Okay, this is gonna be a lot of pics. So 56K modem users beware laugh

The panels are completed and installed. It took a couple of weekends to get them made, but it was worth it in the end. They turned out fantastic and, more importantly, put me right in the zone for acoustic concerns. The rooms decay time is in the butter zone across all frequencies. The frequency response is smoother still, and the high frequencies came up a little while bass flattened a little.



It was a bit of a production to make the panels. Half the battle was deciding just what the heck to do. Put poly facing on the insulation, leave them be with fabric only, or use diffusion instead. I stuck with the tried and true broadband absorbers after starting a thread at AVS and getting a PM from Ethan Winer. (felt kinda special)

Anyhow, the basic crux of the build was the same ol' 3" Roxul Safe 'N Sound everyone uses, but I had to deal with the problem of integrating lighting into them..... hmmmm.

I didn't want to put any more holes into walls for anchors and the like, so I had to figure out how to mount them, and the lights to them somehow..... I came up with making frames around the insulation that would house an inner panel frame with a rough opening for an octagon extension ring. Since the panels were 3" thick, I used two 1 1/2" extension rings ganged up. The result was this:



I then had to perform minor surgery on my otherwise routine panels. The tablesaw made for a great exam table. grin Nurse, Scalpel! You can kinda see the wood runners that would sandwich along the top and bottom of the octagon extension rings, and serve to give a solid backing for the fixture to snug up to. Roxul cuts like cake.



The fixtures came with a mounting plate instead of a strap that I thought would bite enough on the wood runners to secure the panel. Wrong. I had to add some 3/8" fender washers to add some overlap in the key areas. With the plate tightened up to the extension rings the panels were sandwiched tight against the wall. I gave them a stress test and they are solid.



Then it was pretty much a typical fixture install. The first one was a bitch, but after I found out what was involved the rest weren't too bad.



Here is how the room shaped up. Pretty slick for a DIY job.







So what was the end result sound wise. Well, I can't really show you with fancy words or adjectives but boy can I measure! grin

The RT60 times are now great. I think I am done with adding any absorbtion in the room. I think I will leave the 1ft bass traps in the front corners alone as well. Good enough I figure.

Here is the 1/3 Octave RT60 graph. The program doesn't give screencaps in this module, so a pic has to suffice. I test RT60 with a balloon pop at the front loudspeaker locations and measure at the MLP. Absorber panels are magic!



Here is the new frequency response of the main loudspeakers with subs. 1/12 octave resolution pink noise averaged over 30 seconds. 1/3 octave measurements look pretty flat now, with a bump into the bass territory. I could tame this by cutting the sub output, but I perceive it as sounding just right where it is. Not too much and not too little. As a note, the sound power of the room\system was reduced by 2db with the install of the panels. I had to increase the AVR's volume governor to reach a 75db test level.




The front wall QRD diffuser and rear media shelf remain.... The saga continues!