??? Of course. But if his corner traps are in corners, and everything else that is supposed to be against a wall is against a wall, the placement doesn’t matter. I was talking about stuff like, should I place them in a checkerboard pattern, should I turn one on its side, should I put four on that wall vs three on this wall and one on the ceiling…should they go 8 inches apart or 14 inches apart.
The more the better. Just stuff them in there and be done with it.
oh, right. yes, that pretty much the case. With broadband absorption, I try to keep it so there aren’t any spots where parallel walls are left untreated
…I posed that question to Ethan a while back. Where if you could treat the room with equal effectiveness by buying a bunch of really good stuff, and only cramming it in one corner, opposed to putting less of it in all four corners. In an ideal scenario, his tests showed that you should spread it out if possible. But when you can’t spread it evenly, there seems to be a consensus that the specifics of how you distribute it it matter less than how much of it there is, and if the basics (parallel walls, first reflections, properly hung) is all accounted for.
lol…If i’m facing the mixer, the only corner those EthanTraps fit in is behind me to the left. So I stuffed them all there, and have to use the GIK ones for everywhere else. I took the other batch of EthanTraps and put them in the vocal booth.
I don’t think that’s safe to assume basics being accounted for in this situation. The original idea was to add a wall because a large room was considered too hard to deal with. But the basic reality is that a larger room is a lot easier to deal with acoustically. I’d put chalk that down as basic understanding of acoustics.
That’s interesting
It would seem like a larger room would have more reflections since there’s more surface area to bounce around
Either way, the space I’m coming from is almost half the size of the 10x20 space I’m envisioning, so I’m still better off in this space than I was before
I suppose you would have to see how much shit is being stored in that area to understand why I wouldn’t want to just keep it open.
Coming from a messy cluttered band space, the last thing I want is another messy cluttered band space that’s cluttered with someones stuff that isn’t my own
Also it’s all hard concrete floors in there
I don’t know how acoustically amazing concrete is but I have a feeling most of that concrete surface is gonna need some rugs or carpet
More floor means more carpet
I do acoustic treatments and for a room like yours the most important part is the ping pong table. It is a great source of sonic character with ability to provide rhythmic beats of the bouncing ball while keeping you entertained. Great work!
anywho… in all seriousness, before I can suggest anything meaningful…
what do you plan on doing in that room? is it going to be recording vocals, drums or pretty much anything? Basically is it a listening room for mixing or a recording room or both?
Is the floor hardwood or carpet?
what materials is the ceiling?
The band room is meant to be a practice space mostly ,as well as a place to live record the band, as well as track by track recording. Eventually I might try to fashion some sort of dedicated vocal booth, but the band room is meant to double as a recording space.
As for the office area, that I intend to be the mixing room, but also double as a recording space for smaller projects, like if I am just recording myself with vocals/acoustic guitar etc.
But the band room I intend to have equipped for full drum micing, vocal micing, guitar micing etc.
The floor in all rooms is concrete, but the office currently has rugs covering most of the floor space. the ceiling and walls are just normal drywall.
Concrete floors are good, remove the rugs if you can. It sounds like fairly simple room to treat. Broadband absorbers, rockwool sheets or whatever your budget allows. Record the “long” way instead of the short way, mic positioning is important.
Find the most reflective spots in the room (whistle, clap test etc) , most likely the centers and the focus of the room will be the most reflective. You can either put a skyline diffuser directly above it or put a small mat on the floor in those areas.
again a lot of this is budget driven and commonsense driven. If you have a tight budget you have to rely a lot on common sense.
About the “foam” it is normally not used in professional studios because of its low Absorbtion coefficients in the 125-250 Hz zone. At that point it is not really working for the money spent on it. For a little more you can get much higher coefficients. If your budget is extremely limited, you may want to focus only on having strong bass trapping and over a period of time accumulate better panels.
I’m not sure if the 200’s to 250’s are really a problem. I thought cubicle panels in offices can be tuned to reduce that. My understanding was that 70-125 was what you pay a lot of money to be able to control.
GIK and RealTraps present the volume reduction ability of the overall material on a graph in sabins (unit of measurement). I’ve been told that the absorption co-efficient is not what you want to look at when evaluating the effectiveness of a trap because that specific calculation doesn’t account for frequency ranges.
If I’m not correct about that, let me know why.
It is true yes.
Absorption coefficient is not the only parameter, density and thickness of the material plays a big part as well.
Absorption coefficients depend on the type of method used to calculate them and they vary at different frequency ranges per the r chamber method so they are not the go-to factor for making decisions but it is definitely a starting point.
RealTraps uses high density fiberglass for their traps which is excellent for overall generic acoustic work. Though,
Rock based traps fair a bit better than fiberglass at times if you are in a humid environment like a florida basement studio… where fiberglass works poorly.
There is no single go to solution for acoustics unfortunately as opposed to what many may say and budget dictates everything.
That’s interesting. Haven’t heard this one before. Do you hapen to remember a source?
That foam isn’t absorbing anything under 1000Hz. Room modes under 300Hz are pretty hard to control without massive bass traps. 70 - 125 is reaaaaally hard to tame in a small room.
My control room is only 2 feet wider than his control room. I have 15 massive traps in here (not counting those little makeshift slabs leaning against the window), and I still have low end blaring out of control. I’m ordering another 6 matching ones to hang from the ceiling. I just have to make it work.
I have one of those JBL mics to take measurements with, but I’m not sure how to use it. Does anyone here happen to know?
not sure, someone who extensively worked in fiberglass once told me that…and I have personally seen effects of high humidity on fiberglass panels, mold buildup and warping. Walked into a myrtle beach studio once, they had mold build up and sheets had warped. May not effect sonic character by too much but its definitely not very healthy …kinda rare though. Doubt its going to effect the OP’s project.
Ah. I see what you’re saying.
I’m not sure that can be attributed to humidity levels in any general area such as Myrtle Beach South Carolina, Houston Texas, or Miami Florida, all of which have ridiculous humidity levels. First I would ask how well that particular facility was kept up, and then specifically what companies traps were doing this. Well built commercial traps won’t have this problem.
You have me curious which studio that was. For every 1 pro studio that may have moldy acoustic treatment, I assure you that there are 20 of us (here in the Myrtle Beach area) who do not.
It was the early 2000s, I am no longer in that area but if my memory serves well it was owned by Gregory and Carpenter llc or something like that closer to N Myrtle beach area, they dont exist anymore , and you may be correct. Commercial fiberglass panels were in their infancy stage so I bet there could be defects.
Nice area though - miss it.