What should i do with my room?

[elementary]

My garage is about 15ft by 25ft with a 7ft ceiling, concrete walls and a concrete floor.
It sounds fairly crap. I put in 12 RW5 3ftx2ft 50mm thick rockwool slabs and it still sounds fairly duff. I'm pretty sure its the ceiling thats the problem. It makes that really annoying pingy, fluttery sort of sound.
Is it possible to regularly get a good sound with such a low ceiling? If I completely kill a cpl of square metres of the roof with rockwool above the drums would this work in theory? The bass in the room isn't really a problem so if I used something cheaper and less dense than RW5 on the roof would this be effective at taking the crappy ceiling reflections out? If I could just glue up some foam or blankets or something like that it would be much handier than having to put up rockwool.
Alternatively I could record in a 12 ft x 20ft garage with a high pitched roof, but its not at my home so its not as convenient.

Thanks

[tmix]

Originally Posted by elementary

My garage is about 15ft by 25ft with a 7ft ceiling, concrete walls and a concrete floor.
I'm pretty sure its the ceiling thats the problem. It makes that really annoying pingy, fluttery sort of sound.
Thanks

I had this exact trouble in all my rooms. (concrete floors) No matter what I did to the walls the ceiling being untreated caused all kinds of problems.
The more of the ceiling you can treat , the happier you will be.

Tom

[elementary]

Thanks tmix, what did you use to treat your ceiling?

Would using less dense rockwool or foam be appropriate seeing that the bass in the room is already in check? The current ceiling is a bit crap and old and I don't think it would hold too much weight.

Are these annoying flutters purely a high end thing?

[bpape]

Anything around 3lb/cu ft will be fine for that application. Just remember that if you have concrete walls too, you're getting basically zero bass absorbtion from the structure itself. I'd try to kill 2 birds with one stone by using some 4" thick panels straddling all around the wall/ceiling corners and then doing the 2" cloud over the drums. That will give you good distribution of absorbtion, broadband bass control, and cover part of the ceiling while you're at it.

Bryan

[tmix]

Exactly what Brian said!
I put as many 4" panels and "superchunk" corner absorbers as I could and then put a bunch of 2' panels suspended from the ceiling about 4 inches away.
You might can see what I did at my website:
http://www.earthandspacemusic.com/tmix/

The rooms sound excellent.

[elementary]

Thanks very much for the info guys, appreciated.

I'm pretty concerned that the roof wont hold any weight at all, its really old and crappy. Do you guys think if I killed it with some of this cheap foam (I know those words are suicide in studio construction)http://www.thomann.de/gb/takustik_noppenschaumstoff.htm, that I could forget about the ceiling and focus on the corner/wall traps?

I was kind of hoping that the foam would just take the boingy reflections out and I could deal with the bass issues by adding more corner traps and wall mounted rockwool as required. Is this naive?

I forgot to mention that the wooden garage door takes up one of the short walls so am I right in assuming this will help the bass to disperse?

Mainly I want to use the room for tracking loud rock instruments.

I never really understood this acoustics game, I know a nice room when I hear it and just want to get mine to that stage. Thanks for bearing with me

[elementary]

What do you guys think of that idea?

I put the Rockwool around the ceiling corners as suggested, fastened it to the wall and let it hang at an angle cutting off the corner. Its a little better, but the ceiling is still boinging lots.

Will I get a crap sound if i cover the rest of the roof in foam? I think it will take out the boing but will it leave me with crapness?

It really won't hold anything heavier.

thanks.

Ryan.

[Dani Pace]

You could use roll insulation on the rest of your celing, it's not heavy and will do a lot more than foam. Just staple it up then cover it with some light weight cloth (staple the cloth too.) Depending on the type of door, you might also use this on the door too. A piece or two of carpet on the floor may help with some of the pingy reflections. Bare concrete reflects a lot of sounds so try to cover as much as possible if you are trying to deaden the room. You might also want to hang heavy drapes or blankets on the walls, hang them so you leave an inch or two of space between them and the wall. Hanging a cloud over the drums will help, especialy if the drummer uses a lot of hard cymbal hits.

[bpape]

Foam is going to do pretty much high frequency absorbtion only - the last thing you need if you're dealing with drums. Cheap foam is even more worthless.

Bryan

[elementary]

Thanks for the ideas guys.

I'll have to re-evaluate.

When I finally get some drums tracked in there I'll post them up.

Thanks

Ryan

[TexRoadkill]

I would just record in the garage. You can make good rooms sound great but crappy rooms never work all that well.