Ultimate Cheap DIY Acoustic Panels. Broad Spectrum Damping Panels You Can Make In a Weekend! 

Correction, I say that RT30 plot is the time it takes for the reverb to decay by 30dB. It's actually that time multiplied by 2. It's a straight-line curve fit extrapolation for a 60dB decay. Measuring 60dB of decay accurately is difficult, so the time to decay 30dB is measured, then doubling that measured time is approximately how long it takes to decay 60dB. Hope that clears up any confusion.

Hey man. You keep calling these “budget panels” but the truth is, these are simply panels. Exactly the way they are constructed when purchased from any retailer. In fact, better constructed. So yeah, amazing job.

This was not just a demonstration on how to make panels , but how it was explained . Much love & respect 💜

This is the best video on this topic that I've seen on RU-vid. Great job!

Great video... I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of acoustic panels, realized I need to tune my office, and your video (and approach to production) is easily the best I’ve seen. Elegant in your simplicity. Thanks for sharing...

These are some of the smoothest panels I've seen made.

The problem is that the insulation isn't "safe" for a living area because it's made w/ formaldehyde. It's designed to be behind walls, not in front of them. So, over time they will create dust, and some of that dust will have toxic chemicals. You will breath in those chemicals.

I bookmarked this video because it's the best one for making these panels that I've seen. Thank you!

Great idea. I am doing my sons room and I was going to buy those foam panels. So I came to you tube for reviews and came across your video. I not only like your idea but I noticed you have commonsense just by seeing how you built your panels. Sound crazy but as a skilled tradesman you notice these things in people. Great job and you have a new subscriber. 👍

This is the best diy acoustic panel video I’ve found. After researching how dangerous breathing in insulation is I had a hard time figuring out what I would use to back the panels so the insulation was not exposed and this video did the trick.

Liked just for showing how to do a fancy fold.

I just built panels for my own space. Wish I had found this BEFORE my project! After hearing the difference in my room, it will be my new "go to" suggestion for folks with home theaters! Well done video that covers all of the essentials. Good job!

I have used fiberglass Air Duct Insulation (about 1" thick) to make window plugs. Cloth covers and friction fit works fine to kill some outside noise. Then just pop out and stand or hang for an extra panel when needed. I also made the cheapest panels from an acoustic ceiling panel wrapped with quilt batting and burlap covering. Spaced a few inches from the wall they kill some reflections. With a little imagination you can make some neat wall art panels. Still need to use some of your panels for better range. I have also seen the french cleat used in a studio with the wall section all along the wall so the panels can be moved and placed anywhere. Great video and included some of the test proof. Now on to some corner bass absorbers...

Thank you! One of best straight forward tutorials for making panels.

I will make my panels for the second time... this video is really great! Shows some interesting tips!

You are amazing! Awesome video and instruction! Thank you for your generosity honey! xoxo

Thank you! This was extremely helpful. I am building my panels next week and I'm definitely going to be referring to this for guidance

Nice to see a skilled craftsperson make these - very similar to how I was thinking of making them (still can't believe I haven't seen anyone else use french cleats). The cardboard locating template is a great idea and the fancy fold is legit. Nice work!

This was so well thought out! I love a clean organized presentation! There are a few things I would alter and tweak, especially the wood choice, but I absolutely love the simple but effective design. Subscribed!

One of the more clear/concise videos on how to do this. Thanks!

Great video, yes, I would love to get an update on your shop acoustical treatment. I am building out both a shop and audio/video editing room

Great video, very informative with simple, very well done editing (Which is a compliment because I hate overdone editing.)

Brilliant. Very well done! Now I’m on a mission to do mine. Glad I found your video.

Great video! Really nice editing, super informative aswell :)

Sometimes furniture and rugs help as well. For crossing waves and the up and down between floor and ceiling. Besides that the lower fregeuncy bumps can be countered by bass traps made in the sane way, mostly. The panels you made are like general purpose ones, which are SUPER important for getting a generally pretty good sound!

Dude, these are SO GOOD - I built my own in a different way and they definitely don't look as nice 😅 Great idea to use a MDF sheet to cut the frame bits, way cheaper than getting actual timber!

It took about a week and a half, but between getting off of work and days off, I finally finished building and hanging 12 of these in my music room! Thank you so much for this very useful and helpful DIY video! I haven’t even recorded anything yet, but I can definitely hear a difference. I can’t wait to record and hear the difference it makes. Thanks again!

I recommend recessing the back of the insulation with a bread knife or insulation knife to accommodate the depth of the backer board. That will keep the insulation from pushing out into the front fabric as you can see at the end of the video (look at the bottom of the panel to the left of the desk - little bulge there)

Great job! Love the Hospital Corners!

Thank U, excellent presentation in short form (really like that) Did you find this helped reduce sound that comes from the other side of the wall?

Yes I used Safe n Sound as well. Also foam works well but you need a minimum of 2”, I have mostly 4” wedges. I’m checking out this video because I’m going to make more panels but hey, if I can learn other methods, I’m game. Solid video. I’ll also add, even without the graph, you can tell immediately the difference from the beginning of the video to after you hung the panels.

Very well thought out and executed. Probably the best design I've seen on RU-vid. I would prefer solid wood 1" X 4" boards over particle board. The particle board seems too labor intensive if you don't have an outstanding woodshop like yourself. Plus I try to stay away from table saws as much as possible. The other thing is I would prefer a different color felt or material. These two things do not take away from the success of what you accomplished in this video. Thanks for sharing. Excellent...

Thank you, we live in an apartment with our daughter who has autism and she is really loud when she has a meltdown . In order to be respectful to our neighbors we have been looking for a way to sound proof her room. Thank you for this we will be doing this.

Tip: spray the cloth with water afterwards, it shrinks the cloth for a smoother finish (depending on the cloth, I use hessian).

this is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

That's a really handy guide. Thanks!

This is one of the best tutorials on this topic. Great results too. I may use pine and keep it exposed for aesthetics.

You can here the difference in the video before and after from you just talking to the camera. Super cool

The weed block backing is a nice little touch. I dig it.

You can better utilize your absorption with targeted placement. First, a concept: a comb filter is created when the sound from your speakers that travels directly to your ears is mixed/interfered with by the sound coming out of your speakers that reflects off of your primary reflection points on your side walls, then bouncing off the walls into your ears. That time delay, the difference between the direct path, and the primary reflection path interferes with accurate monitoring. Basically, it will be harder to judge the frequency content of the audio you are monitoring because some frequencies will be boosted, and others cut by the effect of the comb filter, and low frequencies will be the most impacted. You can identify your primary reflection points by sitting in your monitoring position, at your desk, having your audio homie move a hand mirror along your side walls, and when you can see your speakers in the mirror from you monitoring position, not by moving but just by rotating your head, the mirror is in your primary reflection point. It is far more efficient to place your sound absorbers in that location, as they will absorb the lower frequencies at the reflection point, rather than just reducing overall sound decay times. This will clean up the audio you monitor from your speakers. Further, what are the two largest sides of the cube of the room you're monitoring in? The floor and the ceiling. Now, which two sides of the cube are the closest together? Again, very likely your floor and ceiling. This is a one, two punch of bad acoustics. The shortest dimension between two parallel walls creates the largest problems with axial room modes, the greatest frequency bumps created by standing waves. You can have certain frequencies boosted by 16db, and remember sound doubles in volume every 6db, so think about how loud some frequencies will sound versus how loud they actually are. It is therefore most important to reduce those shortest axis room reflections. Also, the larger the surface area of the reflective parallel sides of your room create the most input into the standing waves of your room which cloud the audio you are monitoring. So, it is more important to absorb the sound above you rather than the sound off the side walls or the sound off the front and back walls, though, with your absorbers placed in your side primary reflection points, you will see a large increase in the clarity of your audio. So, like finding your primary reflection points on the side walls, you can do the same process with your audio homie and find the primary reflection points above you on the ceiling. Remember to sit in your monitoring position, and just swivel your head up. When you can see your speaker in the mirror, the mirror is at the primary reflection point. Place your greatest depth and amount of absorption there. Though, I don't recommend an air gap greater than the total thickness of your absorption material. So, if your material is 4 inches thick, only leave up to a 4 inch air gap between the ceiling and the backside of the absorber. And a sub note: it would be best to situate your desk and monitoring in the most advantageous position within your room. I doubt you're up for it, but you might want to move your desk back a foot or more from the front wall, the wall in front of you, behind your monitors. And, you should be sitting equidistant between your side walls, facing in the direction of the longest dimension between two parallel walls. This will greatly increase the quality of the acoustics absent any absorption or diffusion. And then, when you do deploy your absorption in the most acoustically relevant locations, aka, at your primary reflection points, you'll have an even greater benefit from that absorption. Your monitoring audio quality may not be that important to you, but I cannot recommend it enough. I dread monitoring in a room of your size. I hope I never have to go back to a room like that, but if I did, I would be certain to use everything at my disposal to fight the terrible acoustics of standard American room sizes/dimensions, which it seems are almost designed to produce jarring, bad sound quality for the inhabitants of those rooms. When I finally got setup in a larger room, and I was able to setup my workstation at the acoustic sweet spot of the room, even without absorption, it was a stunning revelation. It is like hugging your wife while you're both wearing your winter jackets, versus hugging completely naked, if you'll forgive the metaphor. It's absolutely incomparably intimate when you're in the sweet spot ;) All the best.

super underrated appreciate the dedication and knowledge

Nicely done! I saw a RU-vid make similar panels, but your presentation is awesome! YES. I'd like to see the results in your shop.

Best video on RU-vid!

Very informative and fun too watch!

Bold statement to say those panels are just as good as high quality ones without testing the commercial ones - really wish you did and provide numbers with test, cuz now I have to take just your word for it

I have a basement woodshop and would really love if you can make some videos on noise reduction and fumes ventilation if possible keep up the good work

Very well done and informative

Cool setup and interesting results, and wicked burn on the haters! Cheers.

Great vid! I'm looking into sound treatments for both my makeshift studio at home & also our office at work. I'm good with tools & can build this no problem. So glad to see something that actually makes sense & works. So tired of seeing videos hyping up the garbage 1" thick, fugly foam 12x12 Amazon squares. Lol.

Nice job. Many of the other DIY acoustic panel videos don't give a lot of thought to safety. The guys don't wear masks and they leave the insulation bats open to the air in back. Using the lawn fabric was a great idea. I'm going to make thicker ones because I want to try to reduce the fundamental modes in my room. I will also add some thin acoustic tile on the front side to treat higher frequencies. I will use the waterfall graph from REW.

Excellent video. I have built about 75 of the the last 8 or so years. The only thing from a build perspective that I do differently is put the black material on the back AFTER the front material. It makes the back cleaner looking, but honestly no-one sees the back. Maybe I'm just a little OCD. Thanks for investing the time to share this. I hope your recordings and mixes continue to get better and better. Peace.

I was looking at DIY ideas for acoustic panels for our church, since buying a single panel at Amazon would cost around $65. Multiply that a bunch of panels for a huge location. It gets expensive really fast. Thanks for sharing your creativity and plans. They will come in very handy. Also, excellent use of the French cleat. I was rattling my brain on a way to hang them.

T30 is actually how much it takes to decay for 60 dB, not 30. "Reverberation Time T30 - The reverberation time for 60 dB of room decay, based on a straight line curve fit between the -5 dB to -35 dB points on the Schroeder curve (Fig. 3). This time is doubled to be made consistent with the traditional reverberation time for 60 dB of decay (RT60)."

Nice build, but I hate MDF. I used pine myself. Lighter and easier to work with. I made a pair of 18x48" panels to hang on the opposite wall of my sliding door that has heavy curtains... kind of mirrors the mass of the curtains. They mimmic the pictures I also have hanging with them and used an extra set of curtains I ordered for the covering so they match perfectly. Both helped immensely with deadening the sound in my family/AV room and blend in without looking like most panels I've seen that are ugly.

This is a great project. But I do remember seeing a similar projecrbon youtube years ago. This one has a ceiling diy addition. Awesome!

I was waiting for you to clap your hands after the panels were fitted. Great video though, I'm just about to treat my new studio and this will be invaluable information for me. Thanks. 😎

Your video is awesome. Please suggest some sound testing software before and after acoustic treatment

Love your video. I have a shop of 120meters and high sealing. Is this salution to get rid of the ecco ?

Excellent video. Did you use REW (Room EQ Wizard) for the spectrum test? Also, any thoughts on how folks without a SawStop and other high end tools can work effectively would be great. Adding all that equipment pumps the price per square foot pretty high. So... For folks who don't have all that... What kind of tips and/or advice would you give to keep the cost down? Again, video par excellence...!

great video and helpful tips. Will it work for home theater?

Well done. For monitoring and mixing, you’ve made your room better. For recording acoustic guitar or vocals, I wonder whether movable gobos would be more or less effective than your wall/ceiling ones?

You know if cellulose is as affective at treating the room? Iv been looking into doing panels for recording guitars and Iv read rockwool isn’t much healthier than fiberglass . I heard about denim but that is coated in a lot of borax. I’m trying to find something that isn’t known to have negative aspects to it for breathing . I’m also a bit curious to know if I can essentially just stand the panels around the cab and not treat an entire room , if I do that do the corners need to be all sealed? Would I need a sealed box around the amp? Or there can be open space? Maybe some fabric overlaying the open space ? I have a very low ceiling I’m the basement it’s maybe 6ft, they tends to highlight highs a lot right? Lol I have so many questions and no one to ask. Iv heard people say to simply put a carpet of any sort on the floor and that confused me since there is so much attention to walls and ceilings , especially if my mic is on the floor and the floor isn’t carpeted .

I wonder if fibres from the insulation will come thru the material ?

You have to search really hard but yeah that are normal decent honest human being left in this planet , i wonder why doesn’t you tube suggest this videos first it will save us a lot of time and keep us sane 🤣, thanks a lot for this awesome information brother 🙏🏻 God Bless

Thank you for this great video, i´m gonna start building from this excellent tutorial. I do have a question, how many inches thick are each rockwool plate?

Could you still Make stands for these ?

For basstrap you need about double the thickness, rest the same.

I see this phrase under many videos but I don't really get it, those video weren't the best THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO ON ULTRA CHEAP ACOUSTIC PANELS♥️

Hey man, really impressive from the beginning till the end! Quick question: our church room is about 1,300sq fr and 10’ height, how many panels and at what distribution rate would you say to our space? Your suggestion is greatly appreciated. Thanks

these might be the most "pro" I've seen on youtube. but it certainly does help to have good tools ^^

Spoonflower can print photos on fabric for a custom panel look.

I didn't know you needed acoustically transparent fabric or that it existed, and so today when I went shopping for the fabric before watching this video, I've ended up taking one I liked which almost resembles a "straw bag" x_x Hope I didn't do a huge mistake... x_x

Great video

One little correction :) RT30 it’s actually the time for the sound impulse to decay of 60 dB, but as in homes there might be some background noises, then it is best to calculate the RT30, which analyses the drop off of 30 dB and then predicts the RT60 result. This is possible because the decay time of the impulse response of an enclosed space is linear over the dB axis. ✌️

Just a question regarding cleaning these things when they get dusty, is it safe to vacuum them? I’m concerned that doing so will pull the insulation fibres into the air and become a health hazard

Wow, he makes a great video!

Great work. Does it sound different to your ears? I would like to know. Also, you are using sound absorption panels. Have your considered building sound diffuser panels?

Thanks for the video. I want to build exactly this, but a little thicker (12 cm). Also I will place it on the floor, so I wanted to ask you... Can this panel stand straight or does it lean over to the side with the back plates?

Great video! But if I instead use 1x4 pine boards for the frame (no table saw), wouldn’t there be an extra inch where the 3” thick insulation would flop around?

Thank you, seriously one of the best tutorials on RU-vid plus the added value of blueprints and material lists. Love it! 🙏

You could have more gap if you extend the wall side of the french cleat.

Good evening. What programs do you use on your computer to test the sound absorption?

Is there any other filling that is more friendly than the Roxel insulation? Want to stuff the back of my canvas paintings.

Amazing!

Truly excellent video and great DIY instructions on how to build these panels. Measurements are crucial to validate your ears and it was wonderful you had someone with experience/tools/microphone to come perform this objective part of the verification of your work. I would make some adjustments to see if you can improve your room acoustics just a bit further. 1. It looks like you could use just one more panel on the ceiling in between the two you already have - that's a pretty wide gap over your listening position and speakers. 2. From the video it appears you only treated the walls just behind, to the side and above your desk. I imagine you could bring the four panels in from your work shop and place them behind your seating position. Since you have measurement tools plus your ears, it would be a quick setup to see if it enhances your room further. Small rooms like yours can find benefit from just a few more panels on those bare walls. 3. Try experimenting with placing some of your panel over the vertical corners of your room; in other words straddle some panels across the corners. This can help with low end frequency room modes (spikes/dips in response) as the corners of the room tend to return these frequencies back into the room with almost equal energy that was produced by the speakers. That 200Hz spike on the "after" might be alleviated by corner placement or just by bringing in a few more panels on your bare walls behind you. Anyway I'd love to see a follow up video on this as it would greatly benefit so many folks with similar sized rooms. Again great work!

hi, what are you using for laying out the optimal use of your mdf sheet? (2:38)

Hi, I'm about to make my own panels i got everything I need at Menards except the rockwool. Could you let me know were u got it? I live in Montello Wisconsin a small town but im down by my mom which lives in Milwaukee WI. I'll be here for 2days and if you could get back to me b4 I leave the city id really appreciate it. Living in a small town sucks sometimes have to drive 50 miles just to stuff. P.s great video and u have a new subscriber 👍

Hi, what should be the thickness of wood panel sideways, so that mineral wool will not come out, more than 2 inches? Or just 2 inches so that wool will lie flat

Excellent and thank you for such an informative video. Would you be willing to show us how to build effective bass absorption panels for 110 Hz and below? There's very little info on RU-vid other than Acoustic Fields' amazing panels, which are way beyond most home budgets.

Very well made! I would have also added diagonal corner traps though

Thank you 🍻

This is such a great video esp for a newbie to acoustic panels like I am. Quick question: can I use plywood instead of mdf for the entire panel? Mine is 2x4ft and 2inches thick and I'm doing 6. MDF is quite expensive here. Thanks

Nice video, what audio app did your friend, use to do the test.

Any worries about the tiny fibers getting through the cover and into your lungs. Trying to do this same thing.

I've made these, but I dont wrap the fabric around the sides. I use pine, and leave the sides and bottom and top exposed. That way I'm doing the front and back only, and definitely use a pneumatic staple gun.

This is the first video on this topic that included an empirical demonstration of the improvement. Your demonstration was very clear and explicit but a bit hard to follow because you went so fast. I guess that's what the pause button is for. Great job. Did you keep track of your construction and installation time? To make an apples-to-apples comparison of your cost to commercially built panels add let's say $10/hour for your time. What then is the total cost per panel? I'll bet that you still come out ahead but your time is still worth something. For other DIYers add in the cost of aggravation from mistakes and material spoilage (and possibly a trip to the ER). 😃

Sorry if this was already asked but I don't see the name of the software your friend used to analyze the performance. Can you give the name of it and possibly a link to it? Thanks!

Why does the results frequency range start at 125hz? What about lower than 125 did they not perform well or is there another reason it's not included?

If you can make them an inch or two thicker, it would be even better for lower frequencies and would approach being bass traps. Something that I found out helps a lot is if you add a sheet of Sonopan at the back, it makes a major difference, look it up.

How would you suggest hanging these without French cleats?