"The Vinneplex"- our dual duty music & cinema room

The Vinnieplex… quite possibly the greatest media room name ever!

Space looks great!

Love the Oracle Delphi. Fantastic room

It really is…

@VinceHoffman, your room was just featured in our first-ever monthly newsletter!

@mxk116 & @Todd Anderson,

Thanks for the kind words gentleman!

This is really great! Can you say something about the room acoustic treatment (was it homemade or did you buy it somewhere, etc). Thanks!

OntheRivet said:

This is really great! Can you say something about the room acoustic treatment (was it homemade or did you buy it somewhere, etc). Thanks!

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Thanks @OntheRivet. Here is the breakdown on which of my acoustic treatments were DIY'ed vs which were commercially made.

The acoustic treatments seen in the earliest pictured iteration of my purpose-built "stereo room" (from 1997) were entirely DIY. The sidewalls and ceiling treatment were DIY (insufficiently) broadband absorptive panels. Stacks of 72"H x "13"OD and 72"H x 11"OD DIY Tube traps in the room corners cleaned up the mid and upper bass while diffusing frequencies above 500Hz or so. I'd DIY'ed all these treatments several years earlier for a significantly smaller listening space in my prior apartment. They were plainly beneficial in the new purpose-built room just as they'd been in my old apartment. But as my ongoing research into small room acoustics and effective acoustic treatments deepened, I came to understand that my first DIY efforts could be substantially improved upon. Broadband absorptive panels should be deeper using 4" or more of fibrous insulation and TubeTraps should be stacked floor-to-ceiling and larger diameters for better bass trapping.



The DIY panels used a 2" stack of 48"x24" 6lbs/cu ft rigid fiberglass panels in 3.5" deep pine frames with an 1/8" thick Luan ply back panel. The DIY Tube Traps were built from 1.5" thick, 36"L x 10"ID or 36"H x 8"ID rigid fiberglass pipe insulation. I glued the split down the length of the insulation tubes shut and then glued two 36" segments together to form 72" cylinders. Then I glued a pair of 3/4" plywood end caps on to ensure the arrangement was airtight. The end caps were cut using a router and circle jig. A local seamstress helped turn my breathable upholstry fabric into tubular socks I then stretched over the fiberglass cylinders and stapled onto the end caps. I finished the end caps and hid the stapled fabric overlap with leather-look MacTac.

A decade later when the switch from stereo to multi-channel first occurred, it was immediately apparent that additional loudspeaker sound sources necessitated additional treatment. Constructing professional looking DIY broadband absorptive panels was relatively easy. Contructing good looking DIY TubeTraps was hard and surprisingly expensive. I sold most of my DIY TubeTraps and ordered larger 16" and 20" diameter versions of the real thing from ASC, inventors of the Tube Trap. To avoid over damping the room, I focussed on adding diffusion rather than additional absorption. The simplest diffuser to DIY are Poly Cylindrical diffusers made from curved plywood or hardboard semi-cylinders. All of the poly diffusers in my room are DIY. The really big one on my front wall was made from a full 48"x96" sheet of 3/16" hardboard. By loosely stuffing the 8" deep air gap behind it, this diffuser does double duty as an (upper) bass trap. The smaller poly diffusers were all built from maple plywood, stained and varnished to match the room colors.




A few paragraphs earlier I mentioned that my first DIY attempt at broadband absorptive panels left something to be desired. Two iterations and a decade or two later, I've got these dialed. 5"-to-8" deep back-less frames built from 3/4" plywood ripped into boards. The frames are loaded with 4" to 6" of 3 lbs/cu ft rigid fiberclass and upholstered with same Guilford of Maine acoustic fabric that ASC, RPG, GIK acoustics use on their premium professional treatments. This "best practice" iteration replaced all my earlier versions.


The motivation for the latest acoustics revision was the system upgrade from 5.1 multi-channel to Atmos and DTS-X 5.1.4 immersive audio capabilty in 2020. Again with the four additional loudspeaker sound sources on the ceiling there were now additional sonically harmful striong early reflections to intercept and just that much more acoustic energy bouncing around in my modestly sized room. While I did have to add some more broadband absorptive trapping on the rear ceiling, I turned to diffusion and hybrid "diffsorber" treatments for the most part. This approach tamed the room without deadening it.

In this case the new 1D QRD diffuser array on the rear wall and 2D QRD diffuser array on the ceiling were commissioned commercial products, built to my specification and manufactured in Poland by Seven Audio. Lukasz at 7 Audio also provided the custom sized BAD (Binary Amplitude Diffuser) "scatter plates" I affixed to several of my broadband absorptive panels. The latter were CNC machined from 1/8" maple plywood and delivered "raw". I finish sanded, stained, and varnished them before mounting.