Good sounding budget room

[stuckatwork]

Hey everyone,
I was wondering if anyone had any idea how I can make a room sound decent on a budget. Here's my situation. We've got a room about 9' by 15' in a basement. We want to set it up to record my band's rock album. We just recently obtained about 1700' of shag carpet with padding. How can we use that creatively to get the best results? We're not worried about sound proofing as much, just want to room to sound good. I'm thinking of of putting up 2' angles made of layered carpet and padding on all the edges of the room. Will that do anything to tame the bass frequencies or diffuse the sound a bit? Also, if I wrinkle the carpet along the walls will that help difuse the sound?

 

[knightfly]

Carpet won't do anything for bass, unless you use it to cover some fiberglass bass traps in the corners - But, if you over-use the carpet, you will sure suck out all the "sizzle" in the room. Depending on what the walls are already made out of, probably less than half the floor surface and none of the wall/ceiling surface should be carpet. No two types of carpet have exactly the same absorption characteristics, but they pretty much all suck up highs. Cheapest bass trap is a big, overstuffed, FREE old couch.

Here are typical absorption values for one type of carpet, from a table at Studiotips.com - others are similar.

Floor, carpet. 1/4" pile
125 hZ 250 hZ 500 hZ 1 khZ 2khZ 4khZ
0.05 - -0.10 - -0.15 - -0.30 - -0.50 - 0.55

Note the almost non-existent absorption at low freq...