Surrounding myself in acoustic panels?

Robbb

New member
I am buying four free standing super chunk bass traps and four 3 inch thick acoustic panels. All 4 ft. Tall. Any ever just surround themselves with panels and bass traps, with them just standing up on the ground when recording acoustc guitar or vocals?
 
Yep, horrible, and really unpleasant to perform with. At one old studio we had a vocal booth. A big walk in cupboard free space inside 800mm by 1.2m with ceiling foam at 2m. Despite fresh air in and foul air extraction every hated it. Oppressive and one person had a panic attack. I think made worse with DT100 headphones. Like those boxes where you are isolated from the environment and hypnotised. Ours was meant for voice overs, but you could by turning sideways just strum a guitar. 6 months later it became a store cupboard.
 
Have to ask - are these foam or rockwool or compressed fiberglass? What is the room like? I used to set two 4" thick rockwool traps in a V in front of me to record acoustic guitar, worked very well in removing the initial 'thrust' of the sound form bouncing around the rest of the room. For vocals, I faced towards a corner (about 3 feet away) with traps mounted on it.
I assume you have a room with a lot of unwanted reflections - experiment!
 
Bass traps are really designed to fit in corners, because that's where they are most effective. I would not have them standing around in the room.

You can experiment with free standing or wall mounting, but for general purpose use, mounting them on the walls, with airspace behind them, to take care of early reflections is a good option if you need them to also control the room when mixing on monitors. So, maybe something like one of them (assuming 2'x4') in front (horizontal) of you, a cloud overhead, and then on each side at the first/early reflection point off your monitors. Then, that's also going to determine where you would sit to record. That's more or less what I do, but I've got a small space and there's really very limited room to have more than a chair or two and a few mic stands.
 
These are Primacoustic 3 inch thick broadway panels. I think they are compressed fiberglass. And ok great! I'm actually mostly getting these to improve the sound of my acoustic guitar when I record. I will definitely try the methods that you mentioned.
 
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