Placing Acoustic Panels On Walls With Gaps

Acoustically the solid back against the wall is about the same as the panel with no back against the wall.

Placing acoustic panels on walls with gaps.

To avoid this problem mount your acoustic panels flat on the walls and be sure to spread them evenly throughout the entire room. The variable air gap mounting solution. It s a fat wooden shim. Working out where to place acoustic panels in your home theater listening rooms or professional recording studio is always an issue.

In summary i hope today s discussion helps solve the problem you are having. Determining the type of panel how many you need to use for your room usage and where. Possible alternative layout of acoustic panels. Mounting the acoustic panels away from the wall allows for airflow on both sides of the panel and increases the amount of absorption since we are allowing airflow on both sides to occur.

Either way the sound enters the front of the panel is reflected by the back and or wall and exits through the front again. These are easily controlled by strategically placing broadway acoustic panels along the side walls to absorb these troublesome reflections. Where the back can be undesirable is if you are trying to absorb bass and you want an air gap behind the panel. This particular design is perhaps unique to the panels i was using realtraps microtraps but the general principles should apply to any rigid acoustic panel.

As a rule these are mounted at ear and or speaker height and positioned along the wall to capture the early reflections from the loudspeakers. That is to say. Bass traps are in my future but starting with panels for now to address echo and first reflections. Poor acoustic panel layout.

To get maximum effectiveness from a limited number of panels avoid placing panels on both points of opposing walls and instead stagger their positions as shown in the above picture. By spreading them out with 4 gaps in between the panels the perimeter of the entire set of panels increases to 72 and the efficiency of the layout increases by 50. A 2ft by 4ft panel should be placed so that it is 4ft high. In my research i had found that adding an air gap or standing the panels off the wall some will improve absorption and i believe it helps in the bass frequencies most.

Assuming the rear wall is treated diffusers on the front wall are not essential but they make the room sound more spacious and enveloping making it an inviting space for spontaneous musical activities like practicing or recording. If this is centered on an 8ft wall for instance you now have the center 4ft of the wall covered. My idea for mounting rigid acoustic panels with a variable air gap is pretty low tech. Deciding on which acoustical panel to purchase is enough of an issue to begin with now you have to find the correct place.

It acts as a spacing block that both holds the panel away from the wall and creates a variable air gap.