acoustic treatments for a live room

[Executivos]

ok our 12x16 practice studio is basically done...We've moved in and the sound isolation is pretty good. The problem?

The acoustics aren't very good.

We haven't begun to treat it yet (we did plan for it in the budget) so before we start spending money I'd like to see what I should get.

This is for a whole band playing Pa/guitars/drums/bass etc...should the idea be similar to a control room?

From what I understand you'd want diffusers on one wall (I was thinking behind the drums) and then alternating placements of foam on the other walls and hopefulling some homeade bass tube traps if I can get that figured out. I was thinking of buying the mars music auralex pack..it's $100 and it's 24 1x1 wedgies, 9 mini fusors and a tube of adhesive.

Does this sound like a plan or are there any major faults? Also we got like 2" shag carpeting & pad...that helped A LOT.

 

[Dan Merrill]

If you're just using the room for rehearsing, I think you'd want it to remain somewhat live sounding. The idea is to absorb some of the sound without killing the vibe of the room. Too much absorbtion and the band won't won't hear each other that well and your instruments will sound lifeless. You'll have a room that is dull in the high end, and the remaining low end will fill the room and add to ear fatigue. It would be like taking a 1/3 octave eq and turning down everything above 500hz, while leaving the low end turned up.

If you're not into installing some of john's wall units, I'd stack 2 tube traps in each corner. they will tighten up the low end (punch) in a sweet way for you and add some diffusion, without killing the high end. (leave 1/2 the paper on) If you need it, you could later add some diffusion to break up any parallel walls.

my .02,

Good luck