Excess Studio Foam

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RecordingMaster

RecordingMaster

A Sarcastic Statement
Hey there,

I just finished adding some strategically placed 1x1 foam wedges on the walls and ceiling of my tracking room (drums, guitars, percussion, etc) in a checkerboard pattern. I have also added bass traps in all four corners and have the room sounding pretty good. The control room is upstairs in what I convinced my wife was to be a "home office for everyone to use in the family" so that she doesn't nag and say I'm hogging all the house for my own selfish needs :P. All's I could convince her to allow me to put up in there as far as acoustical products go, are some foam wedges in front of the mix position (right behind the monitor speakers) as well as a fabric-covered dense drywall-like acoustical panel hung on the wall behind the mix position to avoid some unwanted reflections.

My dilemma (if you want to call it that):

A music store in my city that once offered music lessons went into foreclosure and the bank was selling all their stuff for half price. I went into one of the teaching rooms. The drum room had a large amount of old brown-orangish acoustical foam panels covering a large part of the walls. They let me take them for free since the bank had no idea what they were! These must be 4'x4' each and are the alternating square-type patterns like this http://img.directindustry.com/images_di/photo-m2/wall-mounting-acoustic-panel-519423.jpg

I have 5 sheets of this and I'm thinking there has GOT to be something I can do with them! Like I said, the tracking room is already where it needs to be acoustically and the control room is as good as I'm going to have permission to get it. ;)

I am brainstorming on what to do with it. It is rather ugly and old looking, but is super thick and would be very useful for SOMETHING. I am thinking maybe I will build two portable free standing 4' wide X 6' walls (one with a window in it) out of plywood and 2x4's and cover them in the foam on the inside. Then place them in the corner to make a vocal booth using the 2 exterior walls (cement block) as the other two walls. On those walls I'd hang moving blankets to cancel out the concrete reflections. The mic would go in the treated corner (where the two walls I make meet together). Then I would treat the ceiling above and put a rubber absorptive mat on the tile floor below to reduce mic stand vibrations.

That is the plan I have in my head and I'm wondering if it's even worth it. Can anyone think of anything else I could use it for? It's ugly so it couldn't be something right out on the open but if it was, I'd cover it in some fabric of some sort. I was reading about vocal booths and that small home studios don't really need them, since you can achieve almost the same results with a small portable vocal isolation thing like this (which I could also make out of some of the foam but then what to do with the rest of it?). RealTraps - Portable Vocal Booth

Any suggestions or help from someone with experience in the acoustics field would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
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Not sure who would buy it though and I'd hate to sell it. What about building something like what you have there or vocals? How'd you make it and what's it standing on?
 
It probably could be used for some type of reflection filter. What I do, is hang two 4"x2'X4' rockwool panels from the ceiling in a 'V' shape, to help stop reflections from the back side of the mic. I just steal them from the wall treatment in my control room. From what I have read, foam is about 1/3 as effective as any dense insulation for the cost. It's own properties at dealing with low end are way below that. That being said, I have used Auralex above drum overheads, to help with early reflections, with great results. I now have a live room with the whole ceiling filled with Roxul 80, so I have a bunch of purple foam that I have no use for.

The foam can also be used to decouple monitors from whatever they are placed on. And it makes for a good pillow when passing out in your studio. lol!
 
Ohhh I see what you're doing there, cool. I was thinking some more yesterday and I think I will try taking down all the existing foam 1x1's on my walls which are fairly spaced apart due to lack of foam, and put them much closer together in an adjacent room that I was going to close off with moving blankets when it's tracking time. Then I will put these new 4'x4' panels in the main room (where the drums are) and that way I can keep the adjacent room open. It will add some extra ambiance and eliminate (hopefully) any fears I have about it being TOO dead in the drum room due to too much treatment. Not only that but it might be cool to throw a couple room mics in that room. Will see it it sounds I guess.

(Sigh) experimentation...Never enough time!

I'M OPEN FOR OTHER SUGGESTIONS GUYS, BEFORE I GO TEARING DOWN ALL MY EXISTING PANELING.
 
If you layer it rather than spread it out it may help with the broad band, by this I mean less surface area (so the highs are no attacked so much) and more depth (which lowers the frequency that is affected), say 4 layers or more on top of each other. But really you need to be careful how much foam you fill the room with.

Cheers

Alan.
 
Well as an update, I ended up cutting (with an electric carving knife) these 4x4 foam panels into 2x4 panels and mounting them to some thin, flexible fiber board (similar to mdf or the like). I then bought enough black polyester/cotton fabric to cover all of the 8 panels (only $30 on sale!). I used 6 of them in the carpeted drum room (original main tracking room) and kept the ceiling treatment.

I then took all 48 of the 1x1 foam wedges that were originally on the walls in the drum room and moved them over to the walls of the adjacent room which is open to the drum room; so I no longer need to close off that room with moving blankets when it's tracking time. I added some foam bass traps in all but one of the corners, and in that last corner, used a huge piece of fabric wrapped rigid fiberboard that I also seized for free from the foreclosed music store instruction room. All's I need now is a tasteful area rug that can go on the newly opened up and treated room (which has tile floor that is causing a huge reflection due to the untreated ceiling). I treated the ceiling in the new room with the foam I had left and put an ugly carpet down to test. Takes away the reflections and sounds great as an alternative room to record in or to place room/ambiance mics!

Now, with the extra two 2x4 fabric covered panels that I have not mounted and the movable rigid fiberboard panel....I will use these to bring upstairs to my control room only when I'm doing sessions and for crucial mixing times. The reason I have nothing up there for treatment is because my wife consider's it the office and not an expansion of my music-land into the rest of the civilized home, which I need to respect - it makes sense. I get the whole lower to do whatever I want, and she gets to decorate however she wants upstairs. Gotta be fair! So anyways, those extra panels will just be used for spot tretment for panel 1) behind my monitors, panel 2) wall behind my head, and panel 3) windown behind my left monitor.

PICS COMING SOMEDAY! When I'm finally done (at least for a small period of time). haha
 
Something similar to these: bass-trap-foam-panel-487392.webp They are up in the corners. I won't be taking acoustic measurements with a special meter, just my ears. If the instruments recorded in the room come off nicely in the mix without an over-abundance of bass muddiness, and have good punch, then they've done their job. Playing drums in the room even in person has shown me quite an improvement already. The bass is more pronounced and my kick drum sounds tighter. Toms have much better body as well, not as airy.
 
Aha, they look much better than the 1" thick panels I was envisaging. I am pleased to hear that they are doing their job.
 
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