Feedback on Costco & Amazon sound absorption panels from folks who have purchased them.

@mitch2 +1

I agree. Start with a pile of Owens Corning s 703 and 2 x 6 lumber. Make your own sound baffles. 4 inches of the stuff stops the proliferation of all sound, including the majority of bass frequencies.

When you have sound baffles that you can arrange around your speakers, you will get a clear understanding of what they can do and where to ultimately put them. What you hear is the music and not the room.

If you start there, you will likely spend a lot less on expensive wall materials that fit within a decor.

Etsy is a good place to find inexpensive wall hangings that absorb sound, but all of that is secondary to the grunt work the Owens Corning stuff provides.

I don't think 45 degree angles and mitering is necessary. To each his own, though.

Nails and glue - spray glue used to hold two 2" pieces of CW 703 together - and a visit to a fabric store to buy cool cheap cotton fabric to match the decor.

Mostly they blend in and don't stand out as they reside in low places up against walls or in corners. 

The 703 stuff is really just a few hours of work with a suggested mask with gloves, glue, utility knife, and hammer and nails. Oh, yeah, I painted the wood black and then stressed the edges so the panels look old.

Anything you buy is going to absorb far less sound than the 703 panels and cost far more. 

Sound diffusers, however, should be purchased as they are quite cheap (Etsy has some from Ukraine that are cool and really inexpensive) and while only generally a thin piece of wood with foam on the back, they serve the purpose well.

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=sound%20absorption%20panels&ref=auto-1&as_prefix=sound%20ab

@jsd52756 

With those Infinity speakers, the bulk of your sound waves required to dissipate will be low frequencies. Hence, wall treatments (I think of them as say higher than a couch) will be for higher frequencies and require far less to mitigate). Maybe only need to diffuse them.

Soft furniture (bigger the better), rugs, bookcases, etc certainly do help with bass waves that hang out in the lower regions, but if you take care of trapping and mitigating unwanted bass waves, the higher frequencies (ones that bounce around the room at higher than couch heights) should be fairly easy to understand how they manifest themselves within your space.

@jsd52756 

Traveled down the road of "acoustic materials" that at first bluster seemed to be the way to go. However, once the overall price hits you upside the head you realize that cotton...

Here is what AI states:

Yes, sound can travel through cotton, but it also absorbs sound effectively. Cotton's porous structure and soft, fibrous nature allow it to trap and dissipate sound energy, making it a good acoustic material. In other words, sound can pass through cotton, but it also loses energy and is not reflected as strongly as it would be from a hard surface. 

As Dave and Troy stated, you can create a dead room by using too much. This is especially true if your room is smallish. A big room will require quite a few of 703 baffles before the room gets to that point. 

There has been a fairly large uptick in commercial entities (restaurants, office buildings, etc) using noise barriers as privacy is becoming more important, even in public settings. Perhaps some of it started in the covid era where public places realized people do not like to listen to other people talk..or maybe it's they don't like what other people say.