New Life Church

Hey Ted,

I FINALLY got a chance to take some pictures of the sound panels!

Again, I am sorry for the delay.

Here are 4 pictures of the front of our balcony- hopefully you can see how perfectly they fit the curve of the wall.

As you can see, there are a few wrinkles in the fabric at the bottom of the panels- that’s only because a few days after the material was initially stretched, everything settled a bit and we haven’t had time to re-stretch it (especially since it’s about 8-12′ off the ground!)

I was only part of the process of screwing the frame into the wall, so I can describe that a bit… and if you want more information about putting up the panels and stretching the fabric, I cc’d one of the guys who did that.

Also, I guess the biggest echo-eliminating impact was for the singers on stage, and so I also cc’d one of our worship leaders, if you would like to ask her about how well they work.  (Although, keep in mind that, as our pastors raise more money for this building, we’ll probably need to put up more sound-deadening materials in other areas of the auditorium- the front of the balcony is only step 1!).

As far as the installation process of the tracking system, I found the steps to be pretty easy.  It just took a long time because we had so much space to cover and we needed ladders to reach it all.  Remember, in order to use the two-inch Echo Eliminator panels, we needed to add the 1×2 furring strips under the track, so we attached that to the wall first – then screwed the tracking on top of them.  The things that took the most time were measuring and cutting the materials, especially the miters in the ends of the track, but both processes were very straightforward.  I would say that it took 3-4 people about 4 hours to put up the 1×2’s and track, which covers a little under 4′ tall x 60′ wide.

As far as the installation process of the panels and fabric, again, I wasn’t there, but I heard that it was also pretty easy.  From what I heard, a couple of people helped Ben tie up the panels with string (because there was no way to hold all of them so highly on the wall) and then they stretched the fabric over them.  Per your recommended installation, we did consider gluing the panels to the wall, but since the building is so new, we decided to not do anything that could have any “permanent” affect on the drywall or paint (besides screw holes).  If we need the panels elsewhere, we’ll definitely talk more about gluing them.  If you need more information on that, you’ll have to ask Ben.

Now all we need to do is pull out the little wrinkles on the fabric and possible paint the bottom and side edges of the 1″-by-2″s (since you can see the bald wood under the fabric from certain angles) to match the walls.  But otherwise, as far as I know, they are good to go!  And they are/will be very unimposing, since they fit along the curve of the wall so well and don’t have any seams.

Thanks again for all of your help- let me know if there is anything else that you need.  I think that of all of our acoustic panel options, this was definitely the best for us for the long-term.

  *Ciara