Choosing the right type of acoustic treatment for my room!

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9:45

New member
So It was suggested to me by a few users on these forums that I should get acoustic room treatment done with my room. I have calculated everything in my room to find out the total wall area of my room. Now I have experience in measuring rooms and doing a small room like this is quite simple! But now for the part I have no clue at all what I am doing when it comes to acoustically treating a room. I see many different types of foams, panels, and traps that range from different prices. I have attached a rough drawing of my room with where my monitor placement is so that I can find out what would be the best bang for my buck. My budget is about $300-600 i will spend 6 but would like to spend 3 if possible , and i would like to cover every surface of my walls if possible as well!
(if you open the image in new tab then you can see the whole image)

Room Demensions.png
 
Oh yeah i forgot to say this! You can take the pic above and edit it with what and where i should place things if you like!
 
Little confusing how you have put your overall dimensions! 159" = 13 ft 3", not 10 ft 39". You need bass traps in the corners (those back corners with closet and door are going to be tough, but maybe you can hang/stack traps while mixing, and take them down when not?
If you have some simple tools (saw, hammer, staplegun, you cna make your own traps (read elsewhere here for details).
First reflection point absorption on the side walls and a ceiling cloud - these can all be 2" OC 703 or 705 or Roxul, traps in corners should be 4" thick.
 
There are a lot of threads covering this. For now I would stick with broad band (porous absorption) at this budget you're pretty much stuck with diy. Try building some corner traps either with fluffy pink fiberglass (like at lowes/home depot) or try and find some mineral wool/owens corning. What most people do around here is take something like owens corning 703 and build a cheap wooden frame and wrap it in burlap so the fibers don't escape but the fabric is as acoustically transparent as possible. I think most people do either 4-6 inches thick so two or three panels per frame? (Idk i used 3 2" thick rockwool panels personally) you'll want to treat as many corners as possible this means wall to wall corners as well as wall to ceiling corners and even wall to floor if you can. After this you should treat your first reflection points. (12 panels) This will give you a starting point. Don't wana sound like an ass but stay away from auralex and their forums/videos there is a lot of bad advice floating around there lately if you want to spend the extra money check out gik or real traps It would be money well spent. Finding the best place to put your speakers is definitely task numero uno. with your size room you're going to have room mode problems no matter what you do (within reason) so find the optimal place to put your desk/monitors. A lot of this will be a pick your poison type deal because a position that has better room mode response may be in a spot with bad sbir. Basically do your homework research a bit theres no free lunch with this stuff you will always make compromises and you have to find a fine line between budget/acoustics/comfort. My advice to you is put some
ass into it and look around locally I bought my mineral wool from a building supply store and after shooting the fool a bit with the sales guy I scored 6 2x4 panels for 35 dollars and bought i don't even know how many bundles. If i would have bought that offline it would have been about 100 each. Also fabric stores have some super deals i bought a hundred yards of black burlap for about 200 bucks. There is so much to talk about here and i don't want to ramble.
 
I treated mine with 4'X2' acoustic panels....my room layout is quite a bit different than yours though....but I ordered Roxul Safe N Sound from Lowes.....8 panels in a bundle, 4'X2' each, 3" thick. Cost was about $60. I used 1"X3" furring strips and made the frames, putting 90 angles in the corners for stability. Stretched fabric across the back, stapled it on the frame, turned it over, laid the Roxul in the frame, then stretched burlap on the front and stapled it on the back. It really does a fine job to "tame" the room. Get your near-fields in the right position, sit in your mixing position, and get someone to put a mirror on the walls (flat against the wall), especially on the left/right and ceiling. Anywhere you can see your near-fields in the mirror, put a panel there. It can get more complicated than that, but that ought to get you started.

Here is a cool YouTube video that shows you how to make the panels:


Hope this helps
 
Thanks everyone, I am defiantly going DIY on this project looks simple enough to do! Do you guys think that the overall position of my speakers is okay right there? i can't really move my speakers position to the other end of the room, oh yeah and also where would i typical set up these pannels and how many do you think would fit in my room? I am not sure if i need bass traps at all, i mean i make ambient synth music so i don't think i need that at all.
 
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That is totally up to you on whether or not it is worth it. I think the most important thing for you right now is to just do a little bit more research on what acoustics can do for you. Regardless of how much treatment has helped me mix (tremendous amounts) it changed my perception. With a room your size you're going to have severe bass isues. I would highly recomment you look into schroeder's frequency and standing waves/room modes. If you aren't sure how big of an issue bass can be. Play a sweeping sine wave through your monitors some bass will sound LOUD and some will sound non existent-nulls and nodes. If you want a rough idea on what you're dealing with take a mic put it where you sit and record some music through your speakers. Play it back in ANOTHER system: your car or something. This is how much acoustics are blinding you. People still spend thousands of dollars on new mics/pres/interfaces/monitors only to realize it wasn't the problem. I'd rather record/mix any band in a well treated studio with a portastudio and a set of radio shack mics than i would in an 8x8x8 untreated room with all the best mics/pres money can buy. Some people think you can learn to work in bad acoustic environments thas not true because of frequencies that will literally dissapear and null out. You can't learn to hear whats not there. Acoustic treatment imo is more important in mixing and mastering which is more or less what you're doing right, Not so much tracking live instruments? You'll hear all the time about a band recording in their home or something calling acoustic treatment over rated but you won't EVER hear a mastering engineer say that. Not in ANY genre.
 
David Cooke said:
That is totally up to you on whether or not it is worth it. I think the most important thing for you right now is to just do a little bit more research on what acoustics can do for you. Regardless of how much treatment has helped me mix (tremendous amounts) it changed my perception. With a room your size you're going to have severe bass isues. I would highly recomment you look into schroeder's frequency and standing waves/room modes. If you aren't sure how big of an issue bass can be. Play a sweeping sine wave through your monitors some bass will sound LOUD and some will sound non existent-nulls and nodes. If you want a rough idea on what you're dealing with take a mic put it where you sit and record some music through your speakers. Play it back in ANOTHER system: your car or something. This is how much acoustics are blinding you. People still spend thousands of dollars on new mics/pres/interfaces/monitors only to realize it wasn't the problem. I'd rather record/mix any band in a well treated studio with a portastudio and a set of radio shack mics than i would in an 8x8x8 untreated room with all the best mics/pres money can buy. Some people think you can learn to work in bad acoustic environments thas not true because of frequencies that will literally dissapear and null out. You can't learn to hear whats not there. Acoustic treatment imo is more important in mixing and mastering which is more or less what you're doing right, Not so much tracking live instruments? You'll hear all the time about a band recording in their home or something calling acoustic treatment over rated but you won't EVER hear a mastering engineer say that. Not in ANY genre.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think that this is a definite thing I am going to have to do! I will gladly spend this 600 bucks to make my studio sound as good as it can! There is one problem i have found quickly about my room however... there is a window behind one of my studio monitors, (you can tell by the drawing i made) so what would be the best way to put a bass trap in the corner of my room if there a window there? its a small window and only sticks out mabye 2 inches this is the only problem i think iam going to face with this room :( any ideas?
 
so i found a solution for windows :D sound proof blankets :D, they make them for windows with these strong as hell magnets that link to the wall right around the window! then i can easily take it down and put it up when i need to :D. I can also put them up and set up the bass trap easier also and they best part is there like 12 bucks also. I know that sound proofing will not really do anything to my room acoustically, but my windows are in really old shape and i am sure that there are sound waves leaking outside even when there shut. I am starting to get a better concept also on making the acoustic panels as well, I am going to go to with the rockwool safeNsound if i can't find owens. 703 locally (forget paying 40 bucks shippers per 8 sheets!)

Robn THANK YOU for that video link earlier gives me a perfect idea for what i need to do and how to do it!

I saw this link right here http://gikacoustics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/GIK-Acoustics-Room-Layout.gif
for some ideas on placement, i have read up and it looks like i need to make my bass traps 6" or two layers of rockwool to get proper usage out of it.

I also have not mentions skyline diffuses yet! they look really really cool and fun to make! this project is going to take awhile but I am really pumped about this!
 
Share the link for these 'sound proof blankets'! :facepalm: Sorry to say, there is no such thing. Heavy moving blankets or similar will help muffle the sound in both directions, but will not 'sound-proof' anything.

The GIK guide is a good 'idea' place, but note your room is small and less than ideal. Read through this thread about small room acoutsics.
 
^^ this.. If you really want to minimize sound from the window you might want to consider adding another pane to the glass or boarding it up all together and caulking it. I wouldn't dive into diffusion yet if I were you..there is sooo much that could go wrong with that plus building anything is tough I was looking into stepped diffusers and qrd and man... Thats some freakin' work. Lots of math involved and you have to consider the angle of incidence, rarefaction, deflection and a million other things. I'm still confused on the matter because I constantly see diffusers really close to sources even though every piece of research I've read says that you have to be a certain distance from diffusers to get the full potential. Think about this if a 50hz wave is about 20 something feet long and your walls are 10 feet wide (hypothetically) that wave has zero velocity and its just mushing around trying to develop you're gonna need all the broadband absorption you can get. If you do go with diffusers please let me know how it works i'm just so bad at anything that has to do with nails/screws/hammers.
 
And as far as bass traps go I would just make them freestanding stack two 2'x4'x6" panels on top of each other and move them if you have to get around it. Its going to suck but at least you can use them as gobos if you need to. Should work provided the place doesn't go up in flames then you'll be pretty screwed.
 
so i am ordering all the stuff very soon guys i will post pictures and let you know how its going along thanks for all the advice guys :D
 
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