Foam Tile Placement Help

andrushkiwt

Well-known member
Moved into a new condo, setting up dedicated performance/recording spot in the living room. I have my desk/office and TV section already set, and on the other side of the room is the mic setup. Assuming I'm going to leave the mic where it is (would rather not rearrange), how would you go about placing the foam tiles? I'm worried about sound bouncing from behind the guitar back forward into the mic, as well as from above, though the ceiling is quite high. Where do my trouble areas seem to be? There is a mic guard protecting the sound from behind the mic as well (the silver/gray mechanism) though this may be pointless in this home since the area behind the mic is quite large with nothing behind it.

I will be recording both guitar and vocals, separately, from this spot.

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Forget foam. It absorbs some (not a lot) of high frequencies and nothing on the low end. Too much of it will leave you with a dead sound but still uncontrolled lows. I would suggest you make or buy some rockwool or compressed fiberglass (OC703) panels (4" thick) that you can place in front of and behind you when tracking. Before I made my traps, I would record vocals by facing the long way into my largest room, and hang a thick duvet on the wall behind me. The idea being to stop unwanted reflections from getting back into the mic. Your reflection filter will do that a little (more for vocals, less for guitar), but you still need absorption behind you.
Where are you going to be doing your mixing, if at all?
 
Forget foam. It absorbs some (not a lot) of high frequencies and nothing on the low end. Too much of it will leave you with a dead sound but still uncontrolled lows. I would suggest you make or buy some rockwool or compressed fiberglass (OC703) panels (4" thick) that you can place in front of and behind you when tracking. Before I made my traps, I would record vocals by facing the long way into my largest room, and hang a thick duvet on the wall behind me. The idea being to stop unwanted reflections from getting back into the mic. Your reflection filter will do that a little (more for vocals, less for guitar), but you still need absorption behind you.
Where are you going to be doing your mixing, if at all?

yeah i didn't include the mixing area. i'll tackle that later. want to get the source sound better first. like you said... the wall behind. that's the area i am thinking to foam pad. or some other material, as you suggested. i'll pull the mic out away from the wall as much as possible, but will still set something on that wall behind.
 
Good to post here again. It has been a while.

What Mjb said is what i have heard too. I have no experience to draw on.

My question would be, how does the room sound now? It does not look like a terrible space. Can you work with the ambience that is there rather than deadening it? Different mic and guitar positions would be worth trying out.
 
Think about it - look at that reflection shield. It is stopping sound going directly into it from bouncing further, and stopping sound that is reflecting towards the mic from that 180 degree sweep. But sound that isn't 'stopped' by the shield (i.e. going to the sides, under and above it) will still be reflecting off the walls and ceiling, eventually bouncing off side and back walls towards the live area of the mic. That's why those shields are only marginally effective unless you acoustically treat the corners (bad for lows) and walls behind/beside you. In that set up you have two corners + the ceiling corners, all 4-6 feet away from you. If you don't think corners can mess low frequencies up, just play some music at a normal listening volume in the room, then go around and listen with your head at different places in and near the corners.
I ignored the basic truths of proper acoustic treatment for a few years, trying every possible method.
 
I posted a video here a while ago where a guy tested some moveable panels (real big ones) and to my ear, he got the best results with the panels in a V when placed behind him. Now, he was in the middle of the room, and had serious panels, but as [MENTION=39487]mjbphotos[/MENTION] said, some the reflected sound in the room eventually finds its way back to the front of the mic. So, you want to minimize the level of that reflected sound, relative to what you are trying to record (voice, guitar, both, etc.). You do that by minimizing the volume of the reflected sound by treating the places where it can reflect from that are closest to you and the mic.

I don't know how much foam you have, but if you're stuck with it, I'd test it in a couple places, maybe with some removable tape or small pins. If you can face in a direction so the wall directly in front of you is the farthest possible, that helps because the sound level reduces dramatically with distance. I.e., the farther that first direct reflection, i.e., the loudest original sound, the quieter it's going to be after making the return trip. Put some treatment behind you, or, as it looks, make that space angled so reflections off of that wall do not go directly to the mic, and you'll have made a difference.

The space looks open and relatively large, with not a lot of parallel surfaces, so you might find it records pretty well in there.

But, you only know by setting up in a few different places and recording and listening back.
 
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