19th December, 2012: [The blankets] smell like some kind of petroleum distillate.
We did have a problem at the time. It was difficult to figure out where the smell was coming from in the beginning, but after several visits to our manufacturers and working our way through the supply chain, we discovered that the issue was in the filler material. Filler which included a mix of synthetic fibers resulted in blankets with the terrible smell.
Since then, we have changed the manufacturer and made sure we were only using recycled cotton with a poly additive in our blankets to make them fluff properly. As of 2014, you can see that there are no more forum complaints about the smell:
4th March, 2014: I bought the Producer’s Choice sound blankets from moverssupplies.com and haven’t had any issues with the smell.
That comment was from a regular contributor to the forum, achieving the title “gear addict”.
Producer’s Choice blankets were specifically designed to absorb sound, and no longer have the drawback of that chemical smell. They work much better than moving blankets, and you can see the frequency results from acoustic lab tests on our website. We compared the test results of Producer’s Choice blankets and Auralex acoustic foam, and found that our acoustic blankets are more efficient than 3 inch foam, and the frequency response is more linear, resulting in a better sound.
Acoustic foam seems to absorb sound similarly at the low frequency range, but rips more out of the mid frequency range, than the Producer’s Choice acoustic blankets. This is why the NRC of the 4 inch acoustic foam is higher.
To get the most out of your blankets, be sure to hang them properly.