ASC Cinema Panels Installation and Impressions

[JJinID]

As I've mentioned several times on various AA threads over the years, one thing I've been really wanting to do is to add additional acoustic panels on my ceiling in my dedicated listening room. My room is the bonus room above my garage, and has overall good dimensions of around 13.5' x 18.5'. The main issue with the room has always been the ceiling. The ceiling follows the lines of the outside roof, essentially having two 48" wide, 45 degree angles on each side before meeting at an ~ 84" flat part of the ceiling. I have known since I initially set up the room that the additional reflections this ceiling configuration creates were causing a high level of brightness and harshness in the upper midrange while masking higher frequency response and detail, not to mention ringing at high volumes and overall image smearing. This isn't to say that the sound of my system previously was not enjoyable, but I knew that it wasn't up to the potential that it could be.

At the end of May, I convinced my wife to allow me to purchase a case of 8 Cinema Panels as an early anniversary and birthday present, which are both this month. I ordered the panels in June, and they arrived in early July. I was hoping to get them installed before I left for my vacation to the OR coast last month, but some unexpected challenges did not allow me to do that. I finally worked, with the help of my wife, to get 6 of the 8 panels installed over this past week and weekend. I still need to replace and relocate the light on the ceiling to allow for the installation of the final two. I will likely get rid of the existing fixture and find a more flush-mount track lighting setup - if anyone has any cool suggestions I would be interested in hearing them.

In the meantime, I thought I would take a few quick pictures and show what things look like so far. I ordered the panels in the stock "Quartz" color, which is a bit darker but overall a pretty good match for my existing Real Traps panels that I installed a few years ago.

I will follow up a bit later with some more detail of how and what we used to install them, and my impressions of the changes in sound. I'm sure it won't be at all of a surprise for me to say that they have made a tremendous improvement, and I am very pleased!