New York - Television recording studios, post-production rooms, every television station theatre uses acoustical fabric. Janson Design Group principal and founder Dennis Janson is one of the world's leading specifiers in this arena. This high end, control room specialist, whose clients include NBC television, MSNBC Cable Division and Salomon Smith Barney, specifies thousands of yards of acoustical fabric to cover everything in sight.

''The fabrics we specify for this application must be acoustically open - that means the fabric must have an open weave - and not too dense; call it panel fabric if you will. We've bought a lot of it from Maharam over the years,'' he said referring to the contract jobber. ''We use materials to absorb different frequencies of soundwaves.''

While most interior spaces are covered with pain, Janson uses fabric for the specialized acoustical rooms he designs. This fabric is relatively unexpensive at $10 per yard installed.

''There's not a big choice of materials when it comes to acoustical fabrics for this purpose,'' he said. ''You can't use natural fabrics in these sound studio applications because of the changes in moisture levels. Natural fabrics will sag under these circumstances; we must use synthetics.''

While most of Janson's business is in the U.S., Janson does some work internationally, namely in The Netherlands for United Pan European Communications. Early this year, that organization moved into new offices, designed by Janson. ''We selected all kinds of fabric in the $15-$20 range on that project,'' he said. ''They wanted to buy from local suppliers. They bought everything from Herman Miller, including Herman Miller panel fabric. This job required all of the offices to be placed around the perimeter of the building so that natural light could be seen from every window.''

Janson was a founding partner of Phillips Janson in 1979 before he started his own firm in 1997.