Where's the best deal on "real" audio acoustic treatment?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Titanship
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All ears. That's pretty funny.

15x13 is not a bad size. You should think about not dividing it up even more. consider making it dual purpose and track with phones. A bit more work to isolate noise sources but will likely give you better sonic results.

My control room is only slightly larger (18x13). It had the same problem with a real bad ping pong flutter Echo. I treated it live-end dead end and broke up the narrow sides with some absorption panels and it did the trick. The picture links above show that I did not have to cover everything to get the desired result. One mistake is to over do it. The small rooms are likely to be a bigger problem.

Maybe John has some links to where you can find some of the spreadsheet calculators that will give you some ideas as to where the nodes are likely to be with your room dimensions. I can't find the ones I used. My concern going in was bass. I was more worried that I would have problems in the lower spectrum that wouldn't be easy to deal with. Fortunately my big bumps were all in the range that a bit of fiberglass could take care of.

There is no such thing as a completely dead room. Most overtreated rooms have a big lower mid bump that can just be havoc in recordings. Foam and fiberglass start to loose effectivness as the freq goes lower. The trick is to make the room sound "normal" not dead.

Don Goguen
Folk Cafe Productions
 
Hey Lee

How low do you need to go? That will determine what you should use. Do you have a problem around 125hz? Identify the problem first. Treat second.

So the answer is, only if you need it. I treated my small bass problem in the corners and that did it for me.

Don Goguen
Folk Cafe Productions
 
Don,

Actually, I'm looking at building a modest room within a room project studio inside of a warehouse. Its in the design phase, so I don't have any "problem" frequencies....YET! :>) I'm seriously thinking about trying for a non-environment control room, though, so the wide band adsorbtion of the fiberglass seems like a pretty ideal way to start, if I'm understanding things.

-lee-
 
Well now is a good time to start examining the design. There are ways of getting some sense of where problem freq will show up. Some of the books on the subject have tables and explanations on how to apply them. I found web calculators in the form of spreadsheets that you input dimensions and it give you a read on room nodes.

As you can quess I don't much believe you can take the room out of the mix enviroment. At least not at the level of most budget studios. I have always read that the goal is to try minimize the bad effects of the room acoustics. Broadband absorption is good but as part of an overall plan. Focus on a plan. Learn what you don't know and hire expertise if needed. If you are spending a great deal of money on construction there is no better investment you can make than to research this subject and learn as much as you can. It will cost you much more to fix mistakes later.

My advice on treatment is to do small amounts at a time. That way you get some sense as to the effectiveness of what you are putting up. You learn what is working and what is not.

Everyone I spoke to before putting my room together said I was over analysing it but I had few surprizes. Considering all the trade offs I had to make, that's saying something. My rooms are not perfect but for cheap they are outstanding. I've had many compliments on how good the control room sounds. and I really like the way my sound room translate on recordings. It didn't just happen.

Don Goguen
Folk Cafe Productions
 
Regarding planning: I couldn't agree with you more. Right now, my interest in the absorbers is part of the plan - I'm trying to figure out what "building blocks" I should use to put it all together.

I've been looking around, but so far, while I've found some good info, I have not found full-blown plans on the net, so I'm working on my own. (anyone have any good links?) I know every space is custom to some degree or other, but I'm working on some "generic" plans for a square open space of about 2500 sq. ft.

Thanks for your input!
-lee-
 
Folkcafe said:
All ears. That's pretty funny.

15x13 is not a bad size. You should think about not dividing it up even more. consider making it dual purpose and track with phones. A bit more work to isolate noise sources but will likely give you better sonic results.
Click to expand...

*cries*

You are killing my control room dreams! Ive worked for studio's so long...I wanted one for my very own!
 
The trick is to make the room sound "normal" not dead.
Click to expand...
Why dead? Here at work we have an anchoic chamber. You can't get much deader than that. It's great for making measurements but would be lousy room for recording. This is the problem I see with many older vocal booths. They are treated to death and as a result sound very unnatural.
Click to expand...

This is too true - too many rooms are over dead......Well they are dead but only in the high end. If you look at the figures for the insulation you will notice that it only works down to around 500hz yet below it tapers off.

This is why I keep pushing the slot resonators as they have a bright reflective/diffusing surface yet absorb below 500hz.

The aim is to lower the reverb time BUT across the whole frequency band. A room with insulation on one wall and a slot resonator on another will have a lower reverbtime but and even frequency response.

When we were building Left Bank (John Sayers Studio at the construction site) we lined the walls with the insulation and when you were in the room it sucked up the sound and was dead as shit but when the slot resonators went in it brightened up again lost the low end wooliness and you could hear the ssss in your voice brighten up YET the reverbtime was low and the room had a heap of presence.

check out the slots on these rooms

http://home.locall.aunz.com/~johnsay/Studio/Pages/Egan5.htm

http://home.locall.aunz.com/~johnsay/Studio/Pages/update_6.htm

cheers
john
 
Doohoohoohood! I have to make a stop at Home Depot followed by Joann Fabrics.
 
John
This isn't the best picture but you kind of get the idea of what I've done in my tracking room. The foam is from Markertech and is designed for studio diffusion and is on all the walls. I still have flutter echos though (if you clap your hands, it has that tubey, fluttering echo sound) and I want to do something about it. The room is 12'X16' with a 7'6" ceiling. Any guidance you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
 

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What treatment is there on the ceiling?? At 7'6" it's the closest wall.

cheers
john
 
None really. It's ox board (kind of a press board that's made of big pieces) with 1/2"X 1 1/2" strips of wood spaced about 1 1/2" apart running the long way to the room. I put them up in a vane attempt to make some kind of diffusers. It's a low ceiling (it's already two sheets of 1/2" drywall and the 1/2"ox board).
 
Seems like you've gotr two problems then. Firstly there will be room modes at the wall distance frequencies and secondly you will have boominess created by the low frequencies reverberating cos the foam only works from around 500Hz up. I'd say you need some angled slots.

cheers
john
 
The foam panels are 54" square. How about if I removed the ones in the corners and replaced them with slot resonators?
 
Yeah across the corners is the way to go. If you look at the figures I gave sjoko you can get an idea of the slot depth, width etc etc.

cheers
John
 
John,
In regard to slot resonators with a varying depth in the cavity.......does it matter whether the angled back board is running vertically as opposed to horizontally.

Also, I presume that it is quite feasable to combine slot width, batten width, slot depth as well as the varying cavity depth to create comprehensive frequency absorbtion............hence the radiating battens in some of the slot resonators pictured.

ChrisO :cool:
 
Yes the vertical angle works just as well and yes the splayed slots are doing what you said. :)

cheers
John
 
John,

Do you have a detailed description of the slot resonators you guys designed for Egan's studio? We are just finishing up construction on our facility, and I am about to shift gears out of "tool belt" mode, and into "acoustic treatments."

I looked at the photos of the rear of Egan's studio, and that is very close to the look I'm going for.

Thanks in advance...
 
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