How To Make Your Own Acoustic Panels - DIY Professional Acoustic Treatment for Home Studio

How to build your own affordable high-performance acoustic panels for a home studio or home office. This DIY professional acoustic treatment will make your recordings sound better by reducing the reverb and echo in your room and controlling background noise.

The total cost per panel is about £20/$25 and weighs 5-6 kg.

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0:00 - Introduction
1:00 - Overview
2:00 - Building the wooden frame
4:05 - Attaching the sides
5:30 - Sealing the back
6:25 - Acoustic materials
8:56 - How to wrap the fabric
10:40 - Hanging panels on the wall
11:28 - Optional external frame
12:30 - Before and After
13:00 - Thanks for watching

🪚 Materials and Dimensions 📏

Frame:
Material: 2 x 1800mm x 18mm x 34mm timber. 4 x wood screws 60mm.
Final size: 120cm x 60cm planed timber frame.
Cuts: 2 x 1200mm + 2 x 530mm cuts

Sides:
Material: 2-3mm fibre/plyboard.
Cuts: 2 x 1200mm x 110mm 2x 600mm x 110mm
Change the 110mm to whichever thickness you want.

Filling:
Recycled denim insulation
Hemp/wood fibre insulation
Cellulose batt Insulation
Recycled foam/fabric slabs
Check the spec sheets and feel free to send a comment on this video and I'll check it out too.

Fabric:

Update 2023 - Camira and other fabric sellers are raising the price of Cara (possibly due to this video or possibly just price gouging).
I no longer recommend Camira if the price stays high (£16 per meter right now).

Original - I use Camira fabrics. There sell lots of suitable options and my favourite is Cara in Black (code EJ138). You can find it much cheaper from local suppliers (hence why my price is lower in the video and I made an edit!)

Additional tools:
Mask and gloves for woodwork
Stapler
Hand saw (or get the timber cut at the shop)
Hammer and nails are optional
Electric drill
Countersink and drill bits

#DIY #acousticpanels #musicstudio

[inthemix]

All of my videos are free forever, no courses or paywalls.
If you gained any value from the free plans, please consider supporting me here

[mantisman]

idk man you're just like the most respectable, non-arrogant or overly confident, yet most helpful and enjoyable person to watch among anyone that makes music related tutorial videos

[bj]

Update: last week I finished my eight panels using this design. The inner frame makes wrapping and stapling easier, and the outer frame keeps the fabric clean and scratch free — I was able to use a lightweight white muslin without worrying about it getting shabby over time.

Based on what I know now, I’d use 5/8” or 3/4” Baltic birch plywood instead of pine for the inner and outer frames. Pine was too fussy to flatten and thickness-plane.

One modification I’m glad I made: I added a 2-foot 1x2 pine strip across the middle to prevent the panel from bowing out.

One mistake I made: I cut all the inner and outer parts first. Then I assembled the inner frames and the outer frames. But I failed to adequately account for the 3/16” hardboard dimension around the inner frame, so the first wrapped inner frame didn’t fit into an outer frame. If I did it again, I’d cut the outer frame members a little long until after I wrap the inner frame. Then I’d cut them to fit the wrapped inner frame. I was too focused on batching all the dust-producing table saw operations before moving onto the clean fabric work in my limited work space. To fix it, I had to unscrew the hardboard sides from all the inner frames and trim off about 3/16” from the 1x2 pine frames and the hardboard parts, then screw the hardboard sides back on. Good thing all that got covered up by the muslin and outer frames!

Notes:

1) I used Rockwool 3”x2’x4’. I do recommend gloves, but with care I don’t think a mask is necessary.

2) Corner wrapping. My first panel, my prototype, came out with two pretty good corners and two bulky ones. After that, I got serious and developed templates for trimming off a specific shape out of the corners of the muslin before wrapping. The other seven panels have tidy, professional looking corners. If I knew how to make a YouTube video, I'd go into detail about the trimming templates. I think they make short work of the wrapping and I'm proud of the innovation.

Total material cost: about $340, including detachable hinges, or $43 per panel (California, 2023). I think Michael's $25 estimate leaves out the outer frames.

Time investment: don’t ask.

Finished quality: outstanding. Smooth and waxed with softly eased edges. Chose the color I wanted.

Satisfaction from DIY: incalculable.

[JosiahVaughan]

hvaing made acoustic panels before, I can definitely day this is one of the best tutorials out there. He adresses a lot of the common problems people run into when making panels for the first time. Great job!

[JThuijs]

My friends and I just finished decking out our new music studio with 12 of these panels, and they make a WORLD of difference! Relatively easy to build (we built all 12 of them in a day with the 3 of us including getting the materials), and so much bang for buck! We came out to approx. 500 euro for the 12. Thanks so much for a great video!

[Karrak]

Dude, Michael is such a rare person. He always goes out of his way to make videos that really help people, in all different ways. Not pushing sponsors, or merch, or anything - sharing everything he knows out of the interest of others and his own good will. Because that's what he loves doing (I hope!). Round of applause for everything you do. You are an inspirational figure.

[xyzct]

I just finished making 5 panels, 5.5" thick. They turned out (relatively) light, solid, and visually beautiful. Acoustically, the difference is night and day. Thank you, sir!

[drazzly]

As a training finish carpenter by day, before I found producing, I appreciate your attention to detail when you recommend counter sinking. I also appreciate you educating people about the frame and which way the wood should be framed. You've framed the foam the same way the faceframe of a bookcase would be framed. Well done.

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I knew I wanted to make my own panels but I'm renting at the moment and I was putting it off because I couldn't think of lighter ways to build the frame that would hold the foam. I was stuck in the "Robust" carpenter mind set lol. This is brilliant!!!

[what.company]

The most knowledgeable, insightful, & deeply compassionate audiophilic educator in the video- internet all things audio dimension. Love your work.

[parthbrahmbhatt]

What a coincidence, last night I was talking to a guy in music store about how to make your own acoustic panels and today we have a video 😂😂

[TonyMacaroni_]

great video!
quick tip which makes a very big difference:
I suggest making the frame about 10cm wider than the panel, so you leave an air gap between the actual panel and the wall. This drastically extends the frequency range which your panel will absorb towards the low end of the frequency spectrum.

[DopeDoo]

An Bass Trap Tutorial would be appreciated as well!

[ostrovmusic]

This is the most thoughtful instruction on making panels (I watched more than 10-15 others). 2 months ago I made 4 panels according to this video, everything went well, I highly recommend it!

[ramizian]

Awesome timing, I was actually looking for an affordable solution when it comes to treat my room. Thank you Michael! 😊

[henninghansenmusic]

Thank you so much! And finally there's a DIY acoustic treatment video on Youtube making clear that rockwool, stonewool and fiber is bad for your health!!! Really great video! 🙌By the way, great channel!

[Evangelionism]

The results at the end... wow.

Amazing. Dude wasn't kidding about DIY being superior.

[deciblaze]

I LOVE this. I see a few commenters upset that you didn’t whip out an SPL or RTA meter to do before and after measurements (I get it, treating specific frequencies is important) but something tells me that wasn’t the goal here. The goal was to DIY some affordable and decent acoustic treatment using dense, absorptive materials. Honestly, this is an excellent solution for reflections and for those higher frequencies (and, depending on the materials the individual has chosen, one could target mids and potentially even lows). You achieved that goal, well done!

[lorenzo]

Thank you so much for this!!!! I just came back from the hardware store with all the material cut!!!

I spent around €50 to make 8 wooden frames with this method. I would have spent €100 to make 4 frames with the hardwood exterior. Such a life half the price for double the amount of panels. I'm happy!

[SteffenMiethke]

Best panel build guide yet👍🏻 thanks for sharing!

Worked on roof construction for a few weeks as a summer job... no safety at all and lots of rockwool insulation. Came home every day itchy literally everywhere.
But hey. It stopped itching now:')

[austinjamesgriffen]

Just finished this project. It took a few days time, but wasn't difficult to do by myself. I found a 6 pack of 4'x2'x2" cotton batts on Amazon and got the rest of supplies at home depot, and fabric at Walmart. I spent a total of $360 to make 8 panels, (4) 4'x2' and (4) 4'x1'. This came out to $45 per panel. Timber was $70, insulation was $180 shipped, fabric $40, hardware and tools were $70. It was a fun project and I'm glad I have some treatment in my home studio now, but expected the cost to be a bit lower.