Flying Acoustic Panels

September 6, 2024

It’s been over a year in the making, but I finally finished flying 15 sound panels in the ceiling to tame the echos in the live room.

I first build a jig to make quicker work of constructing the boxes.

I found that finishing nails and finger-jointed pine wasn’t a great experience, as many nails would not go straight in, and thicker nails would cause splits. I should have used crown staples.

I used a combination of finishing nails, glue and metal brackets to ensure the frames were sturdy.

I oriented the finished sides outward to take advantage of the trim boards having eased edges.

I then covered one side with a backing fabric to help contain the mineral wool, which has a tendency to shed fibers.

I used as much scrap trim material as I could, so some parts were already painted black.

The frames took up a lot of space, and I ended up stacking them to get them out of the way until I was ready to finish them.

Due to being made of 1/2 in. thick pine, these frames are very light for how large they are.

After painting the outsides, I filled them with mineral wool and inserted a soundboard backing.

I ended up painting everything to avoid any change that fabric wouldn’t be opaque enough.

Once upholstered with speaker fabric, I stored them in the studio.

The fabric I used is very stretchy, but also quite delicate, so moving the panels was always risky.

I then joined them in sets of 3 to create larger assemblies that area ready to fly.

Joining the panels together made hanging them simpler and more affordable since I could use less steel cable rigging hardware. It was also faster and easier to get 15 panels aligned overhead.

I’m flying them with vinyl-covered steel cables that run through these special bolts that have a hole through the center.

I used fender washers to distribute the load as much as possible.

Each assembly would then get steel cables run through them.

Although painted black, all the hardware and cables are made of stainless steel.

I created loops at the end of each side and then dipped them in PlastiDip.

I used a rubber dip coating to avoid the need to take the panels outside to spray paint the cable ends.

I hung the first assembly over the drums.

I hung the panel as low as I could without obstructing the projector or wash lights.

From the drummer’s position, this already had a noticeable effect.

The cloud above the drums helps to manage first reflections from the ceiling.

For the other panels, although I had already installed some Unistrut in the ceiling near the track lights, I was unsatisfied with relying entirely on the 5 structural screws each 10ft section was attached to the rafters with.

So Matt came over and squeezed into the attic from the workshop side.

Thankfully it was a relatively cool day, but nonetheless, the attic gets quite warm, so Matt decided to go shirtless.

I then drilled holes and ran long structural bolts through the ceiling assembly.

The cardboard box both help align the very long drill bit and catch debris.

Meanwhile he placed some 4ft Unistrut sections onto the protruding bolts, ensuring each set of 2 bolts spans 3 rafters.

By distributing the weight of each rail below evenly over the top of 6 rafters, I was able to achieve a much higher load rating than the structural screws ever could from the bottom.

The result is a massively reinforced Unistrut rail that I finally felt comfortable hanging things from.

Each assembly is 63 lbs. Each anchor point that the panels are attached to is rated well above the 125 lb requirement to maintain 8x overrating.

The additional panels sit at an angle half-way between the ceiling pitch and the level floor.

The panels attach to the reinforced Unistrut on one side and the same ceiling anchors I used for the lighting grid on the other.

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