DIY Sound Panels - Make Acoustic Sound Panels Like The Pros (Build and Installation)

Jun 3

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DIY Sound Panels - Make Acoustic Sound Panels Like The Pros (Build and Installation) - In this How To video, Will walks you through all the steps to build your own DIY acoustic sound panels that look good too. These acoustic sound panels are fairly easy to make and will be significantly cheaper than buying professional sound panels.

MATERIALS USED:
➜Hooks: https://amzn.to/2TIN0EY
➜Clips: https://amzn.to/3ifUcSB
➜Screws for wood frame: https://amzn.to/3zZGpph
➜Backing Material: https://amzn.to/3iVXJnX
➜Stud Finder: https://amzn.to/3rDtcPG
➜Laser Level: https://amzn.to/3f6l8SI
➜Stapler: https://amzn.to/3BUZ7Aa
➜Front material: Guilford of Maine or Burlap (Find at local fabric store)
➜Wood: 1x4 pine in 8 foot lengths (Home Depot)
➜Insulation: Rockwool Safe N Sound 2x4 at 4" thick (Home Depot)

MATERIALS USED:
➜Hooks: https://amzn.to/2TIN0EY
➜Clips: https://amzn.to/3ifUcSB
➜Screws for wood frame: https://amzn.to/3zZGpph
➜Backing Material: https://amzn.to/3iVXJnX
➜Stud Finder: https://amzn.to/3rDtcPG
➜Laser Level: https://amzn.to/3f6l8SI
➜Stapler: https://amzn.to/3BUZ7Aa
➜Front material: Guilford of Maine or Burlap (Find at local fabric store)
➜Wood: 1x4 pine in 8 foot lengths (Home Depot)
➜Insulation: Rockwool Safe N Sound 2x4 at 4" thick (Home Depot)

GENERATED CAPTIONS:

In today's video I'm going to show you how to make DIY homemade sound panels or acoustic panels that make your audio sound great but also makes your room look good too we went from our studio looking like this this is what it sounds like when you have a lot of echo in your room so sound treatment is super important this sounds very bad with now just under 50 panels installed in the ceilings and walls it makes a huge difference.

I installed 49 sound panels in this studio over the last year but honestly, it was hard to have conversations in here before the sound panels were installed because it was so echoey the overall goal is to fill up as much space as you can in your room with these panels the more the better I probably could have added even more to this room but after making like dozens and dozens of panels I kind of got sick of the process and besides that there was the grid spacing sort of layout design that I had in mind also I will leave links in the description for any of the materials tools or products that we use to make these sound panels so that it's a little easier for you instead of trying to find everything yourself like I did.

In terms of the costs and the materials you can use for making these sound panels there are a lot of different options so I think it comes down to your budget the room and sort of the general idea of what you'd want out of these sound panels for me I was most concerned with removing as much of the echo as I could while also making the studio still look good in terms of the design and professional feel of the space after doing a lot of research I decided to not go the route of the popular DIY approach which was using burlap and the reasons for that are it's a little more see-through and I couldn't find it in a perfect white which is what I wanted unless I decided to bleach it myself, but I wasn't really into that.

I did buy a huge roll of this white fabric that was pretty expensive but again I cared about the look as well so for me that was a better option I used a material called Gilford of Maine it's 100 polyester, and the style is g2100 with color code 224. I don't know how relevant that is to you but there you go. Since I was making anywhere between like 30 and 50 panels that was sort of my original plan I bought about 40 yards of the white Guilford of Maine material and that worked out to be exactly what I needed in terms of the sizing of the panels there isn't really a one size is the best approach the more space you fill up with the panels the better it will be so you could have what I did which are sort of the typical professional size two feet by four feet the cost for the white material was around a thousand dollars which does seem expensive until you do the math and figure out the difference between doing it yourself versus paying for pro panels I don't know the exact per panel cost for the DIY panels that we made but if I had the same number I would say it was like 40 bucks a panel, 50 dollars a panel for us to make four inch thick by two foot by four foot panels that look pro. I think that's pretty good to do them for 40 bucks and remember that's here in Canada with Canadian dollars if you're buying in the states with us dollars it of course will be cheaper.

Also with the research that i did and the diy panels that i ended up making they're going to be just as effective at removing echo or reducing the echo in a room as professional panels there's not much difference the wood i bought was 1 by 4 inch by 8 foot long pine wood unfortunately i bought it at the start of the pandemic when everything was shut down because of lockdowns so all of the wood was delivered and it ended up being warped seriously some were so bad that they were curved like hockey sticks i couldn't even use them i just threw them out not cool home depot especially because the pricing of wood has gone up by like three times in the last year for the installation i used roxul safe and sound it's a rockwool material and the reason i went with that is because the pink insulation is meant to be in your walls sort of behind drywall and it's fine when it's like that but if you're putting them in panels with breathable material open in your room the pink insulation is actually lighter than air so it'll float in the air you can breathe it in which obviously isn't good rockwell is heavier than air so any particles that do come loose they'll just fall to the ground but for me pink insulation wasn't even on my radar because i'm going to spend a lot of time in here and i care about my health.

The backing material I used for all the panels was something I stumbled upon while going through the home depot website while I was going through the pages i found this material that looked to be pretty breathable but it was like a gardening type of material a few weeks later I watched Gerald Undone's video for making DIY sound panels and he had a professional that makes sound panels talking the video about this gardening material as like a industry secret so I was like oh that's awesome that i randomly stumbled upon this and I'm using it so that sort of worked out once you're ready to start making the panels it's pretty straightforward you cut your wood to two foot and four foot lengths and then you screw them all together to make a rectangular box shape from there you cut the fabric to size. I made one box and then used that as sort of a template over the fabric to know how big i need to cut the fabric because again it will sort of fold over and then i'll be stapling it on the one side so it really is important that you give yourself a little bit extra room to work with in order for you to pull it nice and tight and staple it in place next you'll get your insulation and i bought insulation that matches the sizing of the panels that i'm making so two foot by four foot if your installation isn't an exact fit you can cut it using a utility knife so in some cases i did have to make some changes because i did have some warped wood once you have the insulation in you can then put the backing material on it doesn't really matter the color because again it's on the back you do want to make sure you're using something that is a bit breathable because later when you're hanging them i'll explain why the air gap is important so cut your backing material to size staple it in place and then you're ready to go and start hanging the panels.

Alright, here we go so that's two of like 35 it's gonna take forever but i'm actually making pretty good progress we got our assistant over here.

In terms of the layout for where you want to hang the panels that sort of depends on your room size and some other factors like the type of materials you have in the room for us it's drywall and then studs on the ceiling so after going back and forth on a few ideas i decided to go with clips and j-hooks that i found on amazon which ended up being a pretty good solution for going into the joists along the ceiling behind the drywall i did find this approach on youtube for how to find studs by using heavy duty magnets and the general idea is you place them along the studs and the magnet will find the metal nails or screws and of course that will tell you where the studs are so i made this little wooden block and attached them to it and it did work but i found the process to be not overly fast so i did go out and spend about 45 bucks on a stud finder which made the process go a little faster for hanging the panels on the ceiling i ended up using a laser level to help me because it gives you a straight line that you can work from all the way across to keep that grid system perfectly in place. Without it i think the panels would have been sort of all over the place and as I mentioned I talked about the air gap; it is really important to hang the panels from the ceiling just a little bit because it'll do a better job at absorbing the echo.

When you have sound that hits the panel it gets absorbed and it sort of dissipates a little bit through the first time it goes to the insulation and then it goes through the air gap bounces off the ceiling comes back down and goes through the insulation a second time and of course that makes it a little more efficient at reducing the echo once you've made and hung one panel you just repeat the process the exact same process over and over again for as many panels as you want to have installed and then you're done oh yeah and for the wall panels i use something called a z-clip it's basically a system that allows you to attach the two z-clips together that forms a good connection which safely hangs them on the wall so the big question is how much better does it sound with panels versus no panels so here's a video i recorded before i put sound panels up of just how bad the echo was just listen how long the sound travels for after i finished talking it's like literally five or six seconds long and then compared to this you can see there's just a little bit of echo but in a way it's kind of natural overall i'm super proud of this space because the sound panel sort of completed it for me.

I hope this video helps you in coming up with a plan to make the panels for your space now this is a thousand square foot studio space maybe your room is bigger or smaller so you're again gonna have to customize your approach and make it specific to your needs maybe that means making more panels less panels using a different material like I said there are cheaper options if you go with like a burlap material it really comes down to you and your decisions for what you want out of the space as long as you do spend some time coming up with a plan and you do follow the guidelines I'm placing in this video I think you'll be just fine if you do want to learn more filmmaking we have over 100 other filmmaking tutorials as well as youtube success videos we release videos about once a week so hit the subscribe button hit the bell to be notified when those videos come out thanks for watching and we will see you next time wow tell me how you really feel. oh man, my feet are sore that was a long video!

SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE FOR MORE! (120+ FILMMAKING TUTORIALS):
https://youtube.com/alliandwill

OUR VIDEOS ARE EDITED IN ADOBE PREMIERE PRO. GET IT HERE:
https://adobe.prf.hn/click/camref:1101lr4SX

Alli and Will https://alliandwill.com

DIY Sound Panels - Make Acoustic Sound Panels Like The Pros (Build and Installation)

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