Diffuser City's - Unpainted Nebraska

These diffusers work incredibly well.This room is used for film editing, audio composition and postproduction. It’s a basic setup that works remarkably well, but by no means is it a mastering studio.Room dimensions are 10’ x 12’ with an 8’ high wood beam ceiling, hardwood wall panels and an oak floor. There are large, sound-attenuating windows on three sides, two doors near one corner, a bookcase covering half of one side wall, and desks front and rear almost the full width of the room. A pair of Presonus E5 monitors on isolation pads sit each side of a 27” video display and are located 15” from the wall. They are driven by a Steinberg UR22 audio interface. My listening position is approximately the center of the room.I used a graphic SPL meter and sine sweep/pink noise generators to check the monitors (close up) and the room acoustics (at listening position). The monitor bass rolls off at 50Hz and are reasonably flat above 80Hz with a slight bump at 100Hz. On the room check I found some definite modes: a large spike around 95Hz and a smaller one around 200Hz. There was other nonlineararity, but those were the most pronounced. I was not surprised the room needed some help.Starting with the principle that less is more (research on Sound on Sound dot com was very helpful), I first tried large acoustic foam panels I use for field recording, some heavy blankets, and a borrowed 2’ x 2’ Auralex bamboo diffuser. They made only a slight difference regardless of where they were placed. Obviously I needed something more, or different. But what? Bass traps were my first thought, yet the monitors were specifically chosen to avoid bass overload in the small room. After thinking things through some more (and yet more research) it appeared the room needed diffusion more than absorbsion.Diffuser City dot com makes several lines of diffusers and had a very informative website. I liked the agressive look of the Nebraska panels that are made from a large variety of wood shapes and sizes. I also liked that they’re made from reclaimed/scrap wood. I used nine 12” x 12” panels which mounted easily on the provided wedge strips that screw into the wall. I located the diffusers in a square 3’ x 3’ grid directly behind my listening position above the desk, with their midpoint 5’-6” above the floor.I then re-checked the room acoustics. I was surprised these diffusers made such a huge difference. I certainly hadn’t expected this much improvement. The room mode spikes were virtually gone, even without any specific bass treatment. Bottom line, for me the diffusers work great.