DIY acoustic panels

[ohtravioso]

Anyone put together their own acoustic panels before? From what I can gather from the web, you get some rigid fiberglass or similar material like a mineral wool at around 2'x4' at 1" or 2", and you put them in some wood frames and cover them with some porous fabric like a burlap. Anyone done this before? I'm an electrical engineer and a software developer, and if I step into the world of making things in 3D, my brain starts to melt.

I found this company which sells pre made panels of that size for about $50 a piece.

http://www.atsacoustics.com/cat--ATS-Ac ... --100.html

But they sell the insulating material for six of them pre-cut to that size for about $40. Buy some fabric, some wood framing pieces. I think you could save a good deal of money, but I haven't done the math for all the wood and fabric. They sell frames for $20 a piece, but I think you could make them for a lot cheaper if you didn't make them closed on the back. Just had some front and back frames to hold the insulation in and got some 2" corner pieces.

[rld]

I just made 4 4"x24"x48" absorbers and 1 2"x48"x48" cloud for about $150.
Its much cheaper to build yourself if you can.
I used THIS as a guide
Makes a tremendous difference.
I can go into more detail if you need.

[ohtravioso]

Those look great. Do you hear a substantial difference? What'd you use to hang it on the ceiling?

What do you think about a 2" panel with an air gap as opposed to the 4"?

[ohtravioso]

Did you use fiberglass 703 or Mineral wool? I'd love find the noise coefficients on that recycled denim insulation. Cant's seem to find a rigid board of it though.

[rld]

Yes, there is a tremendous difference.
Its very dead, which for my purposes is great.
These spare bedroom type spaces are too small to have a good "live" room sound anyway.

4" traps like I made, which are 2 2" panels stacked, are better for straddling corners than 2".
When you straddle you use the airspace behind for increased efficiency.
The cloud I made for over my mixing position is 2" (1 panel) but its' held off the ceiling by spacers for the same reason.

I used 3 lbs per cubic ft. rigid fiberglass from Knauf which is identical to OC 703,
except the Knauf is called Ecose which uses no formaldehyde or other harsh chemicals.

There is a recycled cotton 3pcf rigid but it is very expensive.

I used 1 hook per panel and used springs and nylon ties to hang.
You put the panel in place then snug up the nylon tie to position where you want it.
Works real nice.

[willwillp]

I did a similar project using Rockwool. I would have used the OC 703, but Rockwool (Roxul Safe n Sound) was more readily available for me since a hardware store around the corner carried it. I used a 4-6 inch gap with 4-6 inches of Rockwool depending on area in my room.

Some people complain that Rockwool is too floppy, but it worked fine for me and definitely helped to improve my room along with proper speaker placement, trap placement and a little bit of eq help preceded by a lot of reading and research on the subject.

You can find a lot of information on the Gearslutz website and you can get your questions answered by audio professionals that hold a wealth of information on sound treatment as this can be a frightneningly large subject depending on how deep into it you want to get.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-c ... acoustics/