I understand if you cant help me out

[kikling]

About a year ago, my dad (yes I'm 14, I live at home) converted our Garage into a studio (dance and music, sisters a dancer). We thought we were doing a good job, we made everything wood, put a mirror on one wall and made the place sound proof. But the big problem we found out after was the acoustics. The sounds bounce off the walls like rubber. Its crazy! Everything is a flutter of echoes. I read about different ways of fixing it but its either to expensive or cosmetically ugly. I don't know the dimensions (sorry, its not big, its pretty small) but its a square room (i know its the worst with saquares, but as i said before, it was alraedy shaped like that. Well let me tell you whats bad. I use cool edit pro and crappy $15 mics from the Shack, but im going to get a sm57 soon. Well i record the guitar from the amp and sounds good. but when recording drums, the sound bounces and i get an delay echo which makes the drums sound distant. I would like to know a cheap, cosmetically nice, anti-space consuming solution for this. I know its hard. But if you can please help. Thanks Alot

[This message has been edited by kikling (edited 07-23-2000).]

 

[John Sayers]

Hi kikling - get anything you have that is soft and cuddly like old mattresses - heavy doonas (how do you spell them - you know bed covers )- soft lounges/chairs - carpets - hang heavy curtains over the mirrors and stop all the high frequency reflections - that's the start. If you want to go further check out my site and get your dad involved - he will probably help you financially (not to pay me cos it's free) but if he's involved he'll understand that to cut down all the low frequency reflections will take some additional construction.
Cheers John http://www.lis.net.au/~johnsay/Acoustics

 

[BigKahuna]

I have a similar problem with my room. I hung up some blankets and put a overstuffed chair in there, and that helped. Also, I've been using a couple of gobos that my friend got from an hifi store a while ago. They don't help the whole room, but creating a vocal 'booth' with them helps isolate the vocal/gtr/whatever from the room and cut down the echo. Each gobo is basically made up of 2 pieces (22" x 72") of particleboard, connected with hinges, with insulation on one side covered with fabric. The other side is a reflective laminate material. When not in use, I put them in the corners and they're out of the way.
I'm tired of the blankets and the chair takes up too much room, so I'm looking at foam now ... which can get pretty expensive. The cost must be low, so I'm looking at Markerfoam, which seems to be the best value.
That will help with the hi-mid - hi freqs ... but the low freqs still need to be addressed. Bass freqs tend to build up in corners, so think foam or other material in each corner will help.

[This message has been edited by BigKahuna (edited 07-23-2000).]