Acoustic treatment - high ceilings music room

JackNoire

New member
Hi! Pleased to meet you.

I'm so grateful to have found this forum. I'm trying to get a room ready (acoustic treatment -wise speaking) for my wife, and it's driving me nuts. She is a jazz singer and also plays both the piano and the guittar, so she needs a room to be able to record vocals and practise her piano.

The main issue with the room is that we have high ceilings (2,93 meters - 9,6 feet), two doors and two windows. I've tried covering up the walls with paintings and tapestries, and the windows with curtains, but it still echoes as if I were inside a cathedral...

I've read I should buy some bass traps for the top corners and acoustic panels for the walls to absord sound, but I'm not sure where to place them exactly. I was also thinking about covering up a wall (wall 4, with bookshelves around the door from the floor to the ceiling) to get some diffusion, but I don't know if that will work properly.

I would love to hear your opinions.

In case you find it useful, I can share with you the floor plan and the walls' situation at the moment (but I can't add images or links for now. Could a moderator help me?)
 
I am sure someone will be along to help with links but in the meantime the length/width will be very useful (if it is a weird floor shape give the major dimms' and the calculated area).

As a start just buy a roll of loft lagging (GF sort of stuff but not GF as it can be an irritant) and roll it out on the floor. You will hear an immediate improvement in the "echoey-ness" ! Then, you gotta make it pretty!

You use SI units so EU? Country you are in helps loads with prices and where to point you. Oh! and buy the current copy of Sound on Sound. Super article about recording (and PA'ing) a very good grand.

Dave.
 
Interestingly, I was just taking measurements of my own place for my latest project so this caught my eye. I also have a very tall ceiling, 3 meters and change at the highest point (it's slanted).

No acoustics in there have been researched or designed intelligently, so what you might find relieving is that you could get very good results without "overthinking" it (I really dislike that word btw but that's another story...)

My place is mainly for drums, but I've recorded lots of acoustic guitar + vocals in there as well. There's no echo problem and it certainly doesn't sound "like a cathedral". The place has concrete walls which you would assume makes it an echo nightmare but... no.

The only acoustic treatment besides covering one wall with wool flooring carpet is a few acoustic boards. Two next to each other behind the drum set and the rest (6 or 8 perhaps) installed on the ceiling above. They're the kind of things apartment building hallways have, they absorb a tiny bit of sound and a huge bit of reverb. They're about 50x100 cm in size and I think they're made from polyester felt or something, there are a few different kinds apparently. They look similar to these: Sound-Absorbing Polyester Panel, Fireproof Facing, Megasorber

So to answer at least one of your questions more precisely: just get the panels and install them. You can move them somewhere else if it doesn't seem to work. Oh and of course... ecc83 brought up the topic but you said nothing about the floor! If it's stone tile or something like that, that is not good! Get some carpet!

Best of luck.
 
I doubt you will need a lot of bass trapping for vocal work and you won't really know what you need for piano until you have the room "right" for singing.

I would suggest the most effective and economical way to use absorbents is to hang them in that vast roof space? Turn a problem into an advantage, most here have 8ft6 ceilings so you have a couple of feet of "useless" space in which to hang stuff!

For vocals you could investigate the SE Reflection filter but get the proper one and even then I don't think it has any great advantage over the "duvets and plastic pipe" form of room control? Even with the SE RF you will need absorbents behind her and a little above to stop sound coming back and into the front of the mic.

My view is, if you can tame the POWorship effect and get it right for vocals it will be pretty good for mixing on monitors because I don't see you running high levels or wanting window rattling bass?

Dave.
 
I am sure someone will be along to help with links but in the meantime the length/width will be very useful (if it is a weird floor shape give the major dimms' and the calculated area).

As a start just buy a roll of loft lagging (GF sort of stuff but not GF as it can be an irritant) and roll it out on the floor. You will hear an immediate improvement in the "echoey-ness" ! Then, you gotta make it pretty!

You use SI units so EU? Country you are in helps loads with prices and where to point you. Oh! and buy the current copy of Sound on Sound. Super article about recording (and PA'ing) a very good grand.

Dave.

It's a pity, because It's easier to see it with some images. But I can't add links yet. I'm from Europe.

So far, this is the solution I came up with:

1. I bought 5 t.akustik HiLo-P80 pyramid panels (1000 x 500, 80mm thick).
2. I'll hang two guitars on the third Wall and I'll cover the Windows with blackout curtains.
3. I'll build some bookshelves on the fourth Wall.

If this isn't enough, I'll add a cloud with 7 thick panels on the ceiling.

---------- Update ----------

Recording room (vocals mainly, but piano and guitar as well).

---------- Update ----------

I doubt you will need a lot of bass trapping for vocal work and you won't really know what you need for piano until you have the room "right" for singing.

I would suggest the most effective and economical way to use absorbents is to hang them in that vast roof space? Turn a problem into an advantage, most here have 8ft6 ceilings so you have a couple of feet of "useless" space in which to hang stuff!

For vocals you could investigate the SE Reflection filter but get the proper one and even then I don't think it has any great advantage over the "duvets and plastic pipe" form of room control? Even with the SE RF you will need absorbents behind her and a little above to stop sound coming back and into the front of the mic.

My view is, if you can tame the POWorship effect and get it right for vocals it will be pretty good for mixing on monitors because I don't see you running high levels or wanting window rattling bass?

Dave.

That's what I thought about bass traps. For the ceiling space I was thinking about a cloud with 7 thick panels.

---------- Update ----------

Let me show you some images with the new configuration :

imgur.com/xYE5nQv
imgur.com/hF9RZwv
imgur.com/OoQ7t5F
imgur.com/NDdSOZA
 
Ouch! No matter how you cut it that room is nearly a cube! How do the dimensions keep changing and the door moving and vanishing? Are you yet to build this?

Three by three mtrs'ish is never going to be good but then we all have to do the best we can with what we have. My idea (and I am NO acoustician! Old valve amp tech' opining here) would be to either use the minimum of stuffing to just take the "boing" off vocals and live with the sound for monitoring (get some REALLY good headphones). Or, stuff the be-whatsits out of it and make it really dead and organize some foldback reverb for your good lady. Mind you, the piano will get strangled I would think. Software Joe and keyboard controller?

Dave.
 
The foam is not going to put a significant dent in the overall room echo - your bookcases (filled with different depth books) will probably be more effective.

Blocking drapes are better than nothing - I've got a set and they definitely help, though I do miss the light!

As mentioned, the room shape is problematic - working in a square-ish room I know the pain. Your money would be better spent getting denser acoustic panels mounted off the wall, and lots of them, TBH. And if there's going to be an acoustic piano in the room, you will want bass traps, which are even thicker. Start saving or make friends with someone that can help you make them. And some clouds will help, though (purely my own experience) I think a couple in the right places can help a lot because you'll have a limited number of spots to monitor/record from in that small of a space, and so with everything else treated properly, the ceiling echo should be easier to control in those places where it's needed.
 
No! Ugly, expensive to get right and only good for dry vocal tracking. Since you are recording piano and guitar too, treat the room as suggested earlier.

Glad you said that Mike. Yes, booths are a necessary evil to get an acoustically isolated place in the midst of noise, news room e.g. and a totally dead acoustic is acceptable. Ok for VO readings but you don't want to SING in one!

Dave.
 
Also the room is WAY too small to make separate booths for things. That size (LESS than 3x3 metre floor area, right?), it's got to be everything in the same space regardless.
 
My studioroom has a (very) high ceiling at 4.5m and I also have a piano in it.
Below you can see how I treated the walls. Panels went up in stages (that's why the different colours and sizes of panels) but what made the real difference was placing the bass-traps.

2.JPG3.JPG5.JPG
 
peghead: That circa 2 metre high thing immediately to the left of the piano (almost touching) is a bass trap, correct? But it's covered in foam or felt, so the surface facing the piano absorbs (and/or otherwise disturbs) high frequencies, right? Is that intentional and what's the logic behind that? (I'm thinking along the lines of what happens to the higher frequency overtones of the piano, in case anyone's wondering why I asked.)

That's some massive work you've done there, so I'm just going to assume you know what you're doing and it sounds good. Kudos.
 
Know what I am doing? :laughings:

That "thing" next to the piano is not a bass trap. It is a panel which opens up (as a book) that I use as a second door when I need extra isolation. When not in use I keep it folded. I made it myself and it is shape exactly to "plug" onto the door (not in the picture... the door you see next to the guitars is a wardrobe).
If you want to hear what I get out of that room have a listen here (a couple of trtacks sang/played/recorded/mixed and mastered in my studio).

The Story About The Girl by moosestudio | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Close To Midnight by moosestudio | Free Listening on SoundCloud

The piano in "Close to.." is a digital thinghy, not the real one, in case you wonder.
 
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