feedback on studio setup

A

agiledood

New member
I'm "rebuilding" my studio in a basement bedroom and wanted some feedback. The room is small (9.5 ft x 8 ft)

Main Use:
- voiceovers for professional instructional videos, webcasts etc
- recording vocals and acoustic guitar

In the pic is the arrangement of the room. I have Vdrums and will be doing all the bass, electric guitar recording through either my GNX4 or direct into my computer with my current Steinberg UR 22 and/or Roland Duo Capture (plan to replace those with the A&H Zed 10 FX eventually) so I won't be micing live amps, unless I get more serious about recording down the road. For now the studio monitors I'm getting will double as my vdrum and guitar amp.

Main question is around acoustic treatment. I watched that awesome video about sound in rooms and am looking at two options:

1) Wall-mounted Flexibooth and portable acoustic panels that would give me a mostly enclosed area to record acoustic guitar and vocals. The appeal with this option is moving the portable ones and shutting the doors to have more space in the room for practicing.

2) put acoustic panels on the walls in the corner and see how it sounds before getting portable panels.

All the recording I've done so far, I've done in my bedroom closet and my clothes have been my acoustic treatment!

Option 1 is more expensive by about $500 but given what I'm planning to do, I'm most curious about whether it's a waste of money getting the Flexibooth and lining the corner walls would be better.

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I like the idea of large surface area 'stand alone / movable treatment. It's flexibility- can serve for a 'mic area, then around your mix area. 2, 3, 4 inch depth(?), lots of square feet. A few, maybe six feet tall..?
It is not the 'popper bass treatment first approach, but at least it's helping in the room. Perhaps better than the same 'sq feet and depth' mounted on the walls. And it is about square feet and depth.
$450 for one 24x48x2" and two 12x48x1", is not a lot of treatment.
 
Not sure what a 'flexibooth' is, but you can build your own rockwool traps fairly easy - a few basic tools, some wood to frame, and some cloth to cover the rockwool. ANd for $450 you coudl stuff that room with 4" traps. Make them free-standing, ,or easy to hang from ceiling hooks, so you can move them around to isolate mics.
 
The Primacoustics kit is ok for ceiling cloud and point-of-first-reflection panels, but at that thickness, they do not attenuate any bass frequencies, which are the typical problem in small rooms.
I built my first 6 4"thckx2'x4' traps for under $250 - and $75 of that was shipping of the rockwool to me as I didn't have any local source.
 
Is this your house? What are the walls made of, what's on the other side, and what about the ceiling?

The walls in my basement room were so flimsy that bass just blew through them to the rest of the world and didn't need a whole lot of trapping. If you've got something like Sheetrock on both sides, though, things will be different.

There won't be anything good about any of the mid-to-upper reflections in a room that small, and it really will be best to try to absorb as much as possible.

I think ideally, you take off the inside wall surface, stuff the studs with insulation, and cover that with cloth. Do the same with the floor joists, or if there's already a dropped ceiling, fill the joists and put the panels back up. If some of those walls are just concrete, build some panels to cover them.

We usually want the mix position to be centered on the shorter of the two dimensions, so I would move that desk.
 
agiledood said:
This is the Flexibooth: FlexiBooth | Primacoustic


I think I might end up with this room kit: Primacoustic London 8 - Gray | Sweetwater

Looks like it'll be a good starter setup and about as cheap as making my own after checking out Lowes.
Click to expand...

I am basically doing the same as you. My track room is 12.5 x 10.5. I am ordering two of the London 8 set ups. I am also going to build something similar to the Flexibooth using 2 inch pvc pipe and thick quilts. It will be three sided. You can also use heavy moving blankets. It will be done in 2' x 6' panels that will be hinged so I can configure it for different applications. My goal is meeting the ACX requirements for audio books as well as local solo instrumental work and vocals.

View attachment 100307
 
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ashcat_lt said:
Is this your house? What are the walls made of, what's on the other side, and what about the ceiling?

The walls in my basement room were so flimsy that bass just blew through them to the rest of the world and didn't need a whole lot of trapping. If you've got something like Sheetrock on both sides, though, things will be different.

There won't be anything good about any of the mid-to-upper reflections in a room that small, and it really will be best to try to absorb as much as possible.

I think ideally, you take off the inside wall surface, stuff the studs with insulation, and cover that with cloth. Do the same with the floor joists, or if there's already a dropped ceiling, fill the joists and put the panels back up. If some of those walls are just concrete, build some panels to cover them.

We usually want the mix position to be centered on the shorter of the two dimensions, so I would move that desk.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's my house. It's a corner room in my basement so two of the walls are drywall over concrete walls, the other two walls are steel studs and drywall. Ceiling is drywall as well. Good point about the desk, I was thinking of facing it towards the wall where the Flexibooth and drums are in the diagram. Problem is, it'll be hard to find space for the drums!

Of course, I could move the drums out of the room and setup a place to record them since I'm using a Roland kit and not live micing. Then the room could just be for recording voice/guitar and mixing.
 
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That's almost worst case scenario there. If you're going to be in that room for a while, you really should consider tearing out the drywall and stuffing all the studs and ceiling like I said. It's the cheapest, most effective treatment you can do, and it doesn't take up any of the precious little space available.
 
Using thin rockwool panels (or quilts/moving blankets) can work fine to remove flutter echo/reverb issues when recording. When it comes to mixing (of music) however, your low end is out of control until you add a lot of thick rockwool traps - this applies to small rooms especially.
 
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