How Professional Acoustic Panels are Made | ADAM Audio & Music City Acoustics

Jun 05, 2021

Hey guys, I'm Andrews from Adam Audio and today we're back with Music City Acoustics to talk about how they build their

acoustic

panels

. So today we're with Graham and Gabe from Music City Acoustics. Can you explain the steps to us? that you take when you build your

panels

, yeah, so we pretty much start everything with raw lumber, we usually start with sheets of plywood, we split them into dimensional lumber, we cut all of that to size, we cut our fabric to size depending on the size of the paneling, the insulation as well, so we use mineral wool and all of our products and then once everything is cut and ready to go and assembled, we wrap it all with the fabric and then we deliver them, we install them or we ship them. wherever they go, yeah, we start with normal groups of ones and threes, you can find them at any home center like Lowe's or Home Depot, so we're going to take just a couple of these guys and get them ready to cut here with the miter saw. and then I'll get another board, so we put a half inch strip of wood that goes on the back of the frames just to add some extra rigidity and keep everything square, so we'll cut that too so that all of our frames are

made

of Pretty standard size, if we have a four foot by two foot panel, the outside dimensions of that panel are four feet by two feet, so the insulation on the inside will be a little smaller just to accommodate the shifting of the frame of wood we are going to have two pieces of 23 and 7 8 inches are two pieces of 46 and a half inches and then from our half inch board we are going to have a piece of 22 and a half inches in total Now that we have the cut of wood, we will continue go ahead and we'll prep and cut our fabric and then we'll come back and assemble the frame and then we'll get the insulation and then we'll put it all together.

This is the fabric cutting table we use. We have this three foot setup for this panel, so for a four by two foot panel we normally work with a three foot piece of fabric, so let's go ahead and cut it and then I also use a piece of backing fabric so that there are no exposed minerals on the panels and that's what this white fabric here is so we're going to take both to build that frame and then we're going to build the panel so we're going to use templates for our different tables. for all the different sized panels we make, here we have the four foot by two foot template.

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how professional acoustic panels are made adam audio music city acoustics...

If you're doing this at home, you can build your own template or use a square just to make sure all the corners of your panels are going to line up and stay square, so if you're putting several together, everything will line up and look nice and alright. ras, this is actually more permanently so that we don't have to build a new one every time we make a panel, so we normally nail our panels and all the frames together, all the frames together while they're on the templates, so The first step is to simply place the wood on the jig making sure nothing gets stuck between this joint so everything is nice and tight and will stay together for a long time.

Now take our nail gun. Make sure to keep your fingers out of the way. If you're using the nail gun, then I'll go ahead and do the same thing on the other side. and then just finish the frame on the opposite side of the panel, so the last step in making this frame is going to just put on that half inch spacer that we cut on the miter saw and this helps hold everything together. put it up, keep it all square, make sure there are no bends in the frame, so we have some spacers that we put in here to make sure we line up our bracket piece correctly.

We'll put this here to make sure everything is lined up properly and This will also be nailed in and then our frame will be ready to go, so we'll have the insulation ready. The insulation used in

acoustic

panels typically comes in four-foot by two-foot pieces, so all you need to do is cut to fit them into these frames. a little bit off each side so that the dimensions of your insulation are 46 and a half by 22 and a half, which matches the inside dimensions of the frame we just

made

, so we'll go ahead and get the insulation. cut it to size so it fits nicely in the frame, let me grab it and I'll take it back to the saw here and we'll cut it, don't forget to plug this in, then I'll duplicate it. check that we cut it to the right size, everything looks good, we're going to take it to our frame and wrap it all up so that we have our fabric for both the front of the panel and our backing fabric, our frame and our insulation.

Right there, so I'm going to go ahead and place all of this, so first we're going to place our fabric face down. Some fabrics are exactly the same on both sides. Some of the ones you will find will have a front and a back. The things have a front, so I just want to make sure the front side is face down so everything will show correctly once the frame is wrapped with fabric. You know you want something that's woven enough to make sure it stays put on everything. the particles of the insulation material that you're using, all of the fabric that we use in our panels is fire rated, so it can be used in any commercial space that you know of and not have any problems with codes like that for any residential use.

You can get away with most things, the most important things, you want to make sure it's acoustically transparent, so it won't reflect any of that energy that you're trying to absorb into your room, which people usually say, whenever you can. like breathe through it or blow air through it and it will pass, so will the sound and acoustic energy in your room, that's a pretty good rule of thumb to follow, so the next step is just grab that wool mineral we use. cut there, we'll place this over our fabric, there's not much wrench here other than just centering it so we have enough fabric to stretch around the frame, we'll take our frame and make sure everything fits nicely. and then take our backing fabric and this will go on top and just help keep everything tidy.

Make sure that even on the back of the panel there aren't any bits of minerals or anything that's going to come off and fall into your room, so now we've got everything laid out, we're going to go ahead and start stapling the backing fabric first and then we'll get to the fabric front and we'll wrap it all up and then the acoustic panel will be done and ready to go so the acoustic panels It takes a lot of staples so if you go to the store to buy some make sure you get the big box. If you're making a lot of panels, get a few.

You can't have too many staples while doing this. so we'll go ahead and start before wrapping the front fabric for this or the purple fabric. I'll go ahead and cut off the excess from our backing fabric. Now we are ready for the front. This is something like that. like wrapping a gift, the sides of this are pretty easy, the corners get a little tricky, eh, but overall, it's pretty easy, just grab a few of them, get the hang of it and then you'll be on your way, like that, like that. things, we always start with the two long sides of the panel and then we'll wrap those corners onto the short sides.

It's the easiest way we've found to do it, it keeps everything looking really clean, so we'll go ahead and start with this. In the first corner, we'll start in the corner to my right and then we'll work our way to the left and then we'll fold all of that over to the middle and repeat for the same thing on the other side. A little advice is this. It's a lot easier if you cut off all the excess that you don't need down here, so I'm going to shorten it a little so I don't have so much extra fabric to have to work with and fold. uh now let's go ahead and do the same thing cutting off the excess and then we should be ready to flip it over, maybe clean it up a little bit, okay, a panel has emerged, this is how the

professional

s build panels.

Pretty simple, but thank you all so much for showing us how you do it, and as always, you can learn more about Music City Acoustics in the description below if you have any questions about building your own panels or ordering panels from us. anything to do with