I have a space in my basement ~13'x26'x6'10" (yea, its low), 3 sides concrete that I have been planning on making into a theater for quite a while now. Things are in order enough that I plan to start finally!!!

I really cant afford to go nuts with this project, but I would like to do the best I can and learn from my first theater build in hopes that #2 or #3 house is the real deal!

My first question of this build is this; My work is spring cleaning, I have the ability to grab enough cubicle walls (yup, office cubes) to completely wrap around my theater. The cubes are 2.5 thick with ~1 inch of compressed glass on both sides of 5/8 particle with some GOM(?) on the outsides. My plan is to mimic the Ownens Corning Basement style by putting up some furring strips on the concrete and use some sort of hooks to hang the panels so I can remove them if necessary. Between the 2 inches of fiber plus the plywood I think they will work pretty well acoustically against the concrete to kill some reflections. What do you guys think?

One concern of mine is mold. Luckily, my basement is dry and does not have a hint of smell to it. The panels would be off the concrete and are 8 inches shorter than the ceiling, so I was thinking to split the difference and leave a gap at the top and bottom of the panel to allow circulation. Would you put some anti mildew/mold paint on the backsides? Cut off the GOM on the back? Do you think its necessary to worry?

I searched a little but didn't come up with much so I'd love to hear what you guys think about the idea and suggestions you could offer.

Thanks!

Definitely an interesting idea, I don't have any good advice for you, but would like to hear how this works if you do it. Office dividers are free on Craigslist all the time and if the innards make reasonable treatments, that would be a cool discovery.

It will help with your high frequencies, but won't do anything to trap low freqs. Also don't put on the entire walls or it will make the room too dead. You need to find the reflection points of the room and place treatments there.

hmmm... I was thinking that the plywood through the center of these things would work quite well for the bass. I was planning on anchoring them at the edges of the panels to the wall. I have 24", 32", 36" and 48" wide panels, so that would effectively be the unreinforced span of plywood. I was surprised at how much mass is in these things, I'd guess the 48incher weighs in at 80lbs. Wouldn’t that suck up a bit of the bass on its way through twice? (It’s the reflection off the concrete I’m trying to kill right?)

One other thing... I don’t care one bit about sound OUTSIDE the theater, house is all me, I’m all brick and so are the neighbors.

For the sake of consistency and the cost of FREE I would prefer to put the panels all around the theater. What about if I were to throw some paint on the surface of these things? Would that increase the high freq reflectivity a bit? (They are the same color I see all day anyways, not sure if I could kick back to at home too!)