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2. Making and mounting control room bass correction panels

1

First we need a way of mounting our heavy panels on the walls. By using batons rather than fixing everything directly to the wall, we can minimise ‘wall trauma’, keeping partners, parents or landlords happy. Use captive fixings/T-nuts to attach long threaded screws to the batons, then fix the batons to the walls using rawl plugs and screws.

2

Drill holes in your 1200x600x2mm steel panels through which to hang them on the long screws. Push them right back to reduce stress on the screws. Next, hang sheets of rubber of the same size so as to dampen the steel, taking away its reverberation. A piece of wood glued to the rubber can prevent curl if necessary. The steel plate now resonates down in those problem areas, helping to cancel excess bass.

3

The rubber makes an undesirable reflective surface, so let’s use a big piece of 100mm-thick MelaTech to cover it. This will also mean we’re covering two issues in the same amount of space, as we’ll have a bass absorber and a broadband mid- and high-frequency absorber in the same place. Glue a drilled aluminium plate to the MelaTech, as shown. Evo-Stik works well, but be sure you have good ventilation!

4

Here’s the whole dual-purpose treatment panel. Ideally you should have some like this and also some that are double the width (1200x1200x2mm) to make sure you’re acting on a wide range of lowend frequencies. These panels are ideal on a wall behind the listening position, or to each side in order to ‘take out’ nearby walls. Cover them with fabric and they’ll look nicer!