How we built our acoustic diffuser

So the first question a lot of you may have is... "what in the world is an acoustic diffuser?". You can read about the basics of acoustics in our Studio Design Blog. The general point of "acoustically treating" your control room (the room with the computer or mixer where the engineer sits) is to try and minimize any effects or colorization the room may have. I am sure you have noticed the change in your voice when you walk from a carpeted living room into a tile bathroom. The tile is brighter, more echo-y, right? Every room changes how sound, well, sounds.

When you are mixing music you want to be listening to the sound coming out of the speakers. If sound from the speakers is bouncing off walls and the engineer is also hearing those reflections is makes mixing much more difficult.

If sound hits a blank wall it will just bounce off that wall at close to the same force that it hit.

Diffusers scatter a sound wave when it hits the wall, reducing the power of each reflection, keeping the reflections from bouncing all the way back to the engineer. 

So, lets get on to actually building one. 

For the specific frequencies we were wanting to diffuse, we did a bunch of math and determined that we wanted Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) that was .25" thick. You can buy sheets of MDF at Home Depot for a little over 5 bucks. 

Our diffuser is going to have 7 "wells" which are the gaps as seen below. Counting the sides of the diffuser that means we need 8 "fins" which are the narrow wood slats sticking out from the back. We did a lot more math and figured out that each fin needs to be 7.75" long and each well needs to be 3.36" wide. So we got to cutting. 

We used a jig saw, clamping a second piece of wood on top of the wood we were cutting to act as a guide for the saw, ensuring we had perfectly straight lines. 

Next we had to figure out how deep to put each slat of wood that is designed to fill the wells. Once again we did a bunch of math and figured out we need each well to look like the drawing below. 

We decided to first mount each well backing to the fin closest to it. We hammered nails into the fins to act as guides to slide the well slats into.

Once all the guides were put into place, we slide the well slats in at the correct depth. 

After all the sides were connected to the well slats, we nailed each fin into the top and bottom frame of the diffuser. After all the nailing was done, we filled the corners of the diffuser with glue and applied clamps to hold the diffuser tight while the glue dried. 

Once the glue dries, we will take the nail guides out and stain the wood. One down, 4 to go! Next time you need a recording made, you know which studio puts the most work into making sure your music sounds its best.