Are Sound Waves Able To Penetrate Canvas Painting?

A layer of painted canvas isn't soundproof, so there will be some effect to have panels behind painting VS not. It won't be the same response the panel was designed for, but it should be better than the painting on a bare wall.

You could also size the panel bigger than the paintin to sort of highlight it, or use some sort of standoff to space the painting off of the panel slightly.

John C.

Thinking that in a movie theater, the center speaker is behind the screen. If you look closely at the screen material, you will see that it is perforated with fine holes.

Similarly there are a lot of banner and billboard surface materials (media) that are perforated for one reason or another. If you could source one of these and then print on it with an inkjet (which has no mass unlike paints applied with brushes and palette knives) you might have something that both looks and sounds good.

Might look in the yellow pages for companies specializing in interior design applications as well as companies specializing in large scale printing...

Then stretch the final piece over a frame filled with your sound absorbing material. You would probably want a deeper frame (stretcher bar) then normal so you can get more masterial in.

Also do a search for John Risch here and on Audio Asylum. He's done a lot of great posts on DIY projects like this and may have already solved this problem.

I am sure a cost effective solution is out there - sorry I can't point you any more precisely.

Ryder, it is both feasible & beneficial to place absorbtion material behind the canvas, i have experimented to confirm this.

Thanks for all responses. Now I have something to think about.

Ryder:

After reading the previous posts something came to mind...

In brief : we all know how difficult it is to keep sound from sneaking out from our rooms through openings....
Maybe we can use this to our benefit here.
Consider installing the sound panels in the wall and "float" in front of them the paintings leaving an opening. Chances are that the sound will sneak to the absorbing panel and maybe you can get something closer to the panel alone than directly covered with the canvas. What are your thoughts about this?