"Pro Acoustic" foam tiles

mashers

New member
Hi all

I'm an amateur singer/songwriter. I have no intention of producing anything professionally, and I can't afford to invest in professional equipment to kit out my home studio. Currently I've created an area for recording vocals by hanging a curtain floor to ceiling across a corner of my studio. The curtain is lined with foam wadding and does a nice job of absorbing sound and deadening the reverberation in the booth area. I would like to add acoustic treatment to the walls and ceiling of this area to prevent as much sound reflection as possible. As I said I cannot afford to invest in professional-level materials. I have found on Amazon the following foam tiles, and I'm wondering if they would do the job:

http://amzn.eu/cN098HC
http://amzn.eu/dqfTzEs

They have good reviews, but I would like to hear opinions from people who have used them in building a home studio setup. Also, should the tiles go all the way from floor to ceiling, or do they only need to be at the level of the microphone?

I have attached some photos of my studio to give an idea of the space and layout currently.

Thanks in advance!

Edit - no idea why the photos are upside down... they weren't that way before I uploaded them!

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The real problem with foam tiles is that they do not really minimize lower frequency reflections. The details on the one link had this:

Below is the Foams Random Incidence Sound Absorption (Typical Results) Frequency (hz) to Relative Absorption Coefficient

125Hz 0.07
250Hz 0.21
500Hz 0.42
1000Hz 0.64
2000Hz 0.80
4000Hz 0.93

So, you can see that it falls off pretty sharply in the lower frequencies, but the fundamental of the human voice is pretty much entirely in that below 500hz range. So, while you'll notice a definite reduction in HF sound, it's not going to do an awful lot for your baritones and basses. Is it better than nothing, sure, but it's not a suitable substitute for real treatment, and it won't help at all if you are mixing instruments with stronger lower fundamental content, like guitars, basses and drums.

Screen Shot 2018-07-30 at 2.45.59 PM.png


Personally, I'd up my budget and get a few good panels if that's an option.
 
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The real problem with foam tiles is that they do not really minimize lower frequency reflections. The details on the one link had this:

Below is the Foams Random Incidence Sound Absorption (Typical Results) Frequency (hz) to Relative Absorption Coefficient

125Hz 0.07
250Hz 0.21
500Hz 0.42
1000Hz 0.64
2000Hz 0.80
4000Hz 0.93

So, you can see that it falls off pretty sharply in the lower frequencies, but the fundamental of the human voice is pretty much entirely in that below 500hz range. So, while you'll notice a definite reduction in HF sound, it's not going to do an awful lot for your baritones and basses. Is it better than nothing, sure, but it's not a suitable substitute for real treatment, and it won't help at all if you are mixing instruments with stronger lower fundamental content, like guitars, basses and drums.

View attachment 102910


Personally, I'd up my budget and get a few good panels if that's an option.
Thanks Keith, that’s very interesting and useful information. Would you be able to suggest some panels that might do a better job?

I don’t think having a bassier response in the vocals would be the end of the world if foam tiles was all I could afford. My arrangements are usually for synths, strings, woodwinds and sampled percussion so a bassier voice can sit well in that mix. Also I use a lot of tenor, head register and falsetto so the bass in the vocals shouldn’t be too great. Think Amnesiac era Thom Yorke and that’s pretty much my vocal and musical style.
 
You can build your own panels with rockwool/compressed fiberglass for as cheap as "professional' acoustic foam. I built my first 6 4"thkx2'x4' panels for under $240 (and $60 was the freight I paid for the Roxul insulation from ATS - if I'd had a local source, it would have been much cheaper, obviously).
 
Foam is useful for touching up toppy issues in an already decently balanced space. Otherwise, it's a waste of space. Broadband trapping, all day, every day, no doubt.

90% of your problem is low / low mid frequencies. Tossing foam up will make it 100% of your problem and do nothing about the actual problem.
 
Thank you mjbphotos and Massive Master. I won't bother with the foam - glad I asked about it before ordering!

I can easily batten out my booth walls, put rockwool in and then staplegun fabric over the top. My only other question is, does this need to go from floor to ceiling around the whole booth, or can I have it from roughly chest height up to the ceiling?
 
I would make some frames from 100mm (4") better but heavier, 150mm " timber about 1mtr square for easy handling and fill with rockwool or GF.

Put 50mm battens on the ceiling and hang the frames 200mm* from walls, the spacing increases the absorbent effect. You can simple build and hang as many as you find you need. N.B. This is to improve the recording space for voice. John's bass traps are to control the monitoring environment, something of course you should be thinking about.

*I am FAR from any acoustics guru so the spacing might be amended by my youngers and (much) betters here.

Dave.
 
I also built my own panels with a rockwool material. It's still going to cost a lot more than those foam bits, but the end result is much better.

Here's how I learned to think about treatment:

Most of what I do at home is mixing stuff I record elsewhere, but with a bit of home recording and mixing of that, too. If you start by treating the lower frequencies as much as you can, you'll also treat the HF content, too because if it's dense enough (and density is the important word) to swallow up long waves, the short ones don't stand a chance.

That absorption number/coefficient is important, but as you saw, it's frequency dependent for all material. You make it work on low frequencies by using really dense stuff, and then make it thick enough to get a good coefficient for your bass. At that point the HF number is about 1. But, you don't want a room that has a coefficient of 1, because it's going to be stone dead. If you start with your bare walls and assume those are zero, calculate the square footage of all surfaces (to become the denominator), then you figure out how much to cover in dense panels, bass traps and maybe some thicker (but not thickest) panels placed appropriately, using the area of those panels as the numerator, so the average of the room starts to move into something like a studio should have. Make sure to place a couple panels at "early reflection" points that would impact your monitoring and recording, like on the side walls and ceiling. Clutter up the rest of the hard space with bookcases, and stuff to act as diffusers. Then, start recording and listening.

And, as [MENTION=89697]ecc83[/MENTION] says, set the panels away from the wall so both sides can capture the sound. It won't quite double their surface area, but you can apply the "fudge factor" of your choice when doing the SWAG on the room's overall absorption.

You can, of course, get crazy scientific about all this. I didn't go there - too lazy :)
 
Thanks Keith, nice to know I was not talking complete bllx!

On the subject of sucking too much HF? I tried a trick for acoustic guitar (for son) whereby I laid some 10sq mtrs of hardboard, (shiny side up but I doubt it matters?) on the carpeted floor around the guitar seat. Seemed to brighten things up without any bad effects?

Dave.
 
I was going to try some laminated wood over the carpet in my tracking area - until I found all the boards were quite warped (concave) from sitting in the basement for a few years! Then I realized that with my Taylors, I really don't need to increase brightness anyway.
 
I have some of that foam. It doesn't seem to do a whole lot, and the good, name brand stuff is super expensive. You can probably diffuse in a similar way using books and things like your bedroom mattress. I guess if a specific wall is a problem some foam on it wouldn't hurt. Weird thing is the foam does seem to make my TV sound better. I think it dilutes some of the overly compressed, high pitched commercials that run these days. That's been the best use I found for foam. :/
 
build your own . easy and quite a bit less expensive. youtube has tons of vids showing how. that's how i did my room and spent under 200 dollars for quality 2' x4'x 4" bass traps. 8 of them .
 
Thanks guys for all the feedback on this. I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube on how to build acoustic treatment panels and I will definitely be doing this.

One question. Acoustically, is there any reason why the panels have to be free-standing or wall-mounted? In other words, would it be ok to just baton out the wall, push in the rock wool, and then staple the fabric over the surface? I would be needing to remove the acoustic panels so don’t care about not being able to easily remove them. This would be considerably quicker and easier than building a free-standing frame to house the rock wool panels.
 
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One question. Acoustically, is there any reason why the panels have to be free-standing or wall-mounted? In other words, would it be ok to just baton out the wall, push in the rock wool, and then staple the fabric over the surface? I would be needing to remove the acoustic panels so don’t care about not being able to easily remove them. This would be considerably quicker and easier than building a free-standing frame to house the rock wool panels.
As mentioned, you get some additional trapping because the sound waves can get behind a panel that is mounted away from the wall; i.e. they present more surface area.
 
If you have open walls/ceiling and own the home, by all means fill that shit with fiberglass and cover with cloth. Don't forget the fire retardant spray... Just sayin...
 
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