I have long wished to build my own quadratic residue diffuser for my humble studio. Today was the first day of the process! I’ll be posting more details as things progress.

A big concern of mine is bang for the buck. More than anything, I wanted to find a design that was put through a battery of scientific tests before I shelled out my money on it. I’m very suspicious of anyone writing a review on just about any acoustic product website that says: “it sounds awesome, buy it.” I needed more assurance than that! I wanted a diffuser that the company took the time and tested in an anechoic chamber with well-calibrated equipment and a scientific process. After tons of research on companies that offer acoustic diffusion products, I settled on Acoustic Fields’ QD23:

Acoustic Fields can send you a QD23, but if you have a DIY spirit, you can also purchase the build plans on their website and build it yourself. I previously bought some other products from Acoustic Fields, and I can’t say enough positive things about them.

After purchasing the build plans for the diffuser and paying my friend from AMBO Guitars (a superior woodworker) to help me with the build, today was the first day we jumped in. We purchased the wood from Austin Fine Lumber and Plywood in North Austin. Our goal today was to cut the pieces we’d need to assemble. Here’s the progression:

Starting the cuts with one huge 4’x8’ piece. This one was the scariest because we had to cut the backs out of just one huge piece.

We started to get some rain, so we covered up the wood and took a coffee break. There was lots of swearing.

With our big cuts done, we ripped the pieces in half for the backs and sides. Unfortunately, we needed one extra sheet. Oh darn. I have to go back to Austin Fine Lumber…

Quadratic residue diffusers have different well depths. We needed to cut the alder into thinner pieces. When we assemble the final piece, each of these will be placed at specific depths within the diffuser.

A little saw action…

Each of the wells is separated by one of these panels. We had a ton of these to cut. Our first job was to do a rough cut before we jumped into the precision cuts. It’ll make the wood more manageable to cut into pieces where we had the exact size we needed.