Deadening an all metal room...

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Jeff K

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I have a shed that I can convet for use mostly for mixing but also for a little bit of recording. it's an 11 x 18 foot space, one of the 11' walls is drywall, the opposite wall is glass. both 18' walls are metal. The roof is about 9' high and made of metal while the floor is made of concrete.

I really can't afford to do anything too expensive to the space so I'm deperately looking for some sort of treatment that will be both cheap and effective. (which may be impossible but you never know...).

I'd hate to have that building in the back yard and not be able to use it...

All suggestions welcome...
 
Hello Jeff K and welcome to the bbs. Well, I assume you know that "soundproofing" is out of the question, and you are only interested in treating for acoustical quality. I do have a couple of things you need to clarify.
First off, on the glass wall, what exactly is this made like. I mean, I wouldn't think the glass is floor to ceiling, nor would I think it is wall to wall. Can you post a plan view drawing of the building showing the glass, and the door, with fairly accurate dimensions?
Second, as to the 9' ceiling. Is this a flat ceiling? If not then 9' doesn't make sense. If it is a pitched gable roof, what is the height at the roof/wall intersection, and what is the height to the ridge?
Since this is a metal building, and you're primary interest is mixing, bass frequencies will transmit directly to the outside world, so little bass trapping will be necessary. If you monitor at high SPL(volume) I hope your location isn't close to neighbors as you have virtually nothing to stop sound transmission to the outside world. Treatment will do nothing for it either. It will only affect the quality of the sound inside. However, if you are not concerned with sound escaping, then this is to your benifit as you will not have to absorb bass frequencies as much.

For your situation the bottom line is BROADBAND absorption. Your entire budget should be applied to this approach. But your budget will still determine the amount of absorption you can apply. As a minimum, I would purchase at LEAST, 12 panels of RIGID FIBERGLASS. Preferably 24-36 panels. These come in different thickness and are priced accordingly. The panels are usually 2'x4' and come in thickness's of 1", 2", 3" 4" and 6". The thickness will determine the low frequency cutoff of the absorber. Allowing an airgap behind the panels will also lower the bandwidth of absorption. There are TONS of threads describing this and how to cover the panels with fabric. Just do a search. Diffusion should also be used at ther rear wall, but we'll approach that later.

Your best option is to treat your room for a reflection free monitoring position. However, the location will still be determined by a couple of factors, such as door placement and type(sliding or hinged), and the nature of the glass wall(just a window or full glass wall). Also your speaker type and size will determine things also. Do you nearfield monitor or have speakers mounted on stands or use PA speakers or what?

IF the glass wall is a window centered on a 11 foot wall:

Orient your monitoring axis on the long dimension, with the window behind your monitors. This window can be either covered with a HEAVY drape of valoor or other heavy fabric OR a framed absorber made of a few of these panels.

As for the reflection free zone, the front of the room needs absorbers placed on the front corners, at the sidewalls adjacent to the engineering position. Use a small mirror to locate these, by sitting in the enginerring position and have someone hold a mirror on the sidewall. Move the mirror around untill you see a monitor in the mirror. As the mirror is moved and the monitor moves out of the reflection, mark this area on the wall The area that you can see the monitor is the area you should cover with an absorber.

Next is a "cloud" absorber hung over the engineering possition, and possibly a small throw rug in front, and a few on the floor behind. For general broad band absorption, a few panels spaced on the sidewalls and on a pitched cieling will help. The cloud should be a framed absorber with a 1/4" ply or mdf back with the fiberglass spaced off the back about an inch. Depending on location, other panels may need a back also. Take a look at the plan view below. This will help illustrate the placement.

Also, even though the building is metal and bass frequencies will escape, some bass absorption will be needed. I suggest the use of "superchunks" of 4" thick Owens Corning 703, from floor to ceiling in the rear corners, and even in the front corners if budget will allow. These are made by cutting panels in 2'x2' triangles from the panels. You will get 4 per panel. Stacking them will require 24 pieces, which is 6 sheets per corner. If budget doesn't allow for this many panels, simply stradle each corner diagonally floor to cieling with 2 panels.

This is why 24-36 panels would be a better choice, as it will take 12 panels for the 2 rear superchunk corners alone. The other 12-24 could be placed as shown. The front corners will take a total of 4 panels. The side walls at the engineering position could possibly take 4 total, and the cloud could take 3, the rear side walls take possibly 6, the ceiling possibly another 6, the rear wall 2, although this wall could have diffusing elements placed against it. So, for a total of say 36 panels, at 8 sq. feet per panel, and roughly a dollar a square foot for 4", you're looking at roughly $300-$400 to properly treat this space.

Well, Im outta time, hope this helps as a beginning. If you are interested in more info, here are a couple of links to check out. The diffuser thing is quite complicated to describe here, but if your interested let me know. I'll try to explain later. Now, there are other ways to utilize these panels, but without knowing exactly what the building is like(pitched roof etc) I can't exactly say.
Although, the area within the pitched roof if exists could possibly be used for superchunk treatment or baffles even. But needless to say...without knowing.

Anyway, my disclaimer is in force as usual. ie...I'm no expert. BTW, ETHAN WINER IS!! :D I just happened to type this just before he posted. Oh well!
fitZ :)
 

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What Ethan and Rick have written is good.

I can see one additional possible challenge with a metal shed wall, possibly the glass one too.

And that is that the sheet metal is light and springy enough that it would vibrate itself and possibly add a metalic rattle or buzz to the room! :eek: !

In that case one would need to add dampening or mass to the metal itself to keep it from vibrating.

Best to just see if that occurs and then see how to fix it, but keep an ear out for it!
 
Thanks everyone for the info. It's given me a litte to digest and a lot to think about. I really appreciate the help and suggestions. I'll post a diagram of the room shortly.

My wife has just agreed to let me use the entire workshed as a studio so my plan has changed a little as I now have an extra 8' x 11' room at the rear of the room I was proposing to use.

Thanks again,
Jeff K
 
I've finally managed to work out wat I want ot do with the space I have and had the time to draw up a quick plan so I can describe what I have to work with.

This refers to the attached plan. I've labelled the walls A trough D and drawn in the furniture that's in there. As mentioned before, I'm not out to do any soundproofing. My only real objective is to reduce reverb so I can use it to record.

The main room is 10' 6" x 18'. All the walls are made of aluminium sheeting with the exception of wall D which is drywall. The ceiling is flat alumiium sheet that slopes from wall B (8'9") to wall C (8'5").

Wall A is the entrance. There's a sliding glass door that starts 6" in from the wall. The glass door is 6' wide and 7' high. the rest of the wall (4') aluminium.

Wall B is all aluminium sheeting.

Wall C is all aluminium sheeting.

Wall D is drywall and has a 3' sliding wood door in it that buts up to wall B.

I'm more into using the space for video production than musical recording (although that'll happen - you can't be a professional musician for 30 yeas and not want to record somethin' :-). This means I'm mostly recording vocals.

The area with the couch will be used mostly for sitting and listening to finished recordings.

The other half of the room with the table will be used for recording. Mostly vocals - things like video voice overs, podcasts, maybe some guitar.


The second room is my control room were I'll be edting video and mixing audio. All the walls are metal except for the other side of wall D, which is drywall. it is 7' 6" by 10' 6".

I'll have a couple of near field monitors on the desk (marked 'M' on the plan) and maybe a bookshelf on the wall behind me.

Once again, I really appreciate the help I've been given so far. I think I sort of understand the theory and I guess I'm about to build a whole lot of absorbing panles but I'm still not 100% sure about where to put them.

Any suggestions and pointers will be greatly appreciated....

regards
Jeff K
 

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Jeff,


> My only real objective is to reduce reverb so I can use it to record. <

You should also be concerned about accurate monitoring.

> The second room ... is 7' 6" by 10' 6" <

Are there two rooms now, or is this how you propose to divide the space? 7.5 by 10.5 feet is awfully small, and is a surefire recipe for a badly skewed and boomy low end.

I do all my work in a single large room, and I greatly prefer that to having two rooms. Unless you're recording bands with drums and loud guitar amps, there's little to be gained from two rooms. And a lot to be lost.

--Ethan
 
I do all my work in a single large room, and I greatly prefer that to having two rooms. Unless you're recording bands with drums and loud guitar amps, there's little to be gained from two rooms. And a lot to be lost.
Your wisdom is worth its weight in golden 703 Ethan.:D
 
Thanks for the feedback Ethan,

There are two rooms now. I'm one of those people that seems to generate clutter wherever I work and it seemed like a good idea to seperate my work area from the room where I'd invite others to come and help me record.

I guess I could use that second room as storage and perhaps run cables through the wall and use it as a 'server' room to isolate the computers and reduce noise...

I'd still prefer to at least have a go at using the room though...

Cheers
Jeff K
 
Divide the small room in two.
Use one part as the server/machine room and the other, make into a vocal booth with some level of isolation and acoustic treatment.
 
Jeff,

> There are two rooms now. <

Then I'd use the larger room for both recording and mixing.

> I guess I could use that second room as storage and perhaps run cables through the wall and use it as a 'server' room to isolate the computers <

Sure, or use it as a vocal booth. But even with vocals I have no problem using a single room, using headphones while recording.

--Ethan
 
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