The Making of a Monolithic Panel: A DIY Acoustic Solution

As I sat at my workbench, staring at the massive panel that would soon become the centerpiece of our home's audio system, I couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation. The project had been in the works for what felt like an eternity, with countless setbacks and frustrations along the way. But I was determined to see it through, to create something truly special.

The first step in bringing the panel to life was to assemble the outer frame. This involved screwing together a series of wooden beams that would form the foundation of the panel's structure. It was a painstaking process, with each screw carefully placed to ensure a sturdy and secure bond. The screws worked remarkably well, and soon the outer frame was finished, looking almost professionally assembled.

But now it was time to move on to the more complex task of adding the beams that would give the panel its desired shape and structure. This involved measuring out the precise dimensions required for each beam, before carefully cutting them to fit snugly together. It was a delicate process, with any miscalculation or misalignment threatening to throw the entire project off kilter.

As I worked on adding the beams, I had to consider how they would interact with the rest of the panel. In this case, the panels were designed to be part of a larger system, with less concern for height and more emphasis on width. This meant that I could arrange the beams in a way that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Finally, it was time to screw together the hardest part of the frame: the front panel. This involved measuring out the beam spacing carefully, before screwing them into place with precision. The only issue I encountered during this process was with my drills overheating due to excessive use – but a quick clean and change of drill bits soon resolved the problem.

To add an extra layer of stability and support to the corners of the panel, I reinforced them with metal brackets. This was followed by Anna's help in covering the panels with fabric, which would serve as a makeshift "wall" to absorb sound and reduce echo. The process of attaching the fabric involved sewing together two large pieces to cover the entire footprint of the panel.

Once the fabric was in place, it was time to fill the panel with rock wool – a crucial step in creating an acoustic solution that could effectively absorb sound waves. But working with rock wool proved to be a challenge, as its very nature made it difficult to handle without causing skin irritation or other issues.

Undeterred, I persevered and successfully filled the panel to capacity, before attaching a backing material to keep the rock wool in place and prevent any accidental contact. The final steps involved adding shelving brackets to the bottom of the panel, which would serve as feet for the entire structure.

The moment of truth finally arrived when we placed the panel into its designated slot beneath a pipe. To my delight, it fit like a glove, demonstrating that all our hard work had been worth it.

Now came the most important part: testing the acoustic effectiveness of the panel. The initial measurement showed an enormous amount of reverberation, with peaks reaching over 2 seconds. But after we installed the panels, the results were nothing short of astonishing – a dramatic reduction in echo and reverberation that left me beaming with pride.

Of course, this was not the end of our journey. We still had to deal with the acoustically reflective wooden floor, which would require additional measures to reduce its impact on sound quality. But for now, I was content with the knowledge that we had created something truly special – a monolithic panel that would elevate the audio experience in our home.

As I looked at the finished product, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. The journey had been long and arduous, but the end result was well worth it. And as I looked forward to future projects and challenges, I knew that this experience would stay with me forever – a testament to the power of determination and creativity in overcoming even the most daunting obstacles.

In conclusion, our DIY acoustic panel project has come to an end, but I'm excited to share the next chapter in my journey. Next week, I'll be documenting the move from our current space to our new office, which promises to be a thrilling adventure. If you're interested in following along, please subscribe to my channel and join me on this wild ride.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow, as you can tell by the huge pile of moving crates behind me, after two and  a half years it's finally time to move to a new much bigger space but before we embark on  that huge undertaking there's one pretty big problem with the new space we need to solvefirst so this is the new office space and as you can tell it is a palace  compared to the previous one but aside from the massive size increase as you can  probably hear there's a big problem with this space the the Absurd echo  which we definitely have to deal with but before getting started with my grandiose  construction plans I needed to get sciency and measure the echo with my calibratedmicrophone now to measure the echo I use software called room EQ with  which plays a consistent frequency sweep over the entire audible Spectrum which can be used  for a bunch of things but here I'm using it to measure the Decay time of that frequency sweep  okay now the the measurements are kind of wild and I'm probably going to explain why with voice  over because this Echo is really crazy after room EQ wizard does the measurements it shows  the results in a graph like this now I'm sure a bunch of you are primed to click off this video  the moment a graph showed up but don't worry it's pretty straightforward it's called an rt60 graph  which plots how long it takes a sound at any given frequency to reduce its volume by 60 DB  hence reverberation time 60 so the higher the number the longer the echo rings in the room  see that wasn't too bad now in a bigger room the ideal rt60 is between 0.4 and 0.6 seconds  whereas the result I measured from my new space looked like this with Peak Reverb times of over  2 seconds which is the kind of numbers that puts a mediumsized indoor swimming pool to shame and  because I don't want to bankrupt myself sound treating this space I came up with a plan to build  my own big ass sound panels which considering my checkered history with manual labor should go verywell step number one get some wood but once I loaded all of the wood we calculated we needed the  scale of the undertaking became clear especially considering the new office is up four flights of  stairs and once all the wood was loaded I also needed to buy some rock wool insulation which  is going to function as the acoustic absorber in the panels we just need to edit  that no and after just carrying a single bail of rock wall up four flights of stairs I was already  considering faking my own death just to get out of this rental contract okay so how many do we  have here this is Oh Come come on so I had to slog back to the Rona for a single piece of pybrown now for this project I decided to build huge 2 and 1/2 M squared sound panels as opposed  to something more reasonably sized like the ones behind me here which are a lot more efficient at  covering just a lot of surface area on the walls but the reason that I'm going with huge panels  instead is because my new office is wedged between two other off offes separated by what I can only  describe as Paper Walls and not only are they quite noisy I also don't want my constant shouting  about goria disturbing them so I want the option in the future if it's necessary to expand these  huge panels into full double walls separating me from the other offices so with that let's get to  the building the first panel needs to fit under this air conduct in front of this door so I did  some very professional measurements in preparation for cutting now now when it comes to The Cutting I  don't have any power tools but according to some guy on Reddit this meter box with the  included saw is a great peasant solution but I quickly discovered a huge shortcoming to thismethod there's no other way to put it manually sewing sucksoh no way that single piece has basically broken my spirit and there's still there's still that  much left now in cutting the next piece of wood I realized that because of friction as you get  deeper into the piece of wood it gets harder to sort so I had the genius idea of halfway  through turning the plank around and starting again with less friction from the top which did  make the second piece easier but it still felt like bamboo fingernail torture on my  nerd body and there was another problem okay well my strategy of turning it over halfway  through the cut is makes it way easier but uh we do need to perfect it a little bit because  we did go a bit skew uh despite our meter box or whatever but that bit of suffering has given us  our two vertical pieces so I can now make the outer frame before I have to cut down the likebeams that is huge and now we get to the very exciting part of figuring out that I  bought the wrong screws to get this all to go together so yay let's do that but  luckily the screws worked very well and soon the outer frame was finished so we  now have the outside of a frame that was very professionally screwed together by me  uh but now we need to do the beams so I need to measure them out and then I am going to have to  cut them so there's quite a lot more sewing that needs to happen but it's going to just be for this  panel I'm going to rearrange how I connect them with the other panels cuz we have less of a of  a height concern with those so that I don't have to cut any beams and just like that it was time  for me to get back to what felt like Eternal damnation of sowing so much suffering and painoh thank God but with the last beam cut I was ready to screw together the hardest to assemble  frame the other two frames were way easier I just had to measure out the beam spacing so the rock  wall will fit between them and then screw them together the only issue I had here was with all  this screwing my drills started to overheat but luckily I had a great solutionI then reinforced the corners with metal brackets before enlisting Anna's help with covering them  in fabric because the panels was so massive Anna had to seam together two pieces of fabric to cover  their entire footprint once Anna finished we put the frames on the fabric and used a  staple gun to try and tension the fabric over the frame the reason we used fabric as a wall  front was so that sound could penetrate it and get absorbed in the rock wall once the fabric  was attached to the frames it was time to fill it with rock wool now rock wool may be a great  insulator but it kind of sucks to work with because you can't make skin contact with it  it feels like you're stuffing your panel with a hive full of angry bees but once the panel  was stuffed to the brim we stretched over and stapled down some backing material to  keep the rock wool in and preventing us from ever accidentally touching it and getting whatever the  skin equivalent of a urinary tract infection is the final couple steps was attaching some  shelving brackets at the B bot of the panel that function as feet starting with the two in the back  and then lifting the panel and attaching two more on the front while Anna held itup well now comes the Moment of Truth we need to hope that that fits under  that pipe oh and it did it fit like a glove which means after what felt like an eternity the panels  were finally finished and it was time to admire them in all their monolithic Majesty   and now comes the most important bit we have to see how much of a difference it  made now remember the initial measurement which looked like this massive mountain  of terrible Reverb with peaks of over 2 seconds but after we put the panels in it  went from that to this which is a huge Improvement now it's still not perfectbut it's a lot better and remember this is in a huge open room without any furniture  in it that's basically made of reflective surfaces so once we put Furniture in there  it's going to be way better than that we're also going to lay some carpet and stuff in  areas to help with that very acoustically reflective wooden floor uh but all in all  I'm pretty happy with the result which brings me to the end of the video thank you very much for  watching next week at some point I'm going to bring out a video documenting the move  you'll see the current state of this space which is kind of wild and the process of moving the huge  mountain of tech from here to the new office which should should be very fun uh anyway if  you don't want to miss that subscribe to the channel and until then bye-byew