# Time to start Acoustics



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Well I built my theater and have it all done except for treatment. I am gonna make 8 4x2 by 3" thick panels. I plan on wrapping them in burlap and my mother(I know) was going to paint a Murel on four of them on the back wall. Anyways I bought the 1x3 wood already and menards had some rock wool insulation so I bought that too. I will start a build thread on them if you guys want. My question is if this insulation will work.

http://www.menards.com/main/mobile/...-mineral-wool-insulation/p-2045736-c-5780.htm

BTW my wife and I just had our 4th child on Thurs. So I will have a little bit of time to work until she goes back to work.


----------



## JQueen (Jan 11, 2012)

Looking forward to the thread and congrats on baby número 4!! Kids are such a blessing.......aaaaaaand they can be crazy


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK I brought back the mineral wool. I am just not sure if that was the stuff to use. I am going to hunt down some oc703 this week


----------



## sdurani (Oct 28, 2010)

For 3" thick panels, I would use OC703 or OC705. Careful about painting the cloth. I'm guessing you chose burlap because it is a porus material. Make sure the paint isn't so thick that it blocks the very holes that you need sound to get through.


----------



## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

Burlap is very porus, perhaps too porus for insulation. You may gets bits of the insulation working its way through causing some serious itching. Try some speaker cloth, muslin or the like. You can alway cover with the burlap if thats what you want as a canvas/base for the paint. And I would recomment the OC as well. We love pics.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK I will let you know how the hunt for of 703 goes. I have all 9 frames built. My oldest son helped me out. They may not be square.


----------



## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

That's OK, when you press the OC into the frame it will square up on its own. Are you planning to cover the frames of just the OC? We love pics.

And BTW, I hear an electric knife works the best to cut it.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK here are some pics of the frames. Very simple frames that are going to be covered with burlap for the rear 5 that are going to be painted or stenceled or whatever my moms plans are and the 4 that will be on the sides I was thinking of canvas and trying to transpose movie posters on them. I am not sure how that will work but I will take a look at the canvas pictures that my wife has done and see if air will go thru them.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Oops I for got to add the pictures. I checked the canvas pictures that we have and they will not let air pass thru them, so there goes my idea of making them into movie posters. Any other ideas other than just using fabric.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK a place near me has oc703 2x4 and 3 inch thick for about $7 per. I bought 12 for $93. Should work well. I hope. Most people use 2in but 3in is all they had.


----------



## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

3" is will work better than 2". If you can, leave a space between the panals & the wall. They will trap better with a gap.


----------



## sdurani (Oct 28, 2010)

+1 

If you can put 3" pegs at the corners of your 3" frames to space them from the wall, then that air gap will help your panels absorb lower frequencies than placing them directly on the wall.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK I put insulation in 4 of the frames and the insulation has foil face on one side. This may be a silly question but should I take the foil off or leave it? I assume I should take it off but I am not sure


----------



## sdurani (Oct 28, 2010)

You assume correctly: take the foil off.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK I used a thin wire .41 mil and it sliced right thru the insulation to take off the top 1/2in. It worked very slick. I have the insulation in all 9 panels. I put them in the room just leaning against the wall until I can get them covered. Pics comimg


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

orion said:


> My oldest son helped me out. They may not be square.


LOL. Congrats again on number 4. (That's a lot!!). I don't know how you find time to do anything, we just had our first and I'm lucky if I remember to eat.

The panels are looking good. If you're still considering the design of the fabric, try a google search for "diy movie poster acoustic panels" and check out the James Bond posters. I have already posted that in another thread this morning, but I found it to be pretty comprehensive when I was looking into the same thing. Some really good info there.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Sweet I am going to have to look into that. The first child is the hardest. A lot of adjustment to the lifestyle. So far number 4 isn't too bad


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK looks like movie posters maybe a viable option for the side 4 panels. I am going to try to find 4 movies that I want on my wall. Does anyone know where to get movie images for free. I can find a lot of them but I am having a hard time finding ones that have high enough resolution to be blown up to 2'x4' panels


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Movie Posters I want are Tombstone, Dark Knight, Mission Impossible, Oblivion, Bourne Legacy, Fight Club, Star Trek, Promethius, Casino Royale, Skyfall, Quantum of Solace. I want all of them but I will have to narrow it down to 4.

I am thinking of doing a skyline for the rear 5 panels now, I think that would be awesome. If I can do it right.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

FYI you can buy movie poster images for about .10 each at http://www.movieposterdb.com Thats dirt cheap I think. I was afraid to look, but glad I did.


----------



## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

You may want to leave the foil on for the rear panels. You want to preserve relectivity of the back wall for the high frequencies. You don't want the room to be too dead.


----------



## sdurani (Oct 28, 2010)

I would at least take the foil off the middle panel(s) on the back wall, just to catch reflections from the centre speaker.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

The foil is gone already. I have to figure out how to resize images now to fit on these panels. I am going to try and find images that will fit 2'x4' panels without stretching the image too much or I may redo the side ones to 2'x3' to be a more standard size


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

I am working on getting the posters resized. I am resizing them to 2' by 4 ' to make sure they don't look too stretched. I am using gimp. I have a lot to learn.


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

I'll try to look into large source files for you this week. I thought I remembered seeing a good free/cheap source for large images. 

If not I'm happy to help you try to resize. I used to have a fractal resize plug in for photos hop that was supposed to retain more resolution.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Thanks alot Owen. I am still playing with Gimp. I am able to resize the photos but I am unable to add a 3" black border all the way around it.


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

No problem! Try increasing the canvas size by 6" each way. I'm not sure how the offset works exactly in gimp, but this should get you started. 

Image > canvas size


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

OK I think I have it figured out.

For gimp users

I took the image and dropped it into the program. 

Then I scaled it to 24x48. Image, scale, unclick the chain link, change to in. Then change to 24x48.

Then I saved the file. Closed gimp, opened gimp opened new, set size to 30x54. (3" border). Then used the paint bucket to paint it all black and then dropped the saved image into it. It centered it itself. Then file,export, save as jpg instead of PNG. Set quality around 85 and that's where I got my images to be around 10mb so I can use 4 to stay under the 40 mb limit.

I still have to put all 4 together. Not sure how but I'll work on it


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

I resized the photos to 150 DPI down from 300 and then scaled them to size. I had to flip them to use them on spoon flower. I ordered 6 of them yesterday for 130 or so. I used the performance knit


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

Awesome, I can't wait to see your results. It's funny how much you have to learn in other areas to complete a project for your home theatre. Good job.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

These are the posters I picked out. Gonna be sweet. These are sized for 25x48. Except for the older ones they are 18x48


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

The fabrics have shipped!!! USPS from NC to SD should be about 3 days or so. So it looks like a weekend project to get these together. I am stoked


----------



## dougc (Dec 19, 2009)

I may have missed it Bud, but are you having the images printed to fabric for the panels? Who are you using to print?


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

Good choices, Bud. I can't wait to see how these turn out. I bet they're going to look awesome in your room (oh, and help your room to sound better too!).


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

Owen Bartley turned me onto DIY Custom-printed acoustical panels forum on another forum and its a real good read and how to. Spoonflower will print images and posters on fabrics. You have to do the resizing of the images and they will print them for you. Mine should be here in a few days.


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

These are the four I hung on my side walls. They look great. I cannot believe how well the printing turned out. I am changing plans for the back wall and I am going to put 4 narrower posters there. Around 18 in wide by 48 tall. So I have to find narrower posters so I don't have to stretch it so much. The side ones are 25x48. I had to stretch them some but not too much.


----------



## Owen Bartley (Oct 18, 2006)

Bud, those look awesome!! I still haven't done panels myself, but now I'm sure this is the way I'll go. I just need to find something that I can convince my wife will be proper 'artwork' for the living room.  I really like the Skyfall one.


----------



## Horrorfan33 (Jun 11, 2013)

Those look FANTASTIC!!...I must find out where and how to do this!!..How do you know what size to get printed, to fit/cut to size?..I have 2 frames for my acoustic panels, they are 24x36 and 2 3/4 deep (typical 1x3's)..Do you know what size I would order?..I'm having trouble getting something that size on their site..
Thanks for any help!!


----------



## game514 (Jul 24, 2012)

I agree can someone help me
Out with this please


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

After you find images that are high quality. Typically something over 2000 pixels by 2000 pixels(Higher the better) Use a photo editing program to resize the images. Gimp is free to use. Google is your friend in learning how it works. I muddled through. Change the image to 150dpi first then resize, put a 3" black border all the way around and you can upload to spoonflower. 

I am looking for 2 narrower posters if anyone has ideas. I have casablanca and metropolis already on 18x 48 I just need two more for my back wall


----------



## Horrorfan33 (Jun 11, 2013)

orion said:


> After you find images that are high quality. Typically something over 2000 pixels by 2000 pixels(Higher the better) Use a photo editing program to resize the images. Gimp is free to use. Google is your friend in learning how it works. I muddled through. Change the image to 150dpi first then resize, put a 3" black border all the way around and you can upload to spoonflower.
> 
> I am looking for 2 narrower posters if anyone has ideas. I have casablanca and metropolis already on 18x 48 I just need two more for my back wall


I think King Kong has a few good narrow posters/images


----------



## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

The posters look great!!! Can you post alink to info on where to get the posters and where to get them printed please?


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

spoonflower is where I got them printed at. I got my images from moviepostersdb 

Google "custom printed diy acoustic panels" and it should bring you to a different forum that explains it better than I could.


These turned out better than I could have hoped


----------



## Peter Loeser (Aug 11, 2012)

Owen Bartley said:


> I really like the Skyfall one.


Yes! They all turned out great though. Excellent idea and very well executed!


----------



## orion (Sep 18, 2009)

I am making another poster (StarTrek) that will cover the equipment space in the front. I am putting it on hinges so it will swing open when we change movies. The remotes go through the fabric so that is a bonus


----------

