Originally Posted By: LoveGuitar
Good point Scott. I am doing some programming work for a major gulf coast refinery. In the DCS rack room, they are demoing some acoustic wall panels that I am trying to score.


The best free source of information for DIY acoustics is on Ethan Winer's site. He sells panels but also has quite a bit on how you can make them yourself. http://ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html Keep in mind that this article is mainly focused at bass traps - but there is more information here: http://ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Panels only control what is inside the room - my advice is to be careful of the flanking paths generated by having your wiring pipes run from one side of the room to another. Wherever the conduit pipes are not in the room - make sure that they are not exposed to noise sources that are outside the room. The word 'conduit' applies to acoustics as well as to wiring. To help them from being exposed, you can box them in, put constrained layer damping material around them (you can purchase mats of this stuff from car audio shops - be careful when you cut it, the constraining layer is foil and can slice fingers like you wouldn't believe - personal experience with this! http://www.dynamat.com/automotive-and-transportation/car-audio/dynamat-xtreme/ )
etc, just make sure that the pipes themselves are not acting as conduits of sound into the room - this also applies to HVAC ductwork. My purpose built studio in my last house suffered from the HVAC as a flanking path. I killed off everything else, but didn't really have a practical way to treat the HVAC ductwork as a path. I could hear my kids playing/talking two floors up through the HVAC, while everything else was killed - foot traffic noise one floor up was managed, exterior noise from outside the house was managed, even noise from the washer and dryer right outside the room was managed well enough to mix reliably.

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