Owens Corning 703 vs. Roxul Safe 'n' Sound?

Nah, I’ll make one frame sized to fit three pieces of the Roxul in, 45-3/4" x 48" interior. There is 56" between the two doors that flank the listening position, on the wall opposite the speakers. I might put a Roxul strip on each of those doors too, if they prove to be reflecting too much sound over to the lp. The space between the doors and the side walls is far enough away from the lp to be of no concern to me. That’s all the absorption I want---just to kill the first reflection from the speakers pointed at the lp wall.

The room sounds fine overall, no glaring problems as far as I can tell. I have ASC Tube Traps and a DSPeaker Anti-Mode for low-frequency eigenmodes, and MG CornerTunes and EchoTunes for any slap and flutter echo emanating from up near the ceiling. The wall behind the speakers will remain reflective---fine (in fact, preferred) for dipole speakers, as will the sidewalls---no need, due to dipole cancellation. First, I’m painting the room, this weekend, hopefully. I chose Sherwin Williams "Mink", a combination of gray and brown that is absolutely beautiful!

One thing to know about the acoustic materials is that you need massive amounts of thickness if you want to absorb a lot of the lower bass frequencies. Yes, putting a space behind the fiberglass will help because the sound will bounce off the wall and back into the fiberglass. However, if you want to absorb the lower frequencies, you’ll need a very thick trap (like the 6-7" bass traps from GIK). If you want to put multiple layers of the fiberglass in, you need to keep them at the lower densities (like 2.5 - 3 lbs).

I chose the 2" thick 8 lb Roxul because I wanted to limit how much mid/high frequencies it would absorb, but I still wanted decent bass absorption. At a certain point, the denser material will start reflecting sound at a thickness level. A 4" stack of the 8lb Roxul will probably not work any better than a 2" stack. However, putting a 4-8" stack of 2.5lb Safe-n-sound will absorb a lot more bass (as well as a lot more mids/highs).

I didn't expect the extra space behind the panel to turn it into a bass trap! Just to lower its effective absorptive range a little. In the specs chart, it looks as if the Rockboard 60 may be a little better at higher frequencies than the 80, though the difference is marginal and perhaps insignificant. I don't want to over think this! But since the listening position has to be right up against a wall (to allow my dipole speakers to be positioned 5' from the wall behind them), and low-frequency eigenmodes run along room boundaries, absorption at as low a frequency as easily possible would be nice.

So I went to Home Depot last night, and though the HD website stated that the branch I went to had Safe 'n' Sound in stock (even the number of packages), I couldn't find any on the shelves. The HD "dude" couldn't even find it in the stores computer, telling me any acoustical product would have to be ordered. I went in to look at the stuff, to see if it is soft and loose like fiberglass insulation, or stiff like OC703. So Monday I'm going to Lowes, whose website indicates it has 2' x 4' Safe 'n' Sound in stock. We'll see!