Bare mininum "treating" for a room?

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joey2000

joey2000

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I plan to record in a medium-sized bedroom. It is furnished however and occasionally used so I can't go nuts on treatment. What would you consider the bare minimum? For ex. I plan to put up something to cover the uncovered windows (blankets probably). The room is carpeted.
 
My room is not treated, but I've read enough on here to tell you to start with bass traps in the corners. I'll let the others build on it from there. :)
 
Are you only tracking in the room, or are you mixing too? What are you recording? (vocals, acoustic guitar, amp?) WHat do you have for mics?
 
Well for starters it's a digital piano only direct, so none of this will matter but I may add a mic at most (just me), prompting the question. Don't have a mic yet. Basically I want this to sound "good" but I'm not a pro and not expecting it to dazzle and amaze.

I've read about treatments but I'm not up for throwing foam this or that all over the place :)
 
I've found the bare minimum in just about any room to be a dozen 2'x4'x4" broadband traps. All four corners (8) and four high-side corners centered on the mix position. Minimum.** That won't make a "really" bad room great by any means (12x12x8 for example - although it will certainly make a marked improvement), but it's (IME) a nearly universal starting point to make a non-really-bad space somewhat usable.

** For the record, I have around 3x that mass and I'm still figuring out ways to add more.
 
joey2000 said:
Well for starters it's a digital piano only direct, so none of this will matter but I may add a mic at most (just me), prompting the question. Don't have a mic yet. Basically I want this to sound "good" but I'm not a pro and not expecting it to dazzle and amaze.

I've read about treatments but I'm not up for throwing foam this or that all over the place :)
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So you're not doing any mixing in the room? You don't need any acoustic treatment if you are just DIing instruments. When you start recording with a mic, heavy drapes over the windows and bass traps that can be moved around - hung in the corners, or directly in front/behind your position - and can be moved when you move. Forget foam.
 
? Yes I'll be mixing. What's "DI?"

And why recommend traps and say "forget foam" when that is such a common (if not most common) material of bass traps?

I should add I am not doing anything that is demanding bass-wise like hip hop, dance music etc.
 
Foam does nothing for low end (even most of the ones laughably marketed as "bass traps"). Foam is a "final tweak" for an already wonderfully treated space.

Unfortunately for the "newly initiated" it's also incredibly cheap. So people tend to toss it up all over the place and think they're space sounds great because there's no more ambience.

No ambience ≠ good.

90% of your problematic energy is in the low end. Take care of that and you've taken care of 90% of your problem.

Put up foam and now the low end is 100% of your problem.

If you're 5 feet tall at the bottom of 10 feet of water, you're going to drown. Make it 9 feet and you're still going to drown.

EVERYTHING is demanding in the low end. ESPECIALLY in the low end I might add. Again, it's the vast majority of the energy in just about every recording.
 
DI = Direct Input - meaning you are plugging your instrument(s) into the interface, not miking an amp.

If you are seeing foam as the 'most common' material in bass traps, you are looking in the wrong places. Good bass traps will be made out of 4" thick (minimum) rockwool - OC703, 705 or Roxul or similar.
 
If I understood it well you need the material to be dense to be able to absorb low frequencies, that is why foam won't work.
 
At the risk of drifting somewhat off topic, has anyone made their own bass traps or improvised something otherwise pretty cheap/easy to set up?
 
Bags of Roxul Safe n' Sound stacked in corners. Works like a beast. Looks ugly... Easy enough to make a frame and cloth over it.
 
joey2000 said:
At the risk of drifting somewhat off topic, has anyone made their own bass traps or improvised something otherwise pretty cheap/easy to set up?
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Yeah, I suspect most people here with bass traps made their own. Do a search here on how to make them, and look on youtube. Put a wood frame together, slip in the rockwool, staple cloth over it. Need it to stand by itself, make little feet for the bottom edge? Hang them? Eyehooks, wire, eyebolts.
 
Way too busy, but thx. :) I like MM's "just stack it" idea. Don't give a flip about pretty, just effective. Appreciate it
 
joey2000 said:
Way too busy, but thx. :) I like MM's "just stack it" idea. Don't give a flip about pretty, just effective. Appreciate it
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If you've got the room for stacked bags, and don't mind the unsightliness, you can use rolls of 'pink stuff' - standard fiberglass wall insulation.
Took me about 2 hours to make my first 6 traps - the time they have saved me during mixing is 100X that in the last 2 years.
 
I have recently learned* that rolls of roof insulation make great bass absorbers.
The great trick is, you do NOTHING! Just pile them up in corners, stuff them under stairwells, anywhere you can put 'em.

You LEAVE THEM IN THEIR PLASTIC BAGS! This means it is easy to put the room back as was, no mess and you can sell/use the insulation!

*Studio SOS SoS.

Dave.
 
Even better (ie cheaper)! Thanks!

Edit: that said, I'd worry about the material getting onto/into stuff....and it's reasonable to say it's considerably less effective still packaged, right?
 
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What the OP means, I think, instead of "Bare Minimum" is "Where will treatment do the most good".

Lets take a look at what room treatments purpose is to begin with. While there are always dissenters, most would agree that even decay across the entire audible range would be the ultimate goal. Spectrograms, Decay Plots and Waterfalls are particularly useful for showing us this.

So "bare minimum" has no meaning really because every room is different in what would be required to achieve the above goal. In rare instances, a room may get close with no treatment at all while another will never get all the way there (using velocity absorption only).

In the real world, most of us are looking for improvement. It is very difficult to get 40hz to decay at the same rate as 1K for instance. So obtaining the ideal isnt realistic for most of us because of expense, lack of expertise, or both.

So my point is, the only real way to approach the issue is to know where you are at and know what your goals are. So measurement software and mic are essential. Without such, just putting up corner units using what the local hardware store has in stock is a guess at best. While I would agree that filling corners in this fashion (without measurement data) is likely to improve bass decay and FR smoothness in most cases, you wont know by how much or in what areas of the frequency domain. And if your goal is to maximize the potential of your room, rather than merely achieve a mild/moderate improvement, then plan on treating >50% of all the surfaces (ceiling included). Not just corners and 1st reflection points.
 
jim1961 said:
What the OP means, I think, instead of "Bare Minimum" is "Where will treatment do the most good".
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No, I meant just what I said :) I think it's a given that included in that is where treatment will do the most good, ie not looking for a perfect solution.

So "bare minimum" has no meaning really because every room is different
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Actually it does, although it's not exactly a precise thing (the gist of the room is in the OP).

measurement software and mic are essential.
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Nah. I might decide on that later on, but offhand I doubt I will need to go that far.

just putting up corner units using what the local hardware store has in stock is a guess at best.
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Clearly - but again I'm not looking or expecting to have a top-end studio sound.

While I would agree that filling corners in this fashion (without measurement data) is likely to improve bass decay and FR smoothness in most cases, you wont know by how much or in what areas of the frequency domain.
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Sure I will, via my ears, which are more than enough as a barometer.
 
To the op.
Better is better. I get where you are coming from.

Any improvement is an upgrade. I think some just go hog wild on treatment, and more so, talking about it.
Its almost turning into a disease. Like the recording equivalent of having to wash your hands 2,500 times a day. :D

It's easy to give high and mighty, all-knowing advice, but the real world is a different story.
It costs no money to type, but it can be a hell of a lot of cash to do studio grade sound treatment.
:D
So do the best you can.
 
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