just moved address, need help with boomy room

Hi Chaps,

The room I've just installed my gear in is quite boomy but it's rented so I cant make any structural changes or even hammer nails into walls.
What can I do to tame the room given these restrictions? I'm going to get some hefty curtains for the windows, other than that I'm stumped.
Thanks

studio1.jpg
 
You can still make gobos and free-standing bass traps. Search through this section of the site. There are ways to make them. You might have to go back quite aways to find a good thread. Search for 703, maybe, see what that brings up.
 
Nice setup. Just so happens this evening I have been scrounging online for ways to hang curtains or drapes in my
new apartment - which is also rented and cannot be attacked with nails or screws. I found some very interesting,
and inexpensive solutions here : free standing curtain rod - Google Search

I want to install drapes to decorate, but mostly to help block out street noises. You could use heavy drapes or moving
blankets. Some of these choices are adjustable, usually from 4 to 10 feet in width - along with height adjustment.
 
I just tried to search with "703" and nothing came up. Don't know why.

Here's a video that might give you some ideas.

YouTube
 
Thanks guys.
The free standing curtain rods look do able but how high would they need to be to cut out corner bass reflections?
 
First step is to buy some rolls of insulation from a hardware shop, Leave them in the plastic and cover the whole thing in some cloth. Stand them in the corners.

Alan.
 
First step is to buy some rolls of insulation from a hardware shop, Leave them in the plastic and cover the whole thing in some cloth. Stand them in the corners.

Alan.

+1 I read about this about a year ago. To trap bass you don't need to roll out the stuff or mount it on fancy frames. As Alan says, buy intact rolls of GF or rockwool and pile them where you can.

If/when you move to somewhere you CAN attack you will have the material ready to go.

Dave.
 
If you open a new tab via right-click or just open a blank one and copy-paste the URL it will work because it doesn’t need to have the HTTPS security.

The insulation would probably work in the bundle but isn’t as dense as the kind of material you’d want to frame up. Search for products like “rock wool” or “mineral wool” that have acoustic specs. And skip anything “foam” for bass traps.
 
spottydog10 said:

These links aren't working for me. They take me to warning, not secure, pages.

Right click the links and open in new tab and they work fine, dunno why...

That doesn't work either.. BUT! Right clicking to an incognito tab DOES work, for me - very strange.

Apologies for the interruption, fellas.
 
Is there a way for me to work out simply the main problem areas?
If I posted a clip of me shouting in the room and uploaded a clip could anybody listen and advise?
Thanks
 
Yeah, lots of room sound in the hello clip. Not sure why you included the singing clip.

So, as others might have said the problem areas for any room that size is going to be the bass freqs. Your vocal test does not have much energy in the problem area, so it really isn't useful.

In a commercial studios, they have two rooms, a 'live' room and a 'mixing' room. The rooms are treated differently for the different functions they serve. For home recording types like us, we usually get one room to work with and so we have to make compromises. We either make it a better live room or a better mixing room and we decide how the acoustic treatment will reach those goals. I have always advised to make the room better for mixing because you can artificially add in room response to a vocal track or acoustic guitar or whatever.

For a mixing room, you want to eliminate all reflections, even those you can't hear. Your hello test reveals a reflection in the high mids - low highs (800hz - 2khz) which tells me the bass freqs (500hz and below) are worse, but those are the ones you can't hear.

So, you need bass traps as suggested. Not foam. DIY bass traps don't have to be expensive and you can make them free-standing. You just have to be willing to do some work and be a little creative.

The bass traps will absorb the problem freqs as well as the ones you hear. The ones you hear can be added back in with reverb and delays, etc. But when you go to mix, you don't want the standing waves, or peaks and valleys in your room's audio response. Small cubical rooms need lots of bass trapping.
 
just to clarify, the bass traps will help to rid me of the reverb which is in the 800 to 2k area plus the lower end that I cant hear as much?
How many BTs and what size? The room is 8ft high with a largish window recess.

Thanks mate, help much appreciated.
 
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