In this video, you will learn how to build your own acoustic ceiling panels and hang them as clouds in your home studio.
The video is broken up into 4 parts, each part should take about a day to complete.
Day 1: Gather the Materials
Day 2: Assemble the Cloud Frames
Day 3: Wrap and Fill the Cloud Frames
Day 4: Suspend the Clouds
Day 1: Collect Supplies for Clouds
This tutorial is will yield you 4 Acoustic Dampening Panels made to suspend from the ceiling.
Each panel will be 2’ wide by 4’ length, with 6” of depth for serious absorption.
Tools:
– Staple Gun + Staples
– a Drill
– a Saw
– PPE for Insulation
– and an Extra set of hands for construction and mounting the clouds
Materials:
– a package of 24” Roxul Rockwool (8 pack – 2 pieces for each cloud)
– 1 – 4’x8’ 3/8” Plywood cut into 6” at the hardware store
– Some scrap wood for the corner supports (1” x 1”)
– Extra wood or elastic to keep the Rockwool from sagging in the middle.
– 32 – 2 inch Hooks
– 8-10’ of chain
~ 12m of cotton Fabric (cut to fit)
My other DIY acoustic panel video covers the fabric cutting part more in depth!
Make sure you can BLOW THRU THE FABRIC, this will allow the most sound to travel thru your panels.
Here are the Dimensions for both pieces of cloth:
Front LARGE – 62” x 38”
Length (48”) + 2 Depth (6”) + Safety 2“ to allow for a clean fold = 62”
Width (24”) + 2 Depth (6”) + Safety 2” to allow for clean fold
Back SMALL – 50” x 26”
Length (48”) + ~2” to allow for a clean fold
Width (24”) + ~2” to allow for a clean fold
Now that you’ve assembled the necessary materials, you can move on to assemble the Cloud Enclosures.
Day 2: Build the Cloud Enclosures
First, measure the 6” Boards to size. You should have:
8 – 48” long Boards. (Length)
8 – 24” long boards (Width)
Measure from both sides to get a true measurement, the hardware store tag is rarely accurate.
If you measure and mark 4’ from each end You will likely have an extra section in the middle.
Once all your boards are measured, cut them to length with a hand saw.
Next, we’ll measure where the screws will connect with the corner supports. (Make sure to off set each side)
Once the measurements have been marked, use a drill to make pilot holes in each end of your boards.
Next line up the boards into the shape of the frame, and add the corner supports.
Then hold the two sides together and drill pilot holes into each side of the corner support.
This is where you want the help of another person to hold everything together.
Once the pilot holes are drilled, Screw the pieces together, and repeat this process on all four corners.
Because these panels are suspended from the ceiling, we’ll need something in the middle to keep the insulation from sagging.
You could staple some type of elastic fabric across the body, I’ve seen that work.
For this design I used some scrap pieces of the plywood cut to fit the width of the panel and placed 2 strips in the middle of the panel dividing the length of the frame into thirds.
Then I used a nail gun to tack them in place on each side.
This will give some extra structure to our clouds, and keep the Rockwool from sagging in the middle.
Finally, We’ll drill some pilot holes on the back of the corner supports for our screw hooks. An easy way to do this is to use a painters stir stick as a template to ensure your holes are evenly placed. But don’t add the screw hooks yet!
Next we’ll wrap the panels in fabric, and fill them with insulation.
Day 3: Wrap and Fill the Clouds
Use a staple gun to staple the middle of one of the long sides, then stretch the other side tight and staple the middle of that side.
Staple along the length if the panel pulling the fabric tight and ensuring it remains straight.
Repeat this on the shorter sides of the panels, and really make sure to pull and guide the fabric to make it wrinkle free and taunt with each staple.
I’m using a piece of 2×4 on the outside for some extra grip support.
Don’t get too crowded with the staples, try to leave yourself room for another layer of staples when you’re putting on the back piece of fabric.
Fold the corners around in frame to form a clean pleat, then staple the excess fabric to the inside of the frame.
Once you’re finished stapling all 4 corners, go around and hammer in any staples that didn’t quite make it.
Once your front piece of fabric is in place, carefully lift 2 layers of Rockwool Safe and Sound into your frame.
Position it snug in the panel but don’t compress it too much. We want the fluffiness which is why you should really open the bag about a day in advance of this step to you can let the insulation expand.
The Rockwool should expand to about 3” which should allow for plenty of room to stuff 2 sheets of this stuff into our 6” deep frame.
Once the Rockwool is in, lay the back piece of fabric and repeat the stapling process, making sure to keep your fabric tight with every staple.
When you come to the corners, staple them into the side but don’t worry about the little flap at the end, we’re going to secure that with the screw hooks, which you can actually use the paint stir template from before to find the pilot holes thru the fabric.
Simply use a small nail to pierce the fabric and then screw the hook in by hand. If it gets too tight, use a screwdriver our pliers to give you some more leverage.
Finally clean off your clouds with a shop vac, and you’re ready to hang them!
Day 4: Suspend the Clouds from the Joists
For my project, I’m mounting 2 clouds in my control room, and 2 clouds in my recording area.
There’s a ceiling lamp in the centre of both areas so I’ll be placing the clouds about a foot away (.3m) from the light to minimize shadow and the likelihood I run into anything electrical.
Use a Stud Finder to Measure out the Joists in your control room and decide where you want your clouds to suspend.
These panels are ~16lbs so you want to securely suspend them into joints.
Make sure you’re drilling into wood.
Measure
Measure again.
Drill your first hole and Check that you feel the resistance of the joist.
Then, screw in the hooks.
Measure and hang your chain.
You can even angle your clouds with different lengths of chain. Like in did in my control room.
Get a partner to help you hang the panels, raise and hook one side then the other. Use a step stool or ladder of your need it, this part can be really tricky.
I recommend mounting your clouds with an air gap of 6” above the panel.
The rule of thumb being that you leave an air gap from the wall that is the same thickness as your acoustic panel.
This will improve the performance of your panels by reducing the amount of sound that is reflected back into the room, because the waves would pass thru the panel twice, further reducing reflections which dramatically improves the sound quality of your room.
And now that you’ve installed your new clouds, you’re probably wondering how well all this acoustic treatment performs, so lets hop into REW and do some measurements.
The following examples are from a sine sweep test done in Room EQ Wizard. To record this test, I used an Advanced Audio CM414 in the listening position, directly in front of my monitors.
The first example (above) shows a comparison between my control room with no acoustic treatment (red line), and 7 acoustic panels covering the 4 parallel walls surround my listening position. (yellow line)
Notice the moderate improvement to the upper midrange, the peaks and troughs of the rooms frequency response have begun to even out.
The second example (above) compares the naked room (red line) with two of the acoustic clouds from this tutorial. Both clouds are angled towards the mix position.
You’ll notice that the clouds (blue line) provide only moderate improvement in this example. That is because they are only covering 1 surface, in comparison to the 4 surfaces covered in the previous example. (yellow line) What’s most remarkable to me is how both sets of treatment work together to extend their affect into the low mid frequencies.
The third example (above) compares a full before and after acoustic treatment is applied to your average room. There is a huge improvement in the consistency of the room’s response across the frequency spectrum. (green line) This is super important if you intend on doing any recording or critical listening in this space.
The final example (above) shows the frequency response of 2 different near field monitors.
Green Line – Yamaha HS-7
Blue Line – Neumann KH-80
it is interesting to see that the smaller 4″ Neumann monitors had more low end and top end than the larger 6″ HS-7.
Thanks for watching! Make sure to share your acoustic cloud project with me at robert at learn audio engineering dot com
