Cheap Fix

  • Thread starter Thread starter Natural Gass
  • Start date Start date
N

Natural Gass

New member
I'm thinking of doing some accoustic treatment in my little studio (12 X 10) but that accoustic tile stuff is $$.

What about using one or more of those foam pad things with the massaging fingers on them that you put on a bed? Will that do the same thing as the real stuff for a fraction of the cost?

Any body tried that?
 
How about this... if you are a DIY'er

-9 sheets of 2' X 4' X 2” O-C 703 rigid fibeglass (or similar): 50$

- One 4' X 8' X 1/4" sheet of plywood, $8

- 3 cuts in the plywood from home depot (so you get 4 2'X4' sheets): $0.50

- 6 yards of linen, whatever color you want: 20$

- Screws, Hooks and eyes and bolts for mounting: $5

Total: $83.50


Bolt 2 eyes to the plywood. Place the rigid fiberglass on top of the plywood. Use 4" drywall screws to secure the fiberglass to the plywood. Cover fiberglass with the linen (like wrapping a Christmas present.) Staple linen to the plywood.

Screw two hooks in your wall, hang pannels by the hooks / eyes.



This gets you four 4.5 inch thick 2' X 4' broadband absorption panels. Each panel costs the same as the Auralex crap but is many, many times more effective in the 500 Hz on down range. Also looks better IMO.

You can also go half thickness (only 2") and use no plywood backer and still blow Auralex away in LF absorption... that way you can get 9 pannels for under 100 bucks.
 
I appreciate your input Gunther. Excuse me for sounding like a dumb ass guitar player. But what is a DIY'er. Is the rigid fiberglass like a flat sheet 2, 3, or 4 inches thick? Isn't the idea to have some texture to breakup sound waves? Or does the fiberglass just kind of absorb the sound?

Does the O - C 703 work better on certain frequencies like taking out the highs or the lows?

I guess I'm kind of ignorant about sound proffing and shit, but hey, Eruption wasn't the first song I learned on guitar either!
 
Gunther, that sounds like a very good idea.. have you done it before??
have any pics...

Natural, a DIY'er= DO IT YOURSELF
 
I've always thought of doing big rockwool "pillows" that could be hung. Wouldn't that be effective, easy, and not too expensive?

Slackmaster 2000
 
I've always thought of doing big rockwool "pillows" that could be hung. Wouldn't that be effective, easy, and not too expensive?
Click to expand...

Yeah you could do that - why not get some old curtains (cheap) and hang the rockwool on the back to make them thicker, or get some dacron (the stuff they line couches with) and hang that behind the curtains..

cheers
john
 
c9-2001:

Yeah, I made some panels 2 Friday's ago. I started with just Auralex, but it sounded boomy / boxy. I built what I described above and it fixed the problem. Now the room is very tame even in the bass area, everything sounds crisp (but dead).

I actually made 2 big 4 X 4 panels, not 4 smaller 2' X4' ones. They are mounted 2 inches off the wall. So the room has 2 big fiberglass panels and 8 auralex panels.

Ill post a pic of it soon.

-----------------

N. Gass:

You can find the specs of the O-C 703 on this board, Ethan and John have both posted them I think.

Auralex foam kills mids and highs well, but does little for the bass. 2" thick O-C 703 kills the highs as well but also helps in the 250 hz area, and 4" thick works well down to 125 hz. The 1/4 inch plywood backer might also add to the bass absorption (Ethan, John, what do you think?).


From what I understand the thicker, denser and heaver the absorbtion material, the more able it is to absorb lower frequencies.

BTW: This isn't done for sound proofing. This is to kill early reflections, and standing waves... to make the room sound better / cleaner.
Soundproofing is much more involved.
 
Gunther,

> The 1/4 inch plywood backer might also add to the bass absorption (Ethan, John, what do you think?). <

I'm not sure, but I'd think attaching a piece of 1/4 inch plywood to one side of a piece of 703 will make it worse, not better.

--Ethan
 
Yeah, I'm a DIY'er since I finished the basement myself - framing, plumbing, electrical, dry wall, paint, gas-fire place, etc.

Gunther,
I guess I'm not looking at sound proofing the room. I want to cut down on the echo and the sound bouncing all around. It sounds like the OC 703 might be the way to go.

I'm thinking of maybe making a grid of 1.5' X 1.5' panels with about 4" spacing between the panels. The grid would be about 5' wide by 7' tall to cover part of my back wall which is bare. Maybe I'd cover the panels in alternating colors (black/white or black/red, or black/green ?) in a checkerboard pattern - must be watching to much Trading Spaces on the HG channel. Maybe do a smaller grid on one of my side walls. Does that sound like I'm on the right track?

Do I need to be carefull of making the room to quiet? Seems like I herd someone complaining that their room was too quiet.

All I need is the 703 and fabric, I got the rest of the stuff. Hopefully I can find some of the OC 703 in our small city.

Thanks for enlightening me - got any good stock tips?!
 
Before you plan on placement, let me tell you a story about my room.

I had the back wall totally killed with Auralex, and the front half of the side walls totally killed, since this is where I thought the most reflections from the monitors would be.
Proud as I was with how dead the room was, I showed it off to my significant other. I clapped and there was no ring / echo. She clapped and there was (much to my suprise.)
You see, the back half of both side walls had no treatment, and where there are 2 untreated parallel walls, there is ring.
Now you might be smarter than I was at that time and you might know this already, but ill state it anyway. The rule: never let both sides of 2 opposing parallel surfaces be untreated.

--------

As far as sounding too dead... my 12 X 10 room is almost a sonic black hole. I do vocal recordings in that room, and add in reverb later. IMO there is no other way to make decent vocal recordings in a room so small.

If you have a bigger room, then you rooms natural sound might not be as evil as mine.

Also, you can consider diffusion in conjunction to absorption. The theory there is to spread the sound around, so that’s it’s not reflected directly back at you. From what I understand, this allows you to kill the ring / echo without creating an extremely dead room, which is probably closer to ideal than treating the hell outa a room with Auralex or O-C 703.

What’s the spec. they talk about... RT60? Which is the time it takes for the echoes and reverberation in a room to reach an inaudible level. I think the goal is .5 seconds across the entire frequency spectrum. I suppose the art is to get an ideal RT60 while killing any ring / echo caused phase problems / standing waves and what not. Some guys here go to huge lengths for that...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top