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Acoustic treatment in a tight space

  • Writer: Richard Gott
    Richard Gott
  • May 12
  • 2 min read

Location sound recordists often find ourselves improvising and innovating in order to circumvent issues that we encounter dynamically, in the field. Sometimes, the best solutions aren't immediately available and we go away, scratch our heads and make sure we're covered in case we encounter a similar scenario again in the future.


Before lockdown 2020, I was asked to do an audio-only recording of a contributor, providing an audio feed and return link to/from a remote director so that the contributor and director could be in communication with each other. The production company booked a hotel room for the purpose. I took stands and sound blankets to treat the room if needed but when I got there, the room was tiny and there was no space to even put a stand. It got me thinking about how I might approach that situation if it arose again, what might I do to get sound blankets rigged when there's no floor space for stands. My solution was to use autopoles that extend between floor and ceiling but they don't come with any fixing points from which to suspend fabri and so I created a modification and I wanted to share my solution, in case it’s useful to anyone else.

A sound blanket is shown suspended from a modification made to the top of the autopole as described in the blog post. The image shows the top two thirds of a pole with a blanket suspended from it from half way along the blanket and then running off at 90 degrees in two directions, creating a corner. We see the view of the corner from the outside.
Autopole sandwiched between floor and ceiling

I bought three Manfrotto Autopoles (76B) 1.5m-2.7m so I can get them in the van easily, and found plumbing/bracket fittings (Munsen rings) that have M8 and M10 threads inside them. I attached one Munsen ring to the top of each pole and threaded an M10 eyebolt into each one to create a suspension point. I have two options for attaching the cloth to the pole: using a tarpaulin bungee through an eyelet in the cloth or, if there’s no eyelet on the blanket at the point where there’s Munsen ring/eybolt to hang it from, I use a Holden clip with a karabiner. The clip grabs the fabric and the karibener hooks onto the eyebolt.

We see a close up of the black Holden clip that grabs the blanket, attached to which is an orange, metal karibener. This is clipeed to the eye bolt that has been secured to the thread in the Munsen ring.
Holden clip grabs the blanket and karibener clips to eye bolt threaded into Munsen ring
From the other side of the sound blanket we see more or less the same view as the photo above, only this time we can clearly see the pole as well.
Rear view of same

It's one of those modifications that I don't need all that often, but, when I do, I'm mightily glad I did it and thank my past self for the effort. Thankfully, I've not since had the displeasure of being squashed into a pokey hotel room with a contributor (and hope I never do again).


Parts used:

Manfrotto Autopoles. LTT Group (Germany) - https://tinyurl.com/ycdub5be

Rubber lined Munsen rings - You need the 38-43mm size.

M10 Eyebolts. Amazon (UK) - https://tinyurl.com/y8pebhf6

Holdon clips. Amazon (UK) - https://tinyurl.com/yb847pmj

Tarpaulin bungee cords

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Sound Recordist Cardiff and West Wales. UK. 2025

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