Acousticon was a shell material developed by Remo for their drums. It's been around since the early Nineties. They claim it's wood fibres suspended in resin. I played a kit once, with Pinstripes on it it sounded really nice.
The unkind mention that basically it's a bit like cardboard.
Interestingly (I'll put my anorak on for this bit) in developing this new shell material, Remo did a study into the effects of the shell material on the overall sound of the drum, and found that it had a less than 5% effect - basically a small damping effect. I'm not sure of the science or the investigation methods of this though, but apparently the head choice, tuning and the shape and angle of the bearing edge has much more effect.
Remo Snare Drum
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