Mattresses

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Turf

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In a few days I'll begin recording in a shed/garage with pretty bad sound. The problem is all the walls are rock solid, as is the floor and there is nothing in the shed other than the instruments. So the problem is the sound is doing a lot of bouncing. I want to minimize this but I don't have any acoustic foam at my disposal. What I do have though.... is a lot of spare mattresses. And what we're thinking is to put these mattresses against the walls.


Would this achieve anything?
 
They would probably help. Put some diagonally in the corners. Propping them on their sides or ends could make them function as decent goboes. Stick one or two up in the rafters if possible. Experiment with the ratio of covered:uncovered walls to get something that's under control but still has some life to it.
 
There's 2 ways to look at it.

First, is a room with SOMETHING against the walls going to have less "echo" and sound at least a little more controlled than a totally empty room with rock solid walls? Yeah, it's going to do something.

But is it really going to be much better? Probably not because you're going to notice other problems and side effects from using mattresses as opposed to the proper materials like rigid frbreglass or some other similar material that will do the job properly.

The problem with using material that's not dense enough to absorb low frequencies is that you'll be reducing the mids and highs while the bass frequencies will be un-affected. Unfortunately, bass frequencies are 90% of the problem in 99.9% of rooms. So, what you're now doing is making the bass 100% of your problem. You'll have less echo, but you'll probably find the sound very dull, since you killed the mids and highs but not the bass. This will probably lead to the drummer hitting harder, the guitar player turning up, etc....which will then lead to hearing loss, fist fights, jail time, and eventual therapy. :D

Just something to think about. But, there's no reason not to try the mattresses if you have them there anyway.:cool:
 
While the mattresses won't make a perfect sounding room, it will improve the horrible live sounding room you have now and at least make it more pleasurable to play in.

Alan.
 
I'm with Witzendoz on this. If you can't do a full, professional acoustic treatment, do what you can.

Besides just putting some against the walls, if you have some bed frames you can stand on end, try putting some around/behind the vocalist(s). Some in the corners would be a good idea too, as has been said.
 
Just put the mattresses on the floor and everybody lays down to record! :facepalm:
 
Is it quiet near this place? You don't want the sound of wind/cars/kids/sirens getting onto the recording, though it could be kind of cool for a garage vibe :guitar:
 
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