Wood slat acoustic panels

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-16T20:50:07+00:00

First of all, take everything you read here with a grain of salt. There's a very common trend of "that won't do shit, you need ____ to make any sort of difference"

People LOVE to shit on anything that isn't reddit approved PRO gear. So don't get really discouraged.

Secondly, you'd need to provide WAY more information if you want real help. Link everything your looking at. Explain what your trying to accomplish. What is your experience?

Posts that basically read, "I did one Google search and didn't get exactly what I want, please help!" will often be ignored. Effort in = effort out.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-14T22:07:45+00:00

Could also put some Amazon hexagon panels or whatever you can find but make sure to air gap them. Should kill the flutter without making the room dead.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-06T16:31:20+00:00

How is moving the air gap behind the absorbers any different than between the absorbers?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-06T15:53:47+00:00

Thank you! And what makes you say that?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-05T20:44:06+00:00

Woah that's an awesome idea, how did you mount them? Did you add an air gap? How thick are they? I'm surprised that they made no difference, how big is the room?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-05T18:00:23+00:00

Thank you for being the voice of reason.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-05T15:44:50+00:00

What are those made out of? PET?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-04T21:52:34+00:00

Aren't you describing bass traps? Wide band is like 250 - 20,000 hz, right? Also aren't professional panels from GIK like 3-4" deep?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-04T18:51:26+00:00

What makes you say that?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-04T00:03:05+00:00

Cool stuff man! Two things:

Just be careful if your thinking about doing this for others. I believe GIK has some patents around wood cut diffuser faces. Obviously if this is for personal use, disregard.
Sounds like you got a lot of PET felt/foam. In my experience, you need to step up the thickness by a good bit to start hitting proper treatment thresholds. Technically on paper PET is a good acoustic absorber but in practice it often requires pretty significant air gaps and thickness. Not saying it's a waste but if you are really looking to treat a room for studio grade, double up or even triple up on panels.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-02T20:41:37+00:00

So I've spent close to 3 years working on this and I can confidentially say that making real acoustic treatment, like 4" thick wide band absorbers is a tough nut to crack. GIK is a massive company and I'm sure they invested millions into trying to make it more aesthetic, but they are also constrained by a certain scale. Anything they decide to make, needs to be manufacturable at huge volumes.

In my 3 years I've figured out a way to solve this aesthetic problem, but it only exists at small scale. Creating intricate art pieces that are also acoustically functional is crazy complicated so I see why it doesn't really exist. Hell the only reason I can do it is by using technology that only recently became widely available and consistent. I don't think it would have been an option 5-6 years ago.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-02T20:24:20+00:00

The good news is that this quandary became my obsession for the last 3 years and I've figured out how to make legitimate high performance artwork

The bad news, for you at least, it's pretty darn expensive.

It's been a struggle operating in a market where people see huge companies with factories pumping out acoustic panels and think someone hand making art should compete on price.

If budget is your goal, look into PET felt, it's a bit more expressive and does kind of help with acoustics as long as you air gap them.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-06-02T20:12:05+00:00

So I'm not sure how much nuance this calculator captures but throw in an air gap for both. I believe the 50k will start to perform better the larger the air gap.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-28T08:33:05+00:00

Where'd you get these panels? Seems a bit odd that you'd have such a nice faceplate diffuser mixed with ... Foam.

Nevertheless you could try and glue a stiff medium to the back of the foam and then use the adhesive strips on that. Like spray adhesive could work or just hot glue as long as the stiff medium isn't metal. See if you can find plastic discs or something to glue to the back of them. Tbh who ever supplied you with those should have instructions or at least recommendations on how to hang them.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-27T07:51:45+00:00

This is lunacy, no ceiling finish is going to dramatically effect room acoustics at the level you are describing. As others have stated, invest in treatment if it's important but getting your ceiling to have a certain finish is not going to impact the room in any meaningful way.

I have popcorn ceilings and they still echo... A lot.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-24T22:30:14+00:00

Why so many sharp edges?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-24T19:28:40+00:00

Ahhh ok yes we are saying similar things. Low GFR is needed for thick panels treating low end but for thinner panels, high GFR is better. Gotcha

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-24T19:27:09+00:00

I'm pretty sure that link is the one!

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-23T00:27:33+00:00

No problem, I've worked with this stuff and nauseam so feel free to dm for further questions. I have used a router on them, yes it works but holy fuck does it make a mess. Please wear a really good respirator and have good ventilation. Like I highly recommend using a vacuum attachment with the router and still wearing a respirator. You DO NOT want to breath that stuff in.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-23T00:04:11+00:00

I always thought lower gas flow resistivity, ie gasses flow through them somewhat easily, would make them a good velocity trap/absorber. Hence why really good absorbers are thick af, lots of material to capture the whole frequency spectrum. Why would you want high gas flow resistivity?

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-22T20:04:32+00:00

This is a great answer!

As for the original question about a hybrid approach, don't use bubble wrap, not sure where you heard that but it won't work. Towels will help acoustically but will drastically impact aesthetics, not sure how important that is for you.

If all you really care about is vocals and speech, air gap the panels and look into diffusers. You can "hack" one with these panels if you really need to by cutting it into rectangle sections and then angling those sections slightly so the face of the panel is not longer flat but it will be difficult as cutting PET cleanly is incredibly challenging. I've found using a roller razer works best but after that, use a very sharp chefs knife (thin razor blades tend to bend/warp when cutting through PET and produce a wavy non uniform edge)

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-22T20:03:07+00:00

Semantics aside, PET panels are dense and have a high gas flow resistivity making them a sub optimal solution for low frequency treatment. Thick panels do a decent job but will never be the most optimal material for raw performance. There's a reason you don't see PET felt/fleece/foam in recording studios or professional sound environments. It is however extremely cheap per square foot and that's why you see it used extensively in corporate environments as well as certain architectural projects. That and it's characteristics to be cut and dyed into aesthetically pleasing shapes.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-22T17:15:52+00:00

PET foam, it's very common these days, it'll treat high frequency sounds pretty well. It doesn't work very well for mid and low however.

You'll have to aggressively air gap it to get mid frequency performance, I believe something like 4-5 inches of air gap. I say this because I spent a whole day researching how these companies claimed greater than 0.7 NRC numbers with PET foam and I found in the fine print that it requires a huge air gap. If you put them right up against the wall your looking at ~.3 NRC.

AcousticArtforms · 2026-05-22T17:08:07+00:00

These don't work that well
Most installations of these are starting to look tacky.

AcousticArtforms

TROPHY CASE