Here is the money quote in this video @44:26 - jesco: "The time response is arguably even more important than the frequency response, because the frequency response is just a result of getting the time response right. Obviously, in real life, everything just happens in time, the frequency domain doesn't exist in reality. The frequency response is the direct consequence of fixing the time response." I think this point bears repeating, because for most people, it is NOT obvious that frequency response is a fabrication that exists only between our ears. What actually occurs in resonant and notch bands is the summation of room reflection paths that just happen to converge with degrees of in-phase or out-of-phase alignment. It is the relative time delay between these reflection paths that determines the phase alignment at each particular frequency band. Our ears evolved to work as far more sensitive phase discriminators than as spectrum analyzers or VU meters. What we refer to as an "acoustically flat frequency response" is in practice the normalization of wide-band phase discrimination.
"in real life, everything just happens in time, the frequency domain doesn't exist in reality. The frequency response is the direct consequence of fixing the time response."" I can concur that!
Actually a very good reaction video - and very cool what Eric did with his studio, and that he let us having a glimpse about his efforts. Its quiete a daunting task to be acomplished with trying out different methods, materials etc.
Eric is the best - a genuine enthusiast and a serious audio nerd, and a real pleasure to talk to if you get the chance as I did at AES this year. His passion and his commitment show both in the records he makes and the equipment Undertone make. I love my Unfairchild and will never part with it. And if a room full of ugly tube traps makes mixing and recording better then good for him!
I'm a big fan of Eric, so it was great to see you offer your insight into his acoustics journey. I learned some things from your thoughts of how he went about treating his control room.
Jesco, could tube traps be more effective than standard rectangular porous absorbers because of its larger surface area? The surface area of an 8 foot cylinder is much greater than the surface area of an 8 foot rectangular box. But maybe I’m missing something. I would love to get your opinion on this. Thanks for the great videos!
Full cylinder surface is pi * d * h. Full square prism surface is 4 * d * h. 4 is greater than pi. But if you place them close to each other, then yes, the cylinder turns out to be larger
I think I've watched your reaction video 3 times now, and Eric's source video Acoustic Rainbow twice. I love this stuff, so much information in both videos. It's amazing Eric documented all of his findings :)
09:40 good point Sir but; since most of us mix using two speakers simultaneously, isn't it more valid to do measurements with both speakers, especially for the low end to observe the complex phase interactions that each speaker and its reflections excite in he room? My room is very specific and has some troublesome spots but my measurements are always slightly different when doing both speakers vs doing them one by one. Especially in regards to decay time displayed on a waterfall graph. Thanks for a great video!
I've also experianced far better results wtih tube traps, mine have a diffusor on the surface and inner resonant tubes, which seem to give a multiple result, but also being able to hang them away from the wall, or corner place perhaps improves performance?
and also 18:08 about the SBIR - isn't is common knowledge, that you put the speakers as close to the front wall as possible so that the SBIR frequency gets higher in spectrum and just treat it with broadband absorptive panels behind the speakers? (or the opposite, far enough that SBIR freq is below the low end cutoff of your speakers, which is probably unpractical 99% of times) and an afterthought - how about the bass reflecting from the floor and ceiling (some kind of vertical SBIR)? are these a real hazard?
Super interesting! I wish Eric would have shown the phase response and not just the freq response. In my experience, when I corrected my phase response, it made a MASSIVE difference in my ability to pinpoint where different elements are located in the sonic field. Mixing has become a very visual experience now :)
20:00 he has an old video explaining that regular panels didnt work for him, in his second recording studio he had a nightmare trying to fix his room, and he swears by tube traps, saved his livelihood
Helmholtz-Absorbers are fantastic if you have one low frequency that's just going crazy once things get loud. But yeah, you gotta stand there with earplugs and tune the thing. For mixing I'd go for porous absorption but for loud low instruments (brass, live bass guitar, some drums), a Helmholtz will do the job. Also great for home cinemas with a one-note-subwoofer, you'll still hear and feel the note but no more rumbling dishes..
Lots of people sounding off on their tube trap theories. Here's mine. Because of the complex shape the absolute thickness of the porous material is constantly different In some places, depending on the diameter of the tube trap, the sound is traveling through more than just 2x the wall thickness. What ends up happening is a sound wave travels through air and into the tube trap where it encounters the resistance of the fiberglass in a non-linear way because of the cylinder shape. As energy travels through the tube trap, the constantly variable thickness of the the absorption combined with the constantly varying times of arrival because of the cylinder shape has a way of decimating the energy. Someone like aerating water through a screen. If it was just a 4 inch panel of rigid fiberglass covering the entire wall, the sounds would arrive at the first resistance at more or less the same time depending on the angle of incidence for the source and continue through, impeded linearly by the panels and then reflecting off the boundary surface. It would just be a uniform attenuation without any sort of disruption of the coherency of the wave. I was absolutely not a tube person until I started watching EVs videos. Now I think there is something unique. Also, he tried stuffing them to make them solid tubes of fiberglass and found no meaningful difference.
When he pointed to the corners at 42:25, I literally laughed, because he pointed to the corners in my room where resonators had the most effect! I had the opportunity to try lab tested, commercial resonators, which worked well but didn't solve the problem in my room. Damn, what a frustrating experience that was.
Cool video, I've been watching the EV videos for a while now & i find this cylindrical bass broad band absorption to fascinating. He did a really good job of proving their effectiveness with REW. In previous vidro quite a while back he proved that they way more effective than flat panels & by a considerable margin. I'm new to this cylindrical trap idea & am interested if you can expand on them vs the flat panel in terms of effectiveness. I'm really curious about this point. Thanks for the awesome content you provide!!
The magic of the tube trap is in the air gap in the middle. Most people treating a room forget that airgaps between rockwool make a much bigger improvement then completely filling the thing up with no airgaps. I f you think about it, when a soundwave hits a tube trap, it passes 4 times against the rockwool insulation. Front side of the trap, airgap, back side of the trap, hits the wall, comes back and repeats.
If there’s no air gap, the sound wave will simply pass through more rockwool, getting converted to heat energy even more effectively. Air gaps might be a way to save money on materials, but they don’t inherently improve the performance of an absorber.
This years videos with Ron Sauro are pretty damn good! Also the todays video about testing basstraps: They lab test those, so it's not anymore on how things should work in theory, but how they work for real.
I don't know... I could do with more 'voodoo' in this channel. I am obsessed with Eric Valentine and adore the guy man crush style. Having said that, it seems like he has made major mistakes with this build and lost unbelievable amounts of money and time. It's great that he is happy and reached a place that works for him. It's also amazing he has given us this incredible resource of his build and his mistakes. He wanted this journey and good on him. It's all anecdotal though and particular to his experience and room though. I expect for example that his room might only sounds great in his small listening position. What if he wanted to put in dolby atmos speakers or give clients a great listening position as well? What if it was in a different room? I expect it might not work. We are guessing! Eric is a genius but not an acoustician. I think this is a case where we need acoustic hard science.I know for example that a very well known acoustician on youtube thinks Eric's approach was a disaster, despite him arriving at where he needed to be.
@@djhmax09 You'll be amazed at all the crap out there in the acoustic world. I prefer to see a guy like Eric revealing his process and his findings in a documented and real experience... and the interesting thing is that there are no strict rules in acoustics, don't think that everything is written in stone... We need to try things, methods , materials and understanding tools like REW..... then you can see and read anyone to get information and knowledge... but in acoustics especially, each room can be a totally different journey and experience...
@@bluematrix5001 I'm sure there's a lot of nonsense. But he also runs this as a business, I don't think he wants to take time and effort to explain the intricacies of how everything works over the effort it takes to run his own business. The reality is most of his clients aren't interested in understanding the data because they just want the finished product to achieve results, at least that's how I see it. Anyway I still think his tech is interesting and would love to try it someday and hear for myself
I had similar experience with Tube Traps and actually, it is well known that Tube Traps perform better than standard flat panels of the same depth; in fact, ASC with Tube Trap and wall attack have been known to give excellent results. and Eric tried those panels and had a wall with fiberglass and then he tested and measured and realized that tube traps are much better and have more bandwidth than panels...it's just acousticians don't want to promote its use because if you are smart, know some acoustics, have a good ear and know how to use REW, you don't need an acoustic and even though tube traps are much easier and faster to build than a wood panel with fiberglass or wool mineral....interestingly just recently GIK is selling tube traps and I think are their most expensive products...must be a reason...
Trouble with them is the eat up space, in my small garden mixing room there is no way I could have used them and ended up with anything practical to work in, plus they look dreadful, like a carpet shop storeroom! 😬
The reality is with enough research and effort you can learn any skill and avoid hiring people right? But you've only got 24 hours a day to get it all done
I’ve been a massive fan of Eric since the T-Ride days, so please don’t take what I’m going to ask as an insult to him in any way, but don’t you think part of Eric’s problems could have been mitigated to some degree if he chose a better dimension ratio for his control room? His room is 9’9”x15’9”x25’1”, which is like he said, “roughly Golden Ratio” (1x1.62x2.62). Those dimensions show nonconformity with Bonello and Bolt. Just plugging those dimensions into JH Brandt’s calculator predicts with shocking accuracy those three big dips and also predicts the needed broadband trapping that Eric wound up largely doing! I know that all the math is wonderful until you build, but IF you have the luxury of determining to some degree the dimensions of your room, shouldn’t we at least use dimensions that begin at a less problematic starting point? Love the channel!😃
THIS IS WHAT I CALL FAIR USE! Damn great video. I just have one question maybe someone can point me to a video discussing this. Why does looking at the Impulse response give us more precise info about the reverb time rather than the RT60/decay measurements?
Eric’s tube traps was porous absorbers. He uses pipe isolation. Pipe isolation is just mineral wool or foam to put around a pipe. It’s clear if you watch Eric’s video.
@@badmongleoit’s very very very compressed fiberglass tho, Is the stuff used in regular panels and traps the same? My pipe insulation tube traps are like hard they’re so compressed.
Iam not shure check out Erics videos he talkes about it. My guess is that the properties of the isolation doesn't differ that much from mineral wool to make that much of a differens. Tube traps did work for Eric but my guess is that if he back filled all the area covered with tube with mineral wool he would probably get the same effect and a cleaner look and probably cheaper.
die armen strauss monitore mit eingedrückter Membran. Ich persönlich finde die Rollen / Tubes optisch absolut unattraktiv wenn man sich damit die Wand zustellt. Als themenvorschlag, könntest du mal ein video machen inwiefern die Decken / Wand Akustik Produkte von Herstellern wie zB Ecophon für Heimanwender interessant sind
The graphs do not say anything if you do not know how it is measured. sometimes only one speaker is measured, sometimes two. Speakers interfere with themselves.
My overriding feeling is that his end result (if not the journey!) is fairly typical for a successful acoustic treatment but the tubes look terrible! I may be wrong but surely he could have achieved the same results with the correct choice of panels and the asthetic of the room would be so much better. Maybe he's someone who doesn't care what it looks like but for me walking into what looks like a carpet shop storeroom would drive me nuts and definitely wouldnt inspire me to be creative! 🫣
that is the big question, yes tube traps are deeper but empty and super easy to make.... so the big question is that if at the same mass volume of the tube traps equals in absorption and broadband results as the same mass volume of porous panels?? clearly the Tubetraps are way easier to make and cheaper too
Eric’s case would probably be easier to fill the entire wall with a thick layer of mineral/glasfiber wool held in place by one big panel then cover it up with fabric. Cheep good looking. This is the way most pros do it. Glad wool is dirt cheep and framing also.
I may be wrong, but I think in either this video or maybe the one following this called “The End Of The End Of The Rainbow” he talks about once he’s got everything tweaked, putting fabric walls around everything.
Here is the money quote in this video @44:26 - jesco: "The time response is arguably even more important than the frequency response, because the frequency response is just a result of getting the time response right. Obviously, in real life, everything just happens in time, the frequency domain doesn't exist in reality. The frequency response is the direct consequence of fixing the time response."
I think this point bears repeating, because for most people, it is NOT obvious that frequency response is a fabrication that exists only between our ears. What actually occurs in resonant and notch bands is the summation of room reflection paths that just happen to converge with degrees of in-phase or out-of-phase alignment. It is the relative time delay between these reflection paths that determines the phase alignment at each particular frequency band. Our ears evolved to work as far more sensitive phase discriminators than as spectrum analyzers or VU meters. What we refer to as an "acoustically flat frequency response" is in practice the normalization of wide-band phase discrimination.
"in real life, everything just happens in time, the frequency domain doesn't exist in reality. The frequency response is the direct consequence of fixing the time response."" I can concur that!
It’s a clever understanding that most lack…but at the end of the day is there an action item based on this knowledge? Probably not.
@@seanb3303 Virtuosity tends to be when somebody can do the same task faster ....in a shorter period of time....
@@bluematrix5001 How would the frequency response measurement be the slow inefficient way?
Actually a very good reaction video - and very cool what Eric did with his studio, and that he let us having a glimpse about his efforts. Its quiete a daunting task to be acomplished with trying out different methods, materials etc.
Eric is the best - a genuine enthusiast and a serious audio nerd, and a real pleasure to talk to if you get the chance as I did at AES this year. His passion and his commitment show both in the records he makes and the equipment Undertone make. I love my Unfairchild and will never part with it. And if a room full of ugly tube traps makes mixing and recording better then good for him!
I'm a big fan of Eric, so it was great to see you offer your insight into his acoustics journey. I learned some things from your thoughts of how he went about treating his control room.
Jesco, could tube traps be more effective than standard rectangular porous absorbers because of its larger surface area? The surface area of an 8 foot cylinder is much greater than the surface area of an 8 foot rectangular box. But maybe I’m missing something. I would love to get your opinion on this. Thanks for the great videos!
Full cylinder surface is pi * d * h. Full square prism surface is 4 * d * h. 4 is greater than pi. But if you place them close to each other, then yes, the cylinder turns out to be larger
The dog in the end was like: No way, I can't stand this anymore! Leave me alone! XD
Thank you for the video! =)
I think I've watched your reaction video 3 times now, and Eric's source video Acoustic Rainbow twice. I love this stuff, so much information in both videos. It's amazing Eric documented all of his findings :)
Thanks again Jesco. Some valuable info and confirmations in your video.
09:40 good point Sir but;
since most of us mix using two speakers simultaneously, isn't it more valid to do measurements with both speakers, especially for the low end to observe the complex phase interactions that each speaker and its reflections excite in he room? My room is very specific and has some troublesome spots but my measurements are always slightly different when doing both speakers vs doing them one by one. Especially in regards to decay time displayed on a waterfall graph. Thanks for a great video!
I've also experianced far better results wtih tube traps, mine have a diffusor on the surface and inner resonant tubes, which seem to give a multiple result, but also being able to hang them away from the wall, or corner place perhaps improves performance?
and also 18:08 about the SBIR - isn't is common knowledge, that you put the speakers as close to the front wall as possible so that the SBIR frequency gets higher in spectrum and just treat it with broadband absorptive panels behind the speakers? (or the opposite, far enough that SBIR freq is below the low end cutoff of your speakers, which is probably unpractical 99% of times)
and an afterthought - how about the bass reflecting from the floor and ceiling (some kind of vertical SBIR)? are these a real hazard?
Super interesting! I wish Eric would have shown the phase response and not just the freq response. In my experience, when I corrected my phase response, it made a MASSIVE difference in my ability to pinpoint where different elements are located in the sonic field.
Mixing has become a very visual experience now :)
Can sbi cause subsequent peaks further up the frequency range?
ASC tube traps?
20:00 he has an old video explaining that regular panels didnt work for him, in his second recording studio he had a nightmare trying to fix his room, and he swears by tube traps, saved his livelihood
Helmholtz-Absorbers are fantastic if you have one low frequency that's just going crazy once things get loud. But yeah, you gotta stand there with earplugs and tune the thing. For mixing I'd go for porous absorption but for loud low instruments (brass, live bass guitar, some drums), a Helmholtz will do the job. Also great for home cinemas with a one-note-subwoofer, you'll still hear and feel the note but no more rumbling dishes..
Lots of people sounding off on their tube trap theories. Here's mine. Because of the complex shape the absolute thickness of the porous material is constantly different In some places, depending on the diameter of the tube trap, the sound is traveling through more than just 2x the wall thickness. What ends up happening is a sound wave travels through air and into the tube trap where it encounters the resistance of the fiberglass in a non-linear way because of the cylinder shape. As energy travels through the tube trap, the constantly variable thickness of the the absorption combined with the constantly varying times of arrival because of the cylinder shape has a way of decimating the energy. Someone like aerating water through a screen. If it was just a 4 inch panel of rigid fiberglass covering the entire wall, the sounds would arrive at the first resistance at more or less the same time depending on the angle of incidence for the source and continue through, impeded linearly by the panels and then reflecting off the boundary surface. It would just be a uniform attenuation without any sort of disruption of the coherency of the wave. I was absolutely not a tube person until I started watching EVs videos. Now I think there is something unique.
Also, he tried stuffing them to make them solid tubes of fiberglass and found no meaningful difference.
what is its measurement program? no room eq wizzard but the comparative program
When he pointed to the corners at 42:25, I literally laughed, because he pointed to the corners in my room where resonators had the most effect!
I had the opportunity to try lab tested, commercial resonators, which worked well but didn't solve the problem in my room. Damn, what a frustrating experience that was.
Cool video, I've been watching the EV videos for a while now & i find this cylindrical bass broad band absorption to fascinating. He did a really good job of proving their effectiveness with REW. In previous vidro quite a while back he proved that they way more effective than flat panels & by a considerable margin. I'm new to this cylindrical trap idea & am interested if you can expand on them vs the flat panel in terms of effectiveness. I'm really curious about this point. Thanks for the awesome content you provide!!
Do you know the title of the video where EV looked into tube traps?
@@Trilodeez End of the acoustic rainbow
Have you seen his last room update video? Very interesting
The magic of the tube trap is in the air gap in the middle.
Most people treating a room forget that airgaps between rockwool make a much bigger improvement then completely filling the thing up with no airgaps. I
f you think about it, when a soundwave hits a tube trap, it passes 4 times against the rockwool insulation. Front side of the trap, airgap, back side of the trap, hits the wall, comes back and repeats.
If there’s no air gap, the sound wave will simply pass through more rockwool, getting converted to heat energy even more effectively.
Air gaps might be a way to save money on materials, but they don’t inherently improve the performance of an absorber.
VPR's - if you use thicker steel instead (2mm), you'll get much lower absorption apparently.
What do you think of John Brandt?
This years videos with Ron Sauro are pretty damn good! Also the todays video about testing basstraps: They lab test those, so it's not anymore on how things should work in theory, but how they work for real.
awesome
I don't know... I could do with more 'voodoo' in this channel. I am obsessed with Eric Valentine and adore the guy man crush style. Having said that, it seems like he has made major mistakes with this build and lost unbelievable amounts of money and time. It's great that he is happy and reached a place that works for him. It's also amazing he has given us this incredible resource of his build and his mistakes. He wanted this journey and good on him. It's all anecdotal though and particular to his experience and room though. I expect for example that his room might only sounds great in his small listening position. What if he wanted to put in dolby atmos speakers or give clients a great listening position as well? What if it was in a different room? I expect it might not work. We are guessing! Eric is a genius but not an acoustician. I think this is a case where we need acoustic hard science.I know for example that a very well known acoustician on youtube thinks Eric's approach was a disaster, despite him arriving at where he needed to be.
J, Acoustic Insider community...
What type to headphones is Jes using? Much appreciated.
aren't these famous alibaba phillips?..
But did he compare with and without dog bed?!
Would be cool to know your thoughts on acoustic fields technology with their carbon panels and proprietary foam
That guy I dont trust... no really serious business wise
@@bluematrix5001 well it's not the person that you have to trust but the information he's putting out. It makes sense to me but I'm no expert
@@djhmax09 You'll be amazed at all the crap out there in the acoustic world. I prefer to see a guy like Eric revealing his process and his findings in a documented and real experience... and the interesting thing is that there are no strict rules in acoustics, don't think that everything is written in stone... We need to try things, methods , materials and understanding tools like REW..... then you can see and read anyone to get information and knowledge... but in acoustics especially, each room can be a totally different journey and experience...
@@bluematrix5001 I'm sure there's a lot of nonsense. But he also runs this as a business, I don't think he wants to take time and effort to explain the intricacies of how everything works over the effort it takes to run his own business. The reality is most of his clients aren't interested in understanding the data because they just want the finished product to achieve results, at least that's how I see it. Anyway I still think his tech is interesting and would love to try it someday and hear for myself
@@bluematrix5001I totally agree. 😎
Eric is honest😊
I had similar experience with Tube Traps and actually, it is well known that Tube Traps perform better than standard flat panels of the same depth; in fact, ASC with Tube Trap and wall attack have been known to give excellent results. and Eric tried those panels and had a wall with fiberglass and then he tested and measured and realized that tube traps are much better and have more bandwidth than panels...it's just acousticians don't want to promote its use because if you are smart, know some acoustics, have a good ear and know how to use REW, you don't need an acoustic and even though tube traps are much easier and faster to build than a wood panel with fiberglass or wool mineral....interestingly just recently GIK is selling tube traps and I think are their most expensive products...must be a reason...
Trouble with them is the eat up space, in my small garden mixing room there is no way I could have used them and ended up with anything practical to work in, plus they look dreadful, like a carpet shop storeroom! 😬
@@kadiummusic that is the negative of Tube Traps...but if you can afford to eat up some space...are great
The reality is with enough research and effort you can learn any skill and avoid hiring people right? But you've only got 24 hours a day to get it all done
@@ezrashanti both ways of doing it are fine, depends on your free time and priorities :)
I’ve been a massive fan of Eric since the T-Ride days, so please don’t take what I’m going to ask as an insult to him in any way, but don’t you think part of Eric’s problems could have been mitigated to some degree if he chose a better dimension ratio for his control room?
His room is 9’9”x15’9”x25’1”, which is like he said, “roughly Golden Ratio” (1x1.62x2.62). Those dimensions show nonconformity with Bonello and Bolt. Just plugging those dimensions into JH Brandt’s calculator predicts with shocking accuracy those three big dips and also predicts the needed broadband trapping that Eric wound up largely doing!
I know that all the math is wonderful until you build, but IF you have the luxury of determining to some degree the dimensions of your room, shouldn’t we at least use dimensions that begin at a less problematic starting point?
Love the channel!😃
THIS IS WHAT I CALL FAIR USE! Damn great video. I just have one question maybe someone can point me to a video discussing this. Why does looking at the Impulse response give us more precise info about the reverb time rather than the RT60/decay measurements?
Why would he decide his sitting position to be in the "collision of two resonances"? Wouldn't it be better to move, instead of fighting against it?
Interesting... I had a similar thought
Deep enough is what ? 21” deep panels ?
Where are jescos measurements?
The tubes barely put a dent in that room.
WHY jesco stil trying to sell the idea that tube traps are the same as porous panels, they are not, and they are not filled with porous material....
Eric’s tube traps was porous absorbers. He uses pipe isolation. Pipe isolation is just mineral wool or foam to put around a pipe. It’s clear if you watch Eric’s video.
@@badmongleoit’s very very very compressed fiberglass tho, Is the stuff used in regular panels and traps the same? My pipe insulation tube traps are like hard they’re so compressed.
Iam not shure check out Erics videos he talkes about it. My guess is that the properties of the isolation doesn't differ that much from mineral wool to make that much of a differens. Tube traps did work for Eric but my guess is that if he back filled all the area covered with tube with mineral wool he would probably get the same effect and a cleaner look and probably cheaper.
die armen strauss monitore mit eingedrückter Membran. Ich persönlich finde die Rollen / Tubes optisch absolut unattraktiv wenn man sich damit die Wand zustellt. Als themenvorschlag, könntest du mal ein video machen inwiefern die Decken / Wand Akustik Produkte von Herstellern wie zB Ecophon für Heimanwender interessant sind
The graphs do not say anything if you do not know how it is measured. sometimes only one speaker is measured, sometimes two. Speakers interfere with themselves.
Big budget amateur build :) That room is huge! Hard not to make it sound good.
My overriding feeling is that his end result (if not the journey!) is fairly typical for a successful acoustic treatment but the tubes look terrible! I may be wrong but surely he could have achieved the same results with the correct choice of panels and the asthetic of the room would be so much better. Maybe he's someone who doesn't care what it looks like but for me walking into what looks like a carpet shop storeroom would drive me nuts and definitely wouldnt inspire me to be creative! 🫣
Yeah Eric is known not to care about aesthetics. His first studio was called HOS (Hunk of Shit).
that is the big question, yes tube traps are deeper but empty and super easy to make.... so the big question is that if at the same mass volume of the tube traps equals in absorption and broadband results as the same mass volume of porous panels?? clearly the Tubetraps are way easier to make and cheaper too
Eric’s case would probably be easier to fill the entire wall with a thick layer of mineral/glasfiber wool held in place by one big panel then cover it up with fabric. Cheep good looking. This is the way most pros do it. Glad wool is dirt cheep and framing also.
I may be wrong, but I think in either this video or maybe the one following this called “The End Of The End Of The Rainbow” he talks about once he’s got everything tweaked, putting fabric walls around everything.