solution in that scenario.
But usually what happens is people want to start small, and then once they hear (the results) and what it does to their room, they just want to add more to it,” he states. “The last 20%, you know, you can spend 80% of the budget on it. But that’s really when you start getting the bass right, you know, and then you kind of move in small improvements. Fine-tuning,” he underpins.
So where does one begin if they decide to go down the path of acoustic enlightenment? A great thing about science-based acoustic advice is that the physics don't change, especially when it comes to small rooms. So the advice you seek out on the internet, especially on Gearspace.com - as long as it comes from a reliable source - will still be broadly valid to this day. All those posts Glenn made on GS dating back as far as 2004 will contain a goldmine of information, all of it useful. Once you’ve got an idea of what you want to achieve, all you have to do is give GIK a call or write them an email.
Marsh Mastering, Los Angeles - featuring a GIK Acoustics custom-printed ceiling panel above the desk
Testing GIK Acoustics products at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK - photo GIK Acoustics archives
Sonic Certification
To prove that the presales advice and the products themselves weren’t just hype, GIK has all their products certified by third-parties - Riverbank in the USA, and the University of Salford in the UK independently measure everything GIK makes and issues paperwork certifying that the panels and traps actually do what they say they do. Nick tells me about this, “this is something that sets us apart, because nobody else really has their entire product catalog tested and documented like that - it’s an objective proof-of-performance. So, that's another extra step we always take to make sure that our products stand out and perform like we would expect them to perform.”
GIK’s expansion since Glenn Kuras started building panels by himself in his basement has been nothing short of extraordinary. “Office staff, we’ve got about 25 people now,” Nick confirms.
“And then, once you include the staff on the manufacturing floor, it's probably closer to around 80-100 people!” This is across three factories too - one in Atlanta, the one in Bradford, as well as a new factory in Poland purpose-founded to better serve the EU market. GIK have gone from three panels in two different colors to a whole range of panels, traps, and more available in a rainbow-range of fabrics and finishes and also the ability to custom-print your own designs or images onto your panels.
Nick comments -”obviously, our educational approach, conveying that this is actually really important and that you've got to have it, is one facet. The other one is with product design and, offering not only black and white, but, essentially making it fully customizable. Offering a wide range of colors, offering nice-looking face plates to choose from and having (the products) fully configurable to your personal taste.”
“They will always be made to order because of the countless options we offer. But that’s what makes our approach so interesting. You can really fit (your panels) to your style, to the vibe you want your room to have. Whether it's, you know, just clean white panels on the wall or just some moody wooden ones or darker fabric colors. That’s how we at least try to make it sexy!”
The past few years in manufacturing have not been without challenges. The war in Ukraine, Brexit and of course the pandemic have thrown up wrenches to all aspects of the business, but the company has been resilient and mostly been able to mitigate those issues with exceptional forecasting - and a great team of people.
GIK Acoustics panels installed at Sonic Temple Studio, Italy
Advisors, not salespeople
Manufacturing companies such as GIK are more than patents and CNC machines and purpose-built factories. They are, at their heart, about the people. Nick has an important thought about that to conclude with. “The beauty of GIK is that we are all engineers & musicians. We all came from that industry. We've all worked different jobs in the industry. Literally everybody here has that connection to sound and music. That's why we don't want to call our (customer-facing) staff salespeople. Internally we call them advisors, because that's what they do. They advise people,” he states.
“They don't reach out and sell to people. And all of them really understand what matters in terms of sound, because of where they came from. I and many others still have our studios from our previous lives. We still have that as a side hustle or as a hobby,” Nick reinforces.
“So there's really just so much experience and expertise inside our salesforce - sorry, our advisors! Recording engineers, musicians, live engineers. Pretty much everybody knew what's important about music and sound before even working for GIK. And then it's pretty easy, obviously, to show them what our products do, and train them on the ins and outs of acoustics.
But the general understanding of it is already there - and probably more importantly, so is the passion. Everybody who ever worked for us all went through the same thing at some point.”
I'm sitting in an empty room.
It sounds like sh*t.
What do I do about it?
… and now, just like they did 20 years ago, GIK Acoustics has a solution.
For more information on GIK Acoustics products and to get advice on treating your own space please visit https://gikacoustics.com (USA) or https://gikacoustics.co.uk (UK/EU)
