Hi all,
Acoustic panels can be quite expensive to buy, ok if you are a big commercial studio but if you are a hobbiest/semi pro working out of a home studio then you may be looking for a cheaper option. I was, so I decided to have a go at building my own. I am not a joiner, upholster or a DIY expert (infact i’m pretty rubbish at DIY!) so my aim was to make them as simple as possible, infact my 3 main goals were:
1. To keep costs down
2. To keep them simple
3. To keep them lightweight
Now, if you’re in quite a fancy studio, where you record and have various colleagues/clients visiting your place then these might not be appropriate, you might want some ‘neater’ looking panels. I’m just in my own home studio so appearance wasn’t too much of a concern as long as they worked (which they do, brilliantly!)
So, here is what you need to build 5 Panels:
1. 10 lengths of wood batten (2400mm x 38mm x 18mm) £11
2. 10m Hessian Material £10
3. 10 Cavity Insulation Slab’s (1200mm x 600mm x 50mm) £30
4. Wood Glue £3
5. Nails £2
6. Drawing Pins (150) £1.50
Plus a Wood Saw, Hammer & Scissors (The paste brush in the picture is not needed, I’m not sure why that’s there!)
Stage 1 – Backing Frame
First of all cut all your lengths of wood in half so that you have 20 lengths at 1200mm. Then cut 5 of those in half again so that you have 10 at 600mm.
You should now have 10 @ 1200mm & 10 @ 600mm for your frames and a few lengths spare incase you make any mistakes.
Now, lay down 2 600mm battens horizontally for the top and bottom cross sections, then lay down two 1200mm battens for the vertical sections, this should form the shape of your backing frame that matches the size of your Insulation slabs (1200×600).
Once in place, simply use the wood glue on each corner and nail them together. This will now be your very lightweight backing frame. Repeat until all your frames are done.
Stage 2 – Applying Insulation & Covering
Simply unroll enough Hessian to cover your panel and then lay down 2 50mm Slabs (This will provide a good 100mm thickness for your panel). Now place your frame on top of the slabs (Important: make sure that the horizontal cross sections are on top of the vertical ones! You will see why later)
Note: Hessian is used because it has an open weave structure which allows soundwaves to pass through easily.
Now just pull the Hessian pretty tight and use your Drawing Pins to hold the material to the wood battens. Any loose material can be tucked under the batten so that the back of your panel looks like this:
Repeat this until you have all your panels finished and they should look like this:
As you can see they don’t look too bad. You could use a raised frame around the sides and some kind of backing board so that your insulation sits inside, your cover would be much squarer around the edges BUT the method I’ve used here leaves the sides open allowing for more absorption.
Stage 3 – Mounting
The walls in my studio are Plasterboard, hence I wanted to make these quite light so that I could simply hang them like pictures. Earlier I mentioned about making sure your horizontal cross sections were on top of the vertical ones when covering your panels. Here’s the reason…
The lip that is created can be used for hanging the panels BUT what is more useful is the gap between the insulation and the wall. From what I’ve read whilst researching how I could treat my room, this allows any sound waves that get through to bounce off the wall and back into the panel again.
That’s pretty much it, I now have six of these in my studio and they work an absolute treat! I’m very pleased because something i’ve made myself has not only worked BUT worked brilliantly! My room sounds much better and I’m sure yours will too. Oh yeah, don’t forget, all this for under £60! You would struggle to buy ONE commercial panel for that price!
Here are a few more pictures of the panels in place in my home studio…
That’s it, I know they don’t look fantastic BUT they are cheap, lightweight and really do work brilliantly!
All the best!
Andy S
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