Auralex Alternatives

R

RockStarzUSA

New member
Other than the above brand, has anyone discovered other brands well worth looking at for sound proofing/sound manipulation???
 
> Other than the above brand, has anyone discovered other brands well worth looking at for sound proofing/sound manipulation? <

There are a lot of options these days, and many are better than any brand of foam. However, good acoustic treatment costs more per piece than foam, but it works so much better that the overall cost is comparable or even less.

--Ethan
 
This is where I got the foam for my studio: http://www.foambymail.com/Products.html As far as I can tell this is virtually identical to the Auralex but it's less expensive. Since using that I've learned about other treatments (read the stuff on Ethan's site and there's a lot of stuff on this board about making absorbers out of rockwool,etc.) so if I was to do it over again I might weigh some of those other options. Regardless, I do feel I'm getting pretty good value out of my fairly inexpensive solution.
 
JeffLancaster said:
This is where I got the foam for my studio: http://www.foambymail.com/Products.html As far as I can tell this is virtually identical to the Auralex but it's less expensive. Since using that I've learned about other treatments (read the stuff on Ethan's site and there's a lot of stuff on this board about making absorbers out of rockwool,etc.) so if I was to do it over again I might weigh some of those other options. Regardless, I do feel I'm getting pretty good value out of my fairly inexpensive solution.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link!
 
Well burst my bubble :( Still the stuff seems to work pretty good to me - I could definitely tell a huge difference in my room once I installed the foam. Really, I'm not sure what could possibly cause those kind of difference in the numbers - the foam I have looks and feels virtually identical. Anyone know what the actual difference might be?
 
The foam by mail stuff is NOT the same as Auralex. I noticed a visual difference right away and Ethan's tests in the above post prove they're not the same sonically either. In fact the numbers shown by the seller seem to be falsified and/or copied from the auralex site. That said, depending on what you use them for, the price versus performance tradeoff doesn't completely rule it out either. For cutting down on flutter echo, high and mid frequency first reflections and things of that nature they work fine, particularly the thicker stuff. If your looking for bass trapping, forget about it, in fact forget about foam in general because it just doesn't work down to the frequencies of interest. If you can source some rigid fiberglass (Owens Corning 703, Knauf board, etc) or mineral/rock wool and make your own traps, you'll save money and get better results. The problem is it can be hard to find in some places. There's a "sticky" thread about this in the Studio Building and Display forum. I'll bump it up to the top for you.
 
Well I never actually compared them at the same place and time, just looked at the Auralex but was put-off by the price, then I found the foam-by-mail stuff, ordered it, and when I got it was relieved to see that it seemed the same. It is working good for me in my studio for cutting high and mid frequency reflections. I mostly just track vocals in my room - everything is electronic or recorded direct, so it really helped my room for that purpose. It also helped quite a bit with monitoring in front of my nearfields, provided I sit in the "sweet spot". Now I have noticed I still seem to have some bass buildup in the rear corners of my room, even with the triangle absorbers, but assumed this was normal with ANY foam solution. Because of this I might consider adding some homemade rockwool traps in the back corners at some point. Not sure if that would be worth much though since I don't normally monitor my mixes from the corners of the room! Still, if anyone can explain to me how cleaning up these areas might improve things at my mix position, I'd love to hear it.

Bottom line to me is that the foam-by-mail has provided good value for the low cost. I would recommend it for taming the higher frequencies and deadening the echoes in the room, but for serious bass trapping I might try something else. One other thing - if you use the foam-by-mail, get some real Auralex glue for keeping it on the walls - it's the only thing I've found that works.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top