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Hey folks,
I have been researching sound treatment options and have gotten some great ideas on another thread below on some options. I found a great DIY option for tube bass traps, and have some ideas for sound tiles, but has anyone here ever tried to make their own diffusor? I have seen several posts that mention that book shelves full of books works OK, but have not seen any designs for a DIY project. I purchased a bunch of hard maple in 1 7/8" (square) X 16" long, and was considering trying to make something using various lengths from 8 inches and shorter stacked with the ends out. Thinking about 8", 6", 4" and 2" sections placed in a random pattern in a frame. I would make the outer edges uneven etc. Am I crazy for thinking that this would work? Just trying to stay cheap and still get some results. Thanks.

Rob

Comments

anonymous Wed, 02/05/2003 - 07:54

Hey,

How to make a home made diffusor is shown in the "Sound on Sound" book Creative Recording II by Paul White (c. 1999, Sanctuary Publishing, London) on page 178. In this design, 3/4 inch thick boards are cut to various heights and then glued and nailed to a board that would be the base of a panel. The heights he cuts are 1.5 inches, 4 inches, 6 inches, and 8 inches. His finished panel is a series of parallel ridges that run along one side of a square panel.

I'm sure these would work fine, but I would think they'd be pretty heavy. I also wonder about the effect of these ridges being parallel. I'd think it might be best to make the panels rather small, and put them up so that the ridges are perpendicular to each other. Or I was thinking about putting the individual boards together with a stagger of like one inch, then cutting the "proto-panel" into smaller squares and putting them back to gether so that instead of looking like a series of parallel ridges they'd look like a city from above: a bunch of buildings of various heights distributed more randomly. I'm not sure that makes sense, but it is like the way kids make chess boards in middle school shop class. Imagine a chess board with the squares at various randomly assembled heights, thats what I'd like to go for.

I hope anyone with real insight to this kind of assembly would feel free to comment.

Where did you get your diy bass traps plans? I'm going to go with the ones from Ethan Winer's site. http://www.ethanwiner.com

later,

Ethan Winer Wed, 02/05/2003 - 09:33

Rob,

> I found a great DIY option for tube bass traps <

Understand that tube traps are not really bass traps. If you're talking about rolling up a sheet of 703 fiberglass into a tube, it will do very little at low frequencies. You can use rigid fiberglass alone as a bass trap, but to absorb the lowest frequencies it has to be at least four feet thick! A much better design - though admittedly more work to build - is the trap plans listed on my Articles page:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

> I purchased a bunch of hard maple in 1 7/8" (square) X 16" long, and was considering trying to make something using various lengths from 8 inches and shorter stacked with the ends out. <

I'm sure that would work fine. But it's not always necessary to create a complex shape. The main goal of diffusion is to break up the reflections that occur between parallel walls, and even something as simple as a sheet of plywood mounted on the wall at a slight angle will do the trick. If you want to get fancy and also make it look cool, you can bend a sheet of plywood into a curve and stick that on the wall.

--Ethan

Kemble Tue, 02/11/2003 - 11:58

As Ethan said, you can keep it simple. But if you are up to the task of all that cutting and gluing and such, I recommend you pay a visit to the USPTO website and check out the work people have already done on the subject. Or the RPG site. It sounds like you are looking to do this:
:D )

The USPTO is the US Patent Office. They have all the original filings available to download. I have read for hours on the hows and whys of diffusion. They even have the plans and measurements and sizes all spelled out to make your own 3D diffusor. The Skyline from RPG or the ArtDiffusor by....somebody else.

Here's the Patent # for the Omnifusor: Patent Number
5,401,921
Here's the search main page:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html

Get your learn on.

Jeff

KurtFoster Tue, 02/11/2003 - 16:30

Jeff,
What is the progress on your diffuser project? Are you still planning to manufacture budget diffusers? I am still hoping to get a set. Fats
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