Help me treat my new live room

Hey All, I have completed my studio build and to no surprise I have a really boomy live room. This was anticipated but i would love some suggestions on how to treat it. My space is about 12 x 10 x 6'9 (height - yes its that low) I have added some 1.5" foam absorption panels around the perimeter and have also add 12" (6x6) bass traps to all the corners. The ceiling is still untreated and the floor is wood laminate. The room is a square so I am getting some major flutter and resonance especially in the lower frequencies. I will try to post some pictures of the treatment and the room tonight. Any help would be appreciated. Best, Sam

Hey Sam. Good to hear that major construction is complete. Pity about the response issues.

My space is about 12 x 10 x 6'9 (height - yes its that low) ... The room is a square ...

That's not so bad. It's not a total square, and the ratio works out to about 1 : 1.48 : 1.77, which is not terrible. Cheer up: it could be worse! :)

The room is a square so I am getting some major flutter

The flutter is from the parallel surfaces, not from being square. That should be treatable with absorption. The walls should be reasonably easy to do, of course, but with such a low ceiling treating that is going to be pretty hard: You don't have enough space to put up much seriously thick treatment above you, but you can probably get several inches in there, hopefully.

and resonance especially in the lower frequencies.

Theory says that your first order axial resonant frequencies are 47 Hz. (length), 57 Hz (width) and 84 Hz (height), and the first two are isolated modes.

12" (6x6) bass traps to all the corners.

What do you mean by 12"? Are they 12 inches thick? 12 inches high? 12 wide? And what is the "6x6" part? And when you say "all corners", do you mean all twelve of the corners in the room, or just the four most obvious ones? :) Photos would be good! It might also be a good idea to actually test your room, for the entire low end of the spectrum, to see exactly where your problems are. - Stuart -

Thanks for the response Stuart. The bass traps are on the 4 corners from the walls to the ceilings, and 3 of the corners were walls meet. The 4th wall corner is about 4 inches from the door so it doesnt have a bass trap. I will provide some pictures tonight so you can see what I am working with. The bass traps are 12" on diagonal, 6" per side. There are 3 24" high traps end to end in each corner with a 6" block in the ceiling/wall corners. . They are standard auralex foam. What type of measurement device would I need to test the room? Thanks for your help and words of encouragement! -Sam

Hey Sam.

The bass traps are 12" on diagonal, 6" per side.

Your bass traps don't seem to be very big. I reckon you need something rather more substantial. Have you heard of "superchunk" bass traps? You can build them yourself, reasonably inexpensively. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7278&hilit=superchunk And those are small ones in that picture sequence! some folks build them even bigger. 24 inches seems to be a good size to start with, although I have also read that you don't start getting good effect until around 36 inches.

What type of measurement device would I need to test the room?

Well, you could go out and spend lots of money to buy a 1/12 octave spectrum analyzer, but fortunately you don't need to! Ethan Winer (a regular poster here, and manufacturer of bass traps) has a method that is really easy to use, and gives you a fairly good idea of your room response. All you need is your DAW, and a good mic with fairly flat response. For more details, go here: http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm Take a good look around Ethan's web site: You'll find tons of useful info on acoustic treatment there. (Frankly, I'm surprised at the amount of info he gives away for free on how to do things yourself, when the actual business of his company is to make and sell them for money! Like John, Rod and others who make a living out of the business of acoustics, I'm pleasantly surprised by their attitude in helping us out for FREE here. It speaks very well of them; selflessly sharing their knowledge with those of us who can't really buy their products or services, for one reason or another. In my case, I'd love to buy some of Ethan's products, but the shipping costs to Chile would be prohibitive.) But anyway, take a look at the method Ethan developed for measuring your room, download the files, and try it out. There are other ways you can measure your room, too, such as with ETF software (which you have to buy, and doesn't seem to have been updated much over the last couple of years or so), and "room EQ wizard" (download here: http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/ ), but Ethan's method is easy and fairly accurate. - Stuart -