Treat your rooms . . .

  • Thread starter Thread starter chessrock
  • Start date Start date
allright, there are many interesting points to consider here.
i have a totally untreated square room that is about 11x12 1/2 and i am not in any way unhappy with the way my recordings sound, but i know with some treatment my sounds can get better.

is there anything you shouldnt treat your room with? if i use that spray can adhesive will it ruin my wall(drywall) if i wish to remove it? i see that guitar center now carries the spray can adhesive and sheets of the wall foam. are you supposed to cover your walls from floor to ceiling with it? i think talking about how to get started in treating your room(in english)would be a good thing.
how can you hang the foam without trashing your walls? how much foam do you need on a wall? should you cover the wall or space out the sheets and expose some of the wall?
 
Actually, that's pretty much the wrong way to go about it. You need to really dig in to this and read the links that people have been kindly providing.

Just sticking foam up on your dywalls is going to be of very little help -- and it may even throw things off balance and make it worse.

What you probably need is some combination that will provide you with a degree of broadband absorption. Foam will do fine absorbing higher frequencies but will do very little for the mids and nothing for bass. If you have a heavy futon or leather couch you're not using, then pull that out and strategically place that somewheres in your recording or mixing space. That'll help out the bass response a little. Putting a bed mattress against one of your walls will absorb a lot of mids. And I highly recommend getting some heavy, sturdy packing blankets and hanging those from your ceiling using simple metal hooks from home depot.

There are also some simple ideas for homemade tube bass traps if you go here: http://www.studioforums.com/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=1436041581&f=3756015614&m=8636056254


And if you're really serious about treating your space, and want to do it the right way, then get in touch with Ethan: www.realtraps.com
 
Don't bother with the tube traps. They will do little to nothing for your low end. I have tried MANY different traps and found Ethans to do the job the best. I am sure John Sayers has some designs for some resonators that will work down to the low mids.

Kirk
 
Wow. So you think the tube trap idea is just a bunch of snake oil?
 
Ya, unless you have like 50 of them:) No seriously I think there are way better traps out there. If you want to absorb down below 125hz you need Ethans Real Traps.
 
Well, I got my 703 wedges like everywhere . . . so I figure between the two, something is bound to be doing something. :D
 
Chess,

> So you think the tube trap idea is just a bunch of snake oil? <

It's not that tube traps are snake oil. They work about as well as the 1-inch 703 that's in them. Which is not so well at very low frequencies. There's nothing special about a round shape, and it takes up more space than an equivalent flat panel. The DIY plans in particular are lame because the author is clueless - you never need an airtight seal on a hunk of rigid fiberglass!

--Ethan
 
Do you need an airtight seal to make a Dead-Air Trap? I would think that 703 and dead air trap would be a good combo... yes, no?
 
DJ,

> Do you need an airtight seal to make a Dead-Air Trap? <

I don't know what a dead air trap is.

--Ethan

PS: I'll be away and unable to reply further until Monday.
 
Well, that's what I call it... a dead air trap is like the dead air space you have on your low DIY bass traps... you have your collector (plywood), then your transfer/reducer (dead air trap - air space) and then your absorber (703). So my question is... does the dead air trap or air space between the Plywood and 703 need to be an airtight seal... and if not, wouldn't it work better if it was?

Monday is good... thanks.
 
Being air tight will only force sound to travel through two layers of the 703 the tube is basicly made of. For the "dead" air inside to do anything is beyond me. I don't see how 12 or so inches will do anything. What's even funnier to me is some mfg's put in dividers in the tubes to prevent standing waves inside.

Kirk
 
When comparing tube or corner membrane style low absorbers, doesn't a lot of how effective they are come down to the amount of surface area they cover? ie; you can build a good low resonant chamber (RPG's corner traps for example) and at the corner you do get the most effect per square foot of surface, but there is not enough surface area addressed?
 
mixsit said:
When comparing tube or corner membrane style low absorbers, doesn't a lot of how effective they are come down to the amount of surface area they cover? ie; you can build a good low resonant chamber (RPG's corner traps for example) and at the corner you do get the most effect per square foot of surface, but there is not enough surface area addressed?
Click to expand...

Ethan would have the definitive answer, but I think he'd be the first to tell you that a problem room might require eight, 12 or even more corner traps. (You can ask him yourself at recording.org, assuming you aren't one of the hundreds that have been banned from the site.)
 
littledog said:
...assuming you aren't one of the hundreds that have been banned from the site.)
Click to expand...

Do I even want to ask what that's about?
 
DJ,

> does the dead air trap or air space between the Plywood and 703 need to be an airtight seal <

Yes, but this has nothing to do with how fiberglass absorbs. A wood panel trap is basically a shock absorber for low frequency sound waves. The air inside serves as the spring, and the panel is the mass. So an air-tight seal is important for this one particular design only.

--Ethan
 
The BBC has a site with a lot of technical stuff compiled over the years. One paper they have contests the "airtight" seal pretty convincingly. They had built slot resonators and cut open the side of the frame with a Skilsaw to see if the "airtight" bit really was necessary. They concluded that performance of the trap wasn't negatively affected by the loss of the airtightness of the box itself.
 
I thought DJ was talking about he tubes being air tight for some reason.

Ethans panel traps MUST be airtight.
 
I thought DJ was talking about he tubes being air tight for some reason.

Ethans panel traps MUST be airtight.
 
I've got eight of them. They don't appear to be airtight, but I could be wrong.
 
I'd like to take Chessrock's original topic back a step:

Make sure the music you're recording doesn't suck, is well rehearsed and make damn sure you have half decent instruments that are maintained and tuned....

Then treat your room, buy pres, etc, etc, etc...........
 
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