“Some time ago, the optimization of room acoustics was still a topic that primarily recording studios and sound professionals dealt with. But it is also becoming increasingly relevant for business premises and gastronomy,” says Jan Bönisch, Managing Director of Hofa GmbH from Karlsdorf in Baden-Württemberg. “Acoustic measures are also playing an increasingly important role in living spaces.”
Jochen Sachse, the second managing director, founded Hofa in 1988 as a recording studio. According to Bönisch, Hofa employs more than 80 people, about 20 in the area Acoustic. Hofa-Akustik sells bass traps, diffusers, absorbers, removable frames and acoustic curtains. A large part of the products are manufactured by the Lebenshilfe Bruchsal-Bretten.
Customers come from the music industry, for example Oliver Pinelli, Nils Frahm and Armin Pertl. In the area of event, office and trade are savings banks, the energy group ENBW and the Theater Basel customers. “We are currently working on many projects, for example for a university, a Bundesliga soccer club and a well-known rapper and Tiktok professional,” reports Bönisch.
Acoustic curtains dampen the sound
Good acoustics in rooms increase well-being, make conversations more pleasant and promote concentration. “If you improve the sound in the room, the stress level automatically drops because everyone understands each other much better and the entire sound field is quieter,” explains Bönisch. The body perceives noise as Stress. If a room has poor acoustics, the reverberation will be long. This makes normal conversation difficult. A good example is churches. There is a lot of reverberation there, which is why the conversations get louder than they actually are.
Even a carpet or curtain reduces the reverberation. Hofa offers various modules to improve the acoustics. Bass traps absorb particularly deep tones and cost around 200 euros. Absorbers cost about 95 euros. They reduce the reverberation of medium and high frequencies and are used in recording studios and home cinemas, but also in living rooms and offices. Diffusers are used when optimal acoustics are required, as in recording studios. The acoustic curtains, which Hofa makes to measure, insulate the sound: the rooms are acoustically separated; this interrupts or reduces the sound propagation.
The number of private individuals who use the products in the living room, for example, is greater than that of professional users. “Corona has created a small boost in the direction of private users and domestic environments,” says Bönisch. “Many people suddenly had to attend web meetings and the like in their sub-optimal sounding rooms at home, and it became clear that speech intelligibility is very important.”
The right product for the right job
Customers send the company pictures and sketches of the room. Then the reverberation is calculated. The result is then modeled in 3D. Then the product will be shipped. It is important to choose the right product for the right place, says Hofa acoustician Kevin Kleinschmidt. “Even the best soundproofing curtain cannot do anything against the bass frequencies of the home theater system. You have to resort to other means.”
According to Bönisch, the biggest competitors are GIK, t.akustik and Addictive Sound. You have a high market share in the “B2C business“, the sale to the user. Many competitors focus on “B2B”, selling to dealers, or have a smaller range of offers and services. From 2020 to 2021, despite the Corona crisis, Hofa increased sales by 20 percent to the mid-seven-digit range and kept it at about the same level in 2022.
The article is from Student project “Youth and Economy”which the FAZ organizes together with the Federal Association of German Banks.