- Every time we shoot a video in our new workshop,
we run up against the same problem.
Every time I talk, you can hear an echo, echo, echo, echo.
Okay, it's not quite an echo.
What it actually is, is reverb,
and it's caused by a standing sound wave
that is bouncing back and forth inside the room.
Now, it is something that you can address in post,
but as you guys can hear right now,
sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
(claps) Unless, of course, you go right to the source.
We (grunts) with the help of Elgato (grunts)
are going be deploying a literal mountain
of their wave panels.
These are mostly designed for streamers.
But the thing is,
if you've got a good, high-quality acoustic panel,
ready, Nicholas? - Yep.
- You can use it for pretty much anything.
So we're gonna go one stage at a time
with each of these boxes costing about 100 US dollars,
and see, do they do anything?
And if they do anything, how much do you need
before you get some kind of measurable impact?
And how far can you go before I tell you about our sponsor?
Thanks, Jackery, for sponsoring this video.
From September 20th to October 11th,
Jackery is celebrating their ninth anniversary
with a photo contest to win some of their products.
Click the link in the video description to learn more.
(upbeat music)
In every wave panel starter set,
you get everything you need to acoustically treat
about one square meter or 10 square feet of wall or ceiling.
You get six of the wave panels themselves,
bunch of brackets as well as joiners
in case you wanna bind them together
and make cool geometric patterns on your wall,
as well as instructions
and everything you will need to mount them.
Before we can mount anything though,
we need to get a baseline reading
of the current state of the room.
Now, there are two main ways we record audio for our videos,
either with a Lavalier microphone under my shirt
or with a shotgun microphone
that's mounted out of the frame.
And you guys can hear the difference in how those sound.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Then, in order to science it up a little bit,
we're gonna switch over to this puppy right here.
This is the UMIK-1,
an omnidirectional condenser microphone from miniDSP
that is specifically designed
for taking room measurements like this.
The software we're gonna use is called R-E-W or REW.
We just click Measure,
rename it to control no panels and start.
You guys are gonna wanna plug your ears.
(speaker humming)
(speaker screeching)
Wow, it's no wonder the audio is so bad in here.
Even with all the stuff that we have in the room now,
I mean, it was worse before,
we are still seeing standing waves
that are lasting as long as about .9 of a second.
That's hard to listen to.
Now, the goal isn't to turn this place
into an anechoic chamber.
Elgato wave panels would not be the way to do that.
We just wanna cut down on reverb.
So the first thing we need to know
is how much actual wall and ceiling area
there is in this room.
So we've got 1023 times 2.
That's the ceiling and the floor.
And then you wanna give me those wall measurements we got?
13, carry the 1.
I don't think I have ever carried the 1 on camera.
Ah yes, there. 3530.
I remembered to carry the 1, forgot all the other basics.
Why don't we target 5% coverage and see what happens?
Stage two, 10%.
Stage three. I mean, that better do it.
- [James] Question marks.
- Profit. (all laughing)
- Seven.
We have one small problem.
My control, I said it was with no panels in the room.
I had these ones sitting here.
So nobody touch these.
I wanna keep this scientific, boys.
So these are off limits.
This pack though, this wasn't in here. James, hoop.
- [James] Jesus!
- These are a little bit finicky,
but given that it's something you're only gonna do once,
not bad actually, Elgato, not bad.
Full disclosure,
the reason we have that omnidirectional speaker
and the reason we already know how to use the software
is because it is our intention
to make our own acoustic panel product.
But that doesn't mean that I'm gonna say
this is anything but, damn, looking pretty good.
Of course, the performance is ultimately what matters more.
- So these aren't the thickest acoustic panels in the world,
they cause me some concern.
The thinner they are,
the lower the band of frequencies they will absorb.
Thinner meaning higher frequencies only.
But it is two different materials.
That's cool, because, you know,
you've got a low density foam here
and a higher density foam here.
Plus, any time that sound goes through a medium change,
that's pretty good for absorption.
Then the setup,
you don't have to read the instructions at all.
At least I hope so, 'cause I didn't.
They're really easy to clip together.
And then they just friction mount into the holes
that are already on the foam.
Not the most secure.
I might put some adhesive in there
if it was mission critical, but eh.
- If I was gonna ceiling mount it, I would.
On the wall, it's probably fine.
Now, what are you thinking in terms of placement?
Do we wanna put individual panels just kind of around,
do we wanna clip them together in kind of geometric shapes
and go for large flat surfaces?
Are we targeting the walls, the corners?
- I think that you wanna have
big contiguous patches where possible.
Like look between those two blue pipes over there
or right there.
But then because there are so many different gadgets
and machines in here,
there's some spots where you don't have much room,
just do what you can in those spots.
So a mix.
- Okay.
The clips go in the front.
Just two? Kind of flimsy, honestly.
But as soon as you add a third,
you've tripled the joins, so it's quite a bit more rigid.
It's still, I mean, it's not structural, but.
We're climbing it. Can you hold this for me please?
- [James] I'm just gonna climus.
- Climus, Climus Sebastian.
I mean, if the laser level can't support my weight,
it's not a good laser level.
- But don't go on the lid.
- Yeah.
- Climus Stick Tips.
- Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to put the foamies on
before you hang it on the wall, so now we know.
That's a tech tip.
Does it look level?
- [James] Yeah, it looks good.
- There you are. (grunts)
- [James] Just lean, just thrust.
- (groans) I love you, wall.
You're awesome.
Now that we've seen how much space
even one pack takes up on the wall,
we're rethinking our strategy
for laying them out a little bit.
So what we're gonna try to do
is in each area we wanna put panels,
we're gonna put half as many as would fit now.
So that one, we're gonna expand by adding another six.
And then this one here, we're gonna lean a little low
so we can go one, two, three, four more kind of thing,
when it's time for the second round of testing.
Badoop, badoop, badoop. Ah!
Badoop, badoop, badoop.
I'm good. Everything's good.
Quick thought, James,
before we assemble a full frame for the ceiling,
why don't we just try sticking one to the ceiling
and see if this tape actually holds?
- I think the frame will hold, but what about the foam?
Isn't it just gonna fall off?
- Only one way to find out.
Do you mind passing me just one of those single frames?
There's some right there.
Oh, thanks David.
- [David] Like HowToBasic.
- Yeah.
- [Man] There you go.
- Okay.
- [Man] There you go.
- There you go, bud.
- [Man] Stretch!
- [James] The tape is on that side.
- Yeah, I see it.
- [Man] There's no way this works.
- I am not super hopeful.
- [James] I don't think you got that one corner
the closest to you.
- [Man] Eh? Meh?
- Ooh? - Ooh?
- Ruh-roh.
- [Jake] If it falls on someone's head,
are you worried about hurting them?
- No, not really.
- [James] Here, just "Dirty Dancing" into my hands.
- Yeah. Ooh.
- [James] I guess you're ready to double down now.
- [Linus] Yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's get the ladder.
Does Elgato intend for these to go on the ceiling?
- [Nicholas] I think this is outside their scope.
- (coughs) Sorry, a little bit (coughs) ceiling crap.
- [Nicholas] You okay?
- (coughs) Feels like I inhaled a feather or something.
- [Nicholas] Do you have a water bottle here?
- Unfortunately, no.
My lttstore.com water bottle is not here.
Otherwise I'd be fine.
The idea is to distribute our 5%
as though that's all we have.
So we're gonna try and get some paneling
on pretty much every surface.
Bell over there is mounting three above the eyewash station,
for example.
Now, obviously before we roll out a bunch of these
next to something like a welding station,
we wanna make sure they have at least
some level of fire resistance.
Let's see if I can actually...
- There you go.
- Okay.
- [Nicholas] We have a fire extinguisher, don't worry.
- Yeah, yeah, it's right there.
- That's a lot of heat, wow. - Okay, I'm convinced.
It should be fine.
This was one we cut up for a different deployment
over on the podcast set.
So it's a sacrificial one.
Ooh, it stinks.
- [Nicholas] But, yeah.
♪ What could go wrong ♪
- [Nicholas] He sings this while he's holding things
over expensive equipment.
- Yeah.
♪ What could go wrong ♪
They definitely work better on the wall
than they do on the ceiling.
Although, so far everything we put up has stayed,
but you know what's more impressive,
is everything we've got up here so far
is still cheaper than, yeah, this thing,
this kit from Auralex.
$660 for like, honestly,
I'd be surprised if that single foam type one
even performs as well as this.
We'll see. They're thicker though, I think.
- Not really.
- Fair enough.
You know what, guys,
we've got 19 more panels to put up,
and I don't know about you guys,
but I'm already noticing a huge difference.
We're back on both my 416 as well as my Lavalier microphone.
You guys can hear the differences between those.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Now, I'm just gonna come around here
and we're gonna do a second sweep.
Okay, approximately 5% coverage. And start.
We retested, last time I moved away, so.
(speaker humming)
- Oh yeah. - Whoa!
Dang.
That's actually, I mean, (claps)
it's not that I can't hear the difference.
I can totally hear the difference.
Like I believe it, but still, that's really impressive.
5% coverage with these things.
And we went from a peak of .9 seconds
at sort of around the range of my speaking voice,
all the way to about .6, .6 and change.
I mean, you can tell
Elgato clearly targeted human speech frequencies
because that's what this product is designed for,
because that's where we see the biggest improvement.
Right in that 400 to approximately 1,500 hertz range.
Wow, even up to around three kilohertz,
it's like pretty darn good.
Like does it sound better to you if I'm hosting a video?
Okay. David, we're building this computer.
This is a super cool build by the way.
Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss this one.
- [David] Sounds way better.
- Sounds way better? - Yeah.
- Wow, that's awesome. Let's put up a few more.
Let's get that big flat spot there dealt with.
I don't know, maybe like, you know,
a strip down there and then we'll call it.
Everything's been going really well so far,
but David, I just noticed something.
I thought I was kind of imagining it before,
but look at this,
there's some inconsistency in the color of the foam.
So if this was a major aesthetic thing for you,
just be aware.
Like this one's basically silver compared to this one,
which is more like black.
Do you see that? - Yeah.
- I wasn't sure until I saw these two next to each other,
like they're a little all over the place,
but if you buy one pack,
I would imagine they're closer at least.
Without any clear objective,
we kind of put some more on until it looked nice.
I think it looks pretty nice in here.
And we ended up with a total of 210 square feet,
which is kind of looking dangerously close to 69%.
Hold on, let's check it.
10 divided by 3530.
5.9. - Aw.
- 5.9, one short. But that's okay.
Let's go ahead and run our second,
our third rather, our third sweep.
Actually, wait, I forgot to do this again.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
All right, okay. Now let's do our sweep.
I think it's actually better again.
I could be wrong, I could be imagining it.
That is why we have objective measurements.
We added another six boxes, giving us
approximately 5.9% coverage.
And let's go ahead and start it. You guys ready?
(speaker humming)
Wow. Big improvement again.
Check this out, guys.
We just shaved off another,
anywhere from .1 to .2 of a second
in the range that we care about,
which is kind of in here.
This is honestly way better than I expected.
Like this is completely usable now.
We could keep putting on panels,
but honestly, I just don't really feel like it's necessary.
We can take these panels,
we can treat other areas in the studio.
You know what?
You guys might look at the cost of this, $2,100,
and you might think, "Whoa, that's a lot of money."
And it is.
But compared to what normal acoustic treatment panels cost
from specialty vendors, they are darn freaking reasonable.
Remember, this is a big room.
Now, obviously you could save a lot of money
doing it yourself with rockwool
or UltraTouch padding and a wooden frame.
Absolutely.
But considering the overall package here,
I think Coursera's got, excuse me, (coughs) Elgato
has a winner on their hands.
Just like our sponsor's a winner.
Thanks to Skylum for sponsoring today's video.
Coming this winter, Skylum is releasing
their newest creative photo editing software, Luminar Neo.
It's made by the team behind Luminar AI.
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Their new relighting options
have Luminar Neo analyzing your image to recognize depth
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You can remove blemishes
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The new engine also allows
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So don't wait, reserve your copy of Luminar Neo today
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at their limited early bird pricing
using the link in the video description.
If you guys are looking for another video to watch,
by the way, Elgato provided panels for this one,
but they actually sponsored
a full Elgato streaming setup video,
where we're gonna have literally all Elgato
and have a look at what the complete package looks like.
So we'll have that linked down below.
- [David] Do a backflip.
- "Do a backflip." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me get right on that. I'ma get down real careful.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
No, no, I'm kidding, I'm fine.
- (indistinct) Linus.