dead or live?

J

jnorman

New member
i have been reading material about acoustic treatment for my studio,
but i am still confused about whether i need to make the room more
dead or more live. i do lots of solo flutes, violins, and other
classical instruments. my studio is about 17x24x8' carpet floor,
sheetrock walls, one large window, some plants, artwork, etc, and a
baby grand piano. the room needs to service as a performance space since we teach in there, and also for recording. i dont have any specific problems, other than i
think it should either be more dead so i can focus on digital reverbs,
or it needs to be more live to perhaps sound more natural - how do i
decide what to do to my room? thanks.
 
short followup - i guess the main question is - should i install a hardwood floor in the studio, or should i leave the carpet and add some acoustic foam on the ceiling and parts of the walls? or should i just build some kind of iso-booth for solo recording? i cannot really put any cheap-looking materials up - it has to be a professional looking space. thanks.
 
Man, that's a nice sized room. If it were me, and since you asked, I'd install the hardwood and build some moveable panel absorbers that can be put up or taken down depending on what your needs are. That way you get the best of both worlds!

There's a couple different panel designs:

One type is by a guy named Ethan Winer and can be found here: http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html Those traps can be made to look very nice by simply using a nice quality plywood for the bass traps and a nice fabric for the mid/high absorbers.

And the other is by John Sayers. His plans can be found on the SAE site: http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html Just click on the section titled "Absorbers". It's in the menu non the right hand side.

For the record, I haven't built any of these -yet. I'm working on building my own studio and plan on incorporating these into my design.

But both John and Ethan hang out here. I'm betting they'd be happy to field any questions you may have.

Just my opinion,
Brad
 
JN,

> i am still confused about whether i need to make the room more
dead or more live. i do lots of solo flutes, violins, and other
classical instruments. <

You definitely want a hard floor. Wood is nice but expensive. Other materials that are similarly hard work just as good as wood acoustically. But if you can afford wood for that large a space, by all means go for it! The floor is where you want most of the ambience and "room sound" to come from.

For classical instruments - that's what I do too, in a room only slightly larger than yours - you definitely want it more live than dead. But not too live. I suggest placing 703 fiberglass panels wrapped with fabric in various places, so no one large area is all live or all dead. For a room that size, 10-20 panels is probably about right. You probably should put more 703 panels on the ceiling too. Maybe cover one third to one half of the ceiling in an alternating pattern of stripes or in a checkerboard pattern.

--Ethan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top