Towards the end of 2024, I was contacted by Steven Harris, who had just finished building a beautiful new home down the coast in Blairgowrie. The house was big, bright, and full of space—and down on the lower level, he’d set aside a long, clean white room to become his new studio.
The space had loads of potential, but acoustically, it was a bit of a beast. It was so live that even just standing in the room felt unpleasant. The first reverb time test we ran confirmed it—decay times were way too long, to the point that it was hard to even hold a conversation in there. Safe to say, treatment was top of the list.
Here’s a REW screenshot of Steven’s room before treated. As you can see, the low/mids are off the chart.
Steven had a clear vision for the studio: he wanted it to feel clean and minimal but still be a seriously functional space for mixing, producing, and recording. After our first round of treatment, we brought most of the reverb times down to around 200–300ms, which already made a huge difference. But we kept going—adding more panels after seeing the results—aiming to smooth everything out closer to a consistent 200ms across the full frequency range. That sweet spot gives you a really controlled but natural sound, which is what we were going for.
This was his room after the first batch of treatment. Most frequencies came down to about 300ms. We then added (I think) about 6x more Ultras in the middle section.
The back section of the room became the live area—where Steven planned to track drums and other instruments. We added binary absorber/diffuser panels in the corners and lined the back wall with QRD diffusers, which helped keep the space lively but balanced—no unwanted flutter or low-end buildup.
He also had a small vocal booth off to one side, which he treated using some panels he already had lying around. That room worked really well for voice recordings and overdubs—dry, focused, and easy to work in.
Most of the main treatment was done using our Ultra Panels, which Steven and I installed together. We used some metal strapping he picked up from Bunnings—I think we might have even burned and bent it a bit to shape it—and then screwed it onto the backs of the panels so they could hang from a picture rail system that ran all the way around the room. Super clean, and really practical for repositioning down the line if needed.
For the ceiling, Steven wanted a low-profile look with as few fixings as possible. We attached the Ultra Panels in pairs using sections of white-sprayed MDF, then hung them from ceiling rails to keep the aesthetic minimal while still tackling those vertical reflections.
Once everything was in place, the room was totally transformed. What started as a giant echo chamber had become a proper working studio—tight, balanced, and inspiring to be in. It was one of those builds where the end result really matched the vision, and it was a lot of fun to work on.
Steven’s Blairgowrie studio is now a proper creative retreat—designed to sound great, feel good, and let the work flow.