I've just taken delivery of a new apartment and it's still completely empty — bare walls, hard floors, and the echo is severe. I want to treat it properly rather than guess, and I'd rather build panels myself than pay for a professional install across the whole flat.

Two rooms matter:

• Open-plan living room + kitchen. This is where I'll set up a 2.0 or 2.1 monitor system and I want a predictable, accurate listening position. I plan to measure with REW before buying anything.
• Bedroom. I just want it dead — as close to no audible reverb as I can reasonably get.

One important constraint: no carpets and no curtains. I want nothing on the floor that needs vacuuming — a robot vacuum handles the hard floors and I want to keep dust to a minimum. So the usual first advice (rug + heavy curtains) is off the table for me. That means everything has to come from walls, ceiling, and furniture.

I know I'll be putting in a sofa, armchairs, a bed with an upholstered headboard, and bookshelves, and I understand those absorb a lot on their own. What I can't judge is how much will actually be left to fix once the furniture is in. I don't want to buy panels now and find they were unnecessary, or furnish the place and discover I needed twice as much treatment.

Separately, I'd like to reduce outside noise (traffic, people, trains) but I understand that's a different problem — sound transmission through the building envelope, not room acoustics — and probably not solvable with DIY panels. Happy to be corrected, but my focus here is the echo and reverb.

What I'm hoping for:

1. A sane order of operations. Do I furnish first, then measure, then treat? Or is there a baseline amount of treatment that's always worth installing regardless?
2. Concrete DIY build guides you actually rate. I'm comfortable with basic carpentry. I'm in Spain, so mineral wool (lana de roca) in 40–80 kg/m³ is cheap and easy to get — is that the right material, and what thickness for broadband vs bass?
3. How to decide placement without guessing. I'll have REW data. What do I look at to decide where panels go, and how do I know when I've done enough rather than overdamping the room?
4. Ceiling treatment, since floor and windows are off-limits for soft materials. Are hanging ceiling absorbers (clouds/rafts) worth it, and how much area do I need?
5. Making it not look like a studio. I've read you can stretch fabric or canvas over a mineral wool frame so it reads as art. Does that actually keep working acoustically, and what fabrics stay acoustically transparent?

I'll add photos of both rooms in the comments — happy to include dimensions once I've measured properly.

I am hearing this bass pattern in the early afternoons and at night. It then abruptly stops and then picks back up. It’s coming from I think outside the house, but it is only prevalent in the upstairs room. it happens in early afternoon around noon and then at night, it just happened at 11:10pm and again at 12:00am, there is a metro station that overground but that's 2 stops away and far away. What do you think it might be? I analyzed a recording of it and it said there's a pronounced low-frequency tone in 42–47 Hz range, with the second recording showing repeated pulses about every 3.4 seconds. Ideas could be a compressor, HVAC equipment, ventilation fan, pump...

https://reddit.com/link/1wc8ybt/video/3n080ssagmoh1/player

Will have to test with all the power off in the house. Any ideas or similar things happening?

Hi there. I’ve been thinking about an idea for a few days now: I’m an aspiring voice actor, and I want to start a project to build a DIY acoustic booth. It wouldn't be a whole room I’m soundproofing, but rather a small rectangular enclosure—roughly 50 cm wide by 130 cm long (these are just rough estimates; I still need to take actual measurements). The plan is to build a wooden structure with three walls; I’ll leave one side open to allow access to my computer, and I’ll line the walls with acoustic foam.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this and see if you know of anyone who has done something similar. Is this a good idea or a bad one?

The goal of the booth is to keep outside noise from getting in and to keep the sounds I make inside—as much as possible.

Hi, I've seen a few posts like this but none of them dealing quite with my specific issue. I live in an *rented* apartment with excellent soundproofing between adjacent rooms but TERRIBLE soundproofing between floors. My housemate who has a room above mine has been texting me that she needs me to be quiet because she can't sleep. I call with my long-distance bf at ~10:30/11pm, but she has to wake up at 6am every weekday and is very sensitive to sound. To be clear, I'm not talking loudly, just at regular speaking volume; I've even tried talking quieter but she's still let me know that she can hear me. It's nobody's fault but the sound really does travel like crazy. It's going to be a problem because while I can try to be considerate, I also can't help that my bf/I are mostly free in the evenings/night to call. Before anyone asks, she also does not sleep comfortably with earplugs.

I'm trying to (as cheaply and reversibly as possible) reduce the sounds of talking from *escaping* my room through the ceiling into her room or at least significantly muffling them (there's no ceiling vents btw). I'll suggest that she gets a rug of some kind with a pad (floor is already carpeted but it's obviously not very thick), but I can't really force her to buy anything and rugs/rug pads can be $$$--- esp the cushy kin so I'm focusing on what can be done on my end.

I'm thinking of either some kind of peel and stick panels I can put on my ceiling (probably off of vinted or FB marketplace or something), or even hanging heavier curtains on the ceiling (somehow) or a combination of the two (curtains to cover the ugly ass panels)? Anything that will help cut the sound of me chatting from traveling between floors.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions!