Are Sound Waves Able To Penetrate Canvas Painting?


I am planning to use canvas material to cover up some absorption panels. Will this be a feasible idea? Will the surface of canvas able to let the sound waves penetrate through effectively, or will it totally reflect the sound off the surface? I know that an acoustically transparent fabric is the best(I already have them at side walls) but am thinking of some kind of beautiful art at the front wall behind the speakers.

Any opinions or advice would be most appreciated.
ryder
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.
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?
Sol322,

I get your idea about leaving an opening between the absorption panels and the canvas painting. The painting cannot be framed in this case and furthermore the gap between the wall and painting may sacrifice aesthetics. Also, I am not too sure if the sound is able to sneak into the panels effectively as the opening/gap needs to be quite large. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the thought.