How much does it take. . .

[benherron.rrr]

. . . for acoustic treatment to make a difference?

Just a general question.

I know there are probably a lot of veriables to take in to account. Lets take foam pannels and bass traps for instance. How much coverage would it take for you to notice the room to begin to deaden?

The reason im asking is that, im going to speand some money on some foam pannels and foam bass traps, I know its alot better and a little cheaper and better to make my own, but for the extra it will cost me will save me time I dont have at the moment.

Also while Im here. Im using a pair of fostex PM0.4's for my monitors. They are small (4 inch cones) They treat me well but when getting into a mix they get easily overloaded, the bass gets very overwhelming and the highs dont seem to be consistant, unless I turn the volume down to a point where there is no point in trying to mix it because the detail is inaudiable. Thinking about getting a bigger pair of new monitors and thourght id ask if that is mostly down to the size of them, or is it my room makeng the difference?

 

[bigtom]

Forget the foam man it's mostly a waist of money.

As far as how quickly you'll here a difference, I made two 2'x4'x4'' panels, filled with rock wool, and just leaned them against the wall and I could here a difference in the room's acoustics. I mean just with my voice you could here how much less "flutter" there was in the room.

I now have 12 4" traps up and about 15 2" traps up. It has made a huge difference. Well worth the effort.

 

[Jeff_D]

It doesn't take much to hear an audible difference in the flutter in the room, especially when you're comparing to a previously empty room. As mentioned, skip the foam. The 'common' generic answer is for minimum treatment is to treat the corners and the first reflection points and you'll be off to a great start. I've read that you want 30% of the reflective surfaces covered- I'm not sure where that came from or how legit that is.

 

[benherron.rrr]

I just don't really have the time atm to make any pannels myself. and I have got some good prices on some foam. My studio is in my bedroom, so its fairly full as it goes. Why is it so many people say the foam stuff is crap, yet it is used so widely? In our studio at uni, he control room is full of foam and it sounds great, as far as small dead rooms go. Im working for some guy who has a small studio he uses for post. and he has a bit of foam up there. In fact the only time ive ever seen anything a little better is when I went to see this guy who's studio (I imagin) hits well over the £1000000 mark. but he had the whole space designed ground upwards by an acoustic expert. Obviously there is reason to have the mixing space dead, and the recording space a little livlier, is there a good inbetween space?

 

[Jeff_D]

I suppose its not really that foam is *that* bad, but that rigid fiberglass is just *that much* better- especially for the $$. The numbers don't lie. Foam just isn't effective in the low range- their own literature and test results show it. How big is the control room at your school studio? Larger rooms are gonna sound better regardless and have less of a problem with low end response anyway.

As for why foam is so widely used... its HEAVILY marketed by Auralex, et al. Rigid fiberglass' prime market is in industrial applications, and studio construction is a pretty small niche for them, so they don't spend much effort pursuing that. The 'pros' designing pro studios know what they need and they don't need a bunch of ads to reinforce it.

If you don't want to diy, check out GIK or RealTraps. Personally, I wouldn't spend a penny on 'acoustic' foam.

 

[RAMI]

I have got some good prices on some foam.

Honestly, that's a bad reason to buy something that won't help you.

Why is it so many people say the foam stuff is crap, yet it is used so widely?

Same reason a lot of people think egg-crates are good for acoustics. Same reason a lot of people think that copying and pasting their bass drum makes it sound better. A lot of misconceptions that simply are false are repeated from one un-informed person to another.

Foam isn't COMPLETELY useless, but this is the thing: It does nothing for low frequencies. If anything, it just kills the highs and high-mids. So, of course people think it sounds good because they hear a difference and the room is now "dead". But it's not a good "dead". All you lost was the high end. The problem is that high end is almost NEVER the problem in a room. It's the bass frequencies that almost always have to be tamed. So, by putting foam in a room, you often actually make it worse because now the bass frequencies have become 100% of your problem.