How effective are moving blankets for sound deadening?

Description

They're cheap but are they effective? Today at the House of Hacks, Harley investigates if it makes sense to use moving blankets for acoustic treatment. People have tried different sound absorption techniques to remove room echo from recording spaces. Acoustic foam panels and a sound blanket are two popular items. Moving blankets appear similar to sound blankets and are considered DIY sound absorption materials, but how well do they work in a recording studio for sound absorption? Today we're going to measure the difference between having them and not having them actually makes.

Affiliate links:
12 Moving blankets
1 Real acoustic blanket

Resources:
How to measure echo in a room

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.

There's a playlist containing videos talking about the House of Hacks' values.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Workshop Organization Systems - Quick and easy overhead bins

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing

Transcript

[Door bell]

Oh, FedEx. Thanks!

Do you need to reduce echo in a room for recording?

Today, we're going to look at these moving blankets and measure how well they actually work for this application.

[Introduction]

Hi! Harley here.

I'm down here in the workshop which is in the unfinished portion of our basement.

It's got concrete walls, concrete floors, and from this app we can see we've got 0.65 seconds of decay time.

To try to get that down, I got some moving blankets from Amazon, very cheap, and I want to see if this is actually going to make a difference in the echo in this space where I can hang them from the ceiling, drape them around the workshop, as I'm recording to try to get the echo down.

Let's open it up and give it a try.

[Opening package]

There are twelve blankets for less than $60 from Amazon.

I'll leave a link in the description below.

By comparison, you can get an acoustic blanket that's marketed as such for $75 for just one.

But the question is: does this inexpensive option really make a difference?

I haven't spent the money to compare the difference between the moving blankets and the one that's really designed for the purpose, but I can compare the difference between with and without these moving blankets.

First, I installed an application on my phone to actually measure the echo.

And as we saw in the opening, without the blankets, the echo is 0.65 seconds.

I'm going to use some spring clamps to hang the blankets around the workshop.

[Hanging and draping blankets]

So, I'm really impressed!

Depending on the test, it was between 0.19 and 0.43 [sic] seconds delay after adding the blankets.

That's between...

...about a third on the high end and not quite half on the higher end.

So, yeah, these blankets really do make a difference.

How that compares to an acoustic blanket? I don't know.

I'm not going to spend that much money, but they do make a difference.

That's a good thing.

I'll certainly be using these in the future when I'm recording to reduce the echo in here.

I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.

If yours leans towards marking things and you're interested in future House of Hacks workshop related videos, hit the round House of Hacks icon over there and then hit the bell notification and YouTube will let you know next time I upload something.

And down below are some videos YouTube thinks you might be interested in.

Thanks for joining me on this creative journey.

Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required. Fun is!

Workshop Organization Systems - Quick and easy overhead bins

Description

Today at the House of Hacks, Harley shows the overhead bin storage that's part of his workshop organization systems. This is a quick and easy do-it-yourself system, taking advantage of scrap materials, to use under-utilized area for shop organization of small items in overhead bins.

Here are the bins I used. (Amazon affiliate link)

Here are some other shop organization tips.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.

There's a playlist containing videos talking about the House of Hacks' values.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Workshop Organization Systems - Quick and easy overhead bins

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing

Transcript

In the comments of a previous video, STLABC requested that I show the overhead bins that are part of my workshop organization systems.

We're going to look at that today at the House of Hacks. Coming at you.

[Introduction]

Hi. Harley here.

Today we're going to talk about one of my workshop organization systems that I use here at the House of Hacks.

STLABC noticed that I had some overhead bins and requested some more details on that system.

My workshop is down here in the unfinished basement in our house and I've got joists for the floor above me that are exposed because it's unfinished.

One day I noticed that the distance between the floor joists is a little bit larger than the width of one of these plastic shoebox sized storage containers.

It reminded me of an idea I'd seen somewhere as I was wandering around the internet.

So I went down to Target and picked up a couple of these containers just to see if it would work.

I had, fortunately, in my spare wood pile, some of this tongue and groove paneling that was left over from a remodel project.

It's the perfect width to just be able to tack into place underneath the floor joists and the handle will rest on each side. I didn't have to do any cutting.

Now, depending on your application, if you have some scrap wood, you can cut it to width after measuring to see how much you need and it's a real easy to put in place storage system.

Using this is really simple.

All you do is lift up, tilt it, and it drops right out.

To replace it, it's just the reverse operation.

Push it up at an angle and it drops into place.

Now, I'm standing on a step stool to be in frame and demonstrate this on camera but because my ceiling is a couple inches shy of eight feet, it's easy enough to do this while standing on the floor normally.

To easily tell what's in each box when I'm standing on the floor, I just have a label that I made with a label maker on the bottom of each container.

I hope that gives you enough details for this particular storage system.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.

There's another video up here where I talk about other organization tips that I use here at the House of Hacks.

Down there are some videos that YouTube thinks you might enjoy.

Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!