egg crates

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mikeh said:
A serious question (as serious as this thread can get) - would the plastic egg crates function in a limited capacity as diffusers???
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like chess said...yeah, they will diffuse to some degree. however, i don't think they would diffuse to a noticeable degree. mainly because they aren't very absorbant either. the way i understand it is sound would just go right through them, hit the wall and then bounce back off. This is why the good diffusers are made of wood...a dense enough surface so it bounces off in the desired direction.
 
boingoman said:
I don't know about in studios, but they certainly can tame a lot of reflections in live environments. And I'm sure it depends on the blanket. The ones I've seen are theatrical drapes. Thick, heavy, with a velvet-like texture on the face, fireproof, and expensive.

At the club where I work, they cover the back of the stage, with a double layer in the drum nook. We are going to do the side walls of the stage, and put them on slides, so we can move them back and forth to make the stage more or less "dead". Acoustic acts like a more live feel to the stage, and we can use less monitor volume.
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ahhh....i guess that makes sense :)
 
mikeh said:
could not any "angled piece of hard plastic" act as a diffusor?
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If the sides form a 90-degree angle, they will act as a mirror for sounds coming straight from the front, and the sides of each "bubble", if flat, would reflect mirror back 180 degrees any sound hitting them face on (e.g. on a 45 degree angle from straight front on.) Other angles will reflect the sound in various directions. Some of these directions may act ato diffuse the sound but others, like the 90-degree angle will work more as reflectors and not diffusers. It's a crap shoot putting that stuff up.

Also - but this is just an educated guess that could be wrong - I would think that hard plastic would tend to be much "brighter" than cellulose cartons; i.e. they would tend to reflect the high freqs more whereas the cellulose would tend to absorb them a bit more. This would bake the angles thing in the first paragraph of this post all that much more important to watch.

G.
 
Try singing with a sheet of plastic in front of you and ask yourself ... is this the kind of reflection I like? Now do the same thing with wood. Forget the whole science and physics aspect of it, and I think you'll find that wood is just a much more pleasing reflector / refractor of sound. Or maybe not, :D but you should definitely hear a difference at least.
 
Egg Crates

I refuse to believe that they are useless until I see the lab tests...

I used them in a tiny jam room once 'back in the day'

If I used them again I'd try to make a divider out of them with an air pocket or stuffed fiberglass behind them... Sealed as airtight as possible.

If I get a hold of some again I'm going to do frequency analysis on them. Who wants to send me a box to do a FFT analysis on?
 
northsiderap said:
I refuse to believe that they are useless until I see the lab tests...

I used them in a tiny jam room once 'back in the day'

If I used them again I'd try to make a divider out of them with an air pocket or stuffed fiberglass behind them... Sealed as airtight as possible.

If I get a hold of some again I'm going to do frequency analysis on them. Who wants to send me a box to do a FFT analysis on?
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again, i will quote: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

read it all. not necessarily just about egg crates but will tell you how acoustics work and the reason stuff like "acoustic foam" doesn't do enough for a studio. dense material absorbs better. the more denser the material, the more low frequencies that are absorbed. wasting money on something that only absorbs part of the freq. spectrum is just stupid. not to mention the whole fire hazard thing
 
northsiderap said:
If I get a hold of some again I'm going to do frequency analysis on them. Who wants to send me a box to do a FFT analysis on?
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I was going to send you an empty egg carton until I realized my eggs come in a type of styrofoam-like container now :(

;)

G.
 
northsiderap said:
If I used them again I'd try to make a divider out of them with an air pocket or stuffed fiberglass behind them... Sealed as airtight as possible.
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Um ... yea, but then if it worked out, it wouldn't be because of the egg cartons -- it would be becase of the fiberglass and air pockets.

I mean, seriously, why don't you just hang up old, worn tennis shoes? Those will probably do just about as much for you. And do a frequency analysis comparison between the tennis shoes and the egg boxes. See what you come up with.
 
Everybody Gripes, Nobody Acts

Okay, I will analyze:

1) An old pair of tennis shoes
2) An egg crate
3) A piece of drywall

if someone sends me a few egg crates. Are you all afraid of what the results might be? Don't be. Let's get to the bottom of this instead of just constantly speculating and flaming about it.

North Lake Records
P.O. Box 181
Iron Mountain, MI 49801
 
northsiderap said:
Okay, I will analyze:

1) An old pair of tennis shoes
2) An egg crate
3) A piece of drywall

if someone sends me a few egg crates. Are you all afraid of what the results might be? Don't be. Let's get to the bottom of this instead of just constantly speculating and flaming about it.
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I'd happily send them along myself, this is great. :) But like I say, my eggs come in styrofoam-ish cartons now, and I don't have any old tennis shoes.

However, I'll put $5 on the tennis shoes. :)

G.
 
northsiderap said:
Okay, I will analyze:

1) An old pair of tennis shoes
2) An egg crate
3) A piece of drywall

if someone sends me a few egg crates. Are you all afraid of what the results might be? Don't be. Let's get to the bottom of this instead of just constantly speculating and flaming about it.

North Lake Records
P.O. Box 181
Iron Mountain, MI 49801
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come on man, these test have been done already. several acoustical savvy people on this site point out time and time again that egg crates do not do anything that makes them worth while of taming the sound in your studio.
http://www.acousticsfirst.com/eggc.htm and be sure to click on the PDF file on that site which is:
http://www.acousticsfirst.com/docs/egg.PDF
then we got:
http://www.ratch-h.com/eggfoam.html

egg crate foam: .40 NRC
and per Ethan's tests:
Owens-Corning 703: 1.00 NRC
Owens-Corning 705-FRK: .60 NRC

*note--those numbers only represent an average of the mid frequencies and don't properly represent the lower frequencies. Which, as we can tell from the link, the egg crate foam does not help with.
 
Thanks for your elaborate responses guys. I'm glad I posted here first before putting them up right away.
 
Let me know if you need help finding those 12-breasted midgets.
They will appreciate the contribution.
Nothing worse that 12 sagging midget boobies...
 
> Nothing worse that 12 sagging midget boobies... <

I think that one short statement summarizes this thread very well! :D
 
northsiderap said:
Okay, I will analyze:

1) An old pair of tennis shoes
2) An egg crate
3) A piece of drywall

if someone sends me a few egg crates. Are you all afraid of what the results might be? Don't be. Let's get to the bottom of this instead of just constantly speculating and flaming about it.

North Lake Records
P.O. Box 181
Iron Mountain, MI 49801
Click to expand...

FWIW -
I can tell you from my personal experience that they do diddly squat.
I also have spoken to many others who have tried egg cartons to no avail.
I have yet to hear of a SIBNGLE case where egg cartons did any good at all.

It is your perogative to take any advice here as you wish. However, in this case I would not consider any of this to be speculative - there are a lot of user stories out here to back it up. Mine is another. My studio sounded like crap,a nd I tried everything, egg cartons, cartons, auralex foam. Nothing worked as expected.
 
To add to the point.... do you think I would have spent a shitload of money on getting John Sayers to design my studio if all it took was for me to staple up a whack of egg crates???????????

Get real.............. if proper acoustics were that simple, every hobbyist in the world would have world-class studios in their bedrooms.............

:rolleyes:
 
egg crates also make good kindling for fires. :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
To add to the point.... do you think I would have spent a shitload of money on getting John Sayers to design my studio if all it took was for me to staple up a whack of egg crates???????????

Get real.............. if proper acoustics were that simple, every hobbyist in the world would have world-class studios in their bedrooms.............

:rolleyes:
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Wait a minute, you mean I can't use eggcrates?

What am I gonna do?
 
Look man. I've already said it once.

Slab of angus beef.

Okay?
 
Now this is for real...
How about that foam that they put below the carpet, but against the wall?? (but like an inch thick)
or sheets of styrofoam like the ones sold at arts & crafts stores??
 
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