help on getting started with room acoustics

J

Jason James

New member
hi there, I'm using my living room and two spare bedrooms as a semi pro recoding studio. I've had great luck so far with no acoustic treatment but I realize (i think) the advantages of controling the rooms sound more. Where's a good place to get started? I know about Auralex but at the moment I don't think I'll be able to afford their price tag to do all 3 rooms. The living room 18x20 vaulted ceiling/wood floors for tracking. Two 10x10 bed rooms one for tracking one for control room. One with wood floor the other with carpet (for now). Is the control room or tracking room more important to get a handle on? Is this important in a control room if you monitor at a low level (less interfereance from the room)? Should I be looking for Live sounding rooms or more dead? Thanks for any info to help get me started. Oh yeah, I record mosty rock, rock/country, rock/ jazz full band groups.
Also, Sound leakage from outside in or inside out isn't really a problem.

Jason
 
Go to this link.

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/

Read everthing.

Buy this book.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...103-5152147-8623047?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Read everthing.

Pay attention to all the stuff you can do for yourself that will work better than the Auralex stuff and for much less and it is very easy to build.

If you have the option to have different types of rooms it is better. Your control room should always be more dead than the rooms that you record in.

Read everything you can. Have fun.

Eric
 
Microcosm Acoustic Treatment

Yeah, that's a typical problem. I looked around a lot before I decided on an acoustic treatment. There's a lot of products out there (auralex, primacoustic, sonomatt, etc.) I ended up going with Microcosm Panels, and I'm extremely happy with them. This treatment is fast, convenient and effective (and my wife was happy about not having to glue foam to the walls). Better yet, this was by far the most affordable solution I could find. You can check it out at www.microcosmmedia.com
 
Look at the absorber plans on the SAE site. The cheapest absorbers that you can buy are about $2.30/sq. ft. You can build better absorbers for about $1.25/sq. ft. and they are easy to build. Look at them and give it a go before you buy.

Eric
 
Jason,

> Is the control room or tracking room more important <

Both are important, but the control room is where you'll make all mixing decisions and possibly compensate for a less than ideal recording space. So I suppose the control room is a little more important.

If you're on a budget, you can buy 703 fiberglass board for a lot less than foam rubber, and 703 is also twice as effective. But fiberglass and foam do nothing for the low frequencies, which is where you'll have the biggest problems.

If you're serious about wanting an accurate mixing environment but don't want to spend a lot of money, see my DIY article that shows how to build real wood panel bass traps:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

Then look for "Build a better bass trap" from the June 1995 issue of Electronic Musician magazine.

--Ethan
 
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