advice on treatment ?

R

Randy5235

New member
recently moved into a 3000 sq ft warehouse (live there with my girlfriend and 2 roommates). they are pretty down with me doing a bit of work. the living room is about 52' x 21' x 14 . the floor is made of concrete and so are the walls. i cannot however use all that space (i wish) because my one roomate is a photographer and uses the space too (its his place) i do have the corner however and can probably use about a 20 x 20 space. I initially thought of building walls and whatnot creating a smaller room. that doesnt work for a couple of reasons. first we'll only be here 5 years tops more probably 3. second of all is cost. third the smaller room i am dealing with generally the worse the sound.
my idea was this . Basicall hanging some sort of sound absorbers from the ceiling to create the 'virtual' 20 x 20' room but i would still (i assume ) be dealing with larger room dimensions as far as sound control. plus if i hung the panels from the ceiling a could build them in such a way that i could pull the bottom up to the ceiling and they would be outta they way. I guess my questions are basically is this a sound (get it!!) idea? and secondly any recomendations on how to find my *problem* areas ... I have a BIT too much reverb happening in here (read ALOT) obviously. is there any software i can possibly get that would A: generate a tone and B: record said tone from mics to give me an indication perhaps frequency build up? sorry so long just wanted to provide as much info as possible.
Thank you ,Randy5235


PS i guess i could alway generate the tones :) and to give idea i play and record mostly drums,bass and guitar (usual fair) plus ocasionally some horns and hand drums.
 
Randy,

> my idea was this . Basicall hanging some sort of sound absorbers from the ceiling to create the 'virtual' 20 x 20' room <

There are two issues. One is sound leaking out that disturbs your neighbors and also interferes with your use of the room because of sound that leaks in. The other, which is entirely different, is treating the acoustics within the room so it sounds good and gives you an accurate representation of what you're hearing and mixing.

> > is there any software i can possibly get that would A: generate a tone and B: record said tone from mics to give me an indication perhaps frequency build up? <

You can measure a room with pink noise and with sine waves. Each is useful. Read my article "Build a better bass trap" that explains bass traps and shows how to build them, linked here:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

Also follow the link to my commercial site. Even if you don't have a budget to buy treatment, there are more explanations there, plus a link to download a software signal generator you can use to measure your room.

--Ethan
 
the noise to neighbors isn't too much of a problem I live in a commercial area however the sound coming in is more of an issue I've attached a rough image of the are the black box is the 'virtual area' that i can use.
 

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Randy,

> however the sound coming in is more of an issue <

That's the same issue as preventing sound from leaking out, and what you need in that case is isolation in addition to room treatment.

The best way to achieve isolation is with walls that are as heavy as possible. If that's not sufficient the next step is to build two sets of walls, an extra ceiling, and another floor that is floated on fiberglass or rubber above the current floor. Yes, that gets very expensive! So start with heavy walls that divide your space from the neighboring space and see if that's good enough.

--Ethan
 
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