Setting up my spare room as a recording room - newbie :P

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Stirlo

New member
Hey guys i am new to the forums however have spent the last 5 hours reading about studio setup and i am still stumped :P The measurements of the room are 4.7x3m and ceiling is 2.6m high. It has floorboards and behind the thick green curtain is a sliding door, i was just wondering what changes to make. i will be using the room to record vocals & guitar. Should i put carpet over the floor boards or keep them? Remove curtain's or put thicker or lighter ones? Should i keep the room empty or put some cupboards or something in there. I have so many questions :P Hope someone can help. Thanks All
 

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Just for some general ideas:
Usually, a wood floor is preferred in a fully treated room, as carpet isn't very broadband in nature, so it absorbs very particular frequencies very well, and doesn't absorb others very well, so you can easily get an unbalanced result that isn't much better (though there would be much less flutter echo). I'd rather see rugs/etc used directly under the instruments being mic'd, but not covering the entire floor or anything.
Curtains can help deaden some of the echoes - thicker, heavy curtains would be best to use.
Cupboards and other furniture items can help scatter sound around, leaving you with less high frequency problems, but not by a lot. Ideally, you'd want to treat the space with panels and diffusors to really achieve a decent sound in a small room like that. Check out this video we did with Warren at Zen Pro Audio showing examples of guitar, vocals, piano, and drums in a room before and after treatment to hear the difference: ZenPro Audio Before & After Bass Traps, Acoustic Panels and Diffusors |
 
Good advice from Alexander. That's a very small room for tracking, so you're going to need a bunch of traps.
 
Thanks Guys,

i know its a small room but only free room in my house. lol i recorded on a wooden floorboard at a mates house and the acoustic sound was fantastic, i guess i wont know if it sounds good in the room till i get back home this weekend and record something. another random question: Carpet Underlay hanging from the wall, does it work? some people say yes others say no
 
Stirlo said:
another random question: Carpet Underlay hanging from the wall, does it work? some people say yes others say no
Click to expand...

Not really - to absorb/dampen anything from midrange frequencies and down, really you need mass. Owens Corning 703 is the material of choice; IIRC 4" will get you down to about 250hz, but for true bass trapping you're going to want to go 6-8". You don't have to treat the WHOLE walls thankfully - generally bass traps in corners and at major "reflection points" from your speakers is a good start.
 
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