You may remember sound diffusers from your high school band practice—maybe you put egg cartons on the wall, or randomly chopped up blocks of foam. In any case, muffling sound usually doesn't look ...

The new, 'ultra-thin' sound diffuser is 10 times thinner than the widely used diffusers found in recording studios, concert venues and movie theaters to reduce echoes and improve the quality of sound.

Sound diffusers based on acoustic metasurfaces can be one order of magnitude thinner than conventional diffusers while retaining comparable performance, Yun Jing and colleagues report in Physical ...