newbie questions / bedroom studios

Hi all, These are pre-existing rooms (apartments, so I can't <br>make any permanent changes) with limited possibilities.<br> It is basically going to be a project studio / listening room. I <br>would not be recording anything like drums, guitars, etc. All of my music <br>is digitally generated or sampled in some way. This cuts down <br>on the need for any risers or things of that sort. However, I will still<br> need traps, absorption, diffusion, maybe a cloud, etc. These<br> two floorplans represent the two different places I will be living<br> in the next year. I would like suggestions on 1) what room on <br>each plan would be best to use for the studio and 2) what treatment <br>I will need to sufficiently flatten out the room. You might need more information than what I <br>have provided here; I am new to the whole acoustics thing, and <br>all I know is that my untreated bedroom studios in the past <br>have translated poorly to other listening environments (my tracks <br>sound too bassy, and the high end is muffled), and <br>I want to remedy that. I very much appreciate any time you take to help me with this problem! floorplans: First, my fall semester residence: And this is my residence for this summer: thanks, - Nick p.s. I am going to post this on another forum as well to get some more opinions.

Greetings and welcome! Yes, we can use some more information. The ceiling height would be good to know, but mostly to see how much headroom you have, since you can't do too much about it. Also we need to know how much damage you can do to the wall paneling (can you screw stuff into the drywall, and patch it up when you leave? or does all your treatment need to not scratch the surface of your place?) And how handy are you with carpentry? If you can do this all yourself, it'll be a lot easier to give you pointers. If you just want to buy stuff to put up, we can tell you who to go talk to about it. Okay, on the layouts you provided... I don't know about the summer residence- there's only one bedroom, so unless you're going to sleep in the control room (not impossible) or the living room (I've seen people do this for the sake of the music), there's not many options. For the fall residence, you seem to be in better shape- if you can set aside the top-right room (as you look at the plan) I think you'd be in good shape. Not just because it's the biggest, but with the closet along the back wall you'll have a useful bass trap right there. Either leave the door open, or if you're comfortable with it, build an open frame of 2x2 lumber to fit the door opening, and cover both sides with rigid fiberglass panels, then set it on the door hinges. It doesn't need to close perfectly- just to cover most of the door opening. This'll allow low bass freqs to go into the closet but will absorb a lot of it- especially if there's off-season clothes hanging in there. Clothes closets actually make pretty good bass traps. If you don't want to build a rigid insulation door like that, just pull the door off it's hinges and put it away. Anyway, with whatever room you build a temp studio in, you can hang rigid insulation panels in the right spots to make the room very useable. A cloud over the mix position, panels flat against the walls (or spaced a few inches if you can) in the right places to stop early reflections from the speakers to the mix position, and some 4" thick panels spaced out from the walls along the back wall and you should be all set. From reading your post, it appears you've been looking around this board at least a little bit. Your layouts don't show any windows. If possible, try to set up your mixing station to face the windows, as opposed to facing away from them. If you can put curtains over them, or build a temporary 'plug' over them, so much the better. Hope this helps. Kase www.minemusic.net

Thanks for your quick reply! Unforunately, I do not think it will be possible for me to do much damage to the walls in the roooms since I am renting. I MAY be able to get away with nailing, but that's about it. To answer your other question, I am am 99% sure that the room has 8' high ceilings. So for the bass trap, you are saying all I need is to take the doors off the hinges, hang my clothes in there, and build the rigid fiberglass on wood frame thing, and that will do the trick? I have been known to swing a hammer here and there, but I am not very knowledgeable about carpentry. Would the fiberglass fit on the outside of the wood frame, where the edges of the fiberglass are flush with the outter edges of the wood? Or would the fiberglass somehow fit inside the frame? I hope that question makes sense. Also (here again I am showing how new I am to all of this) I was under the impression that it was good to fill the corners with those LENRD things or rigid fiberglass for bass trapping. Does just having a closet converted into a back-of-the room basstrap perform just as well as having traps in the corners, by directing sound into itself instead of causing it to build up in the corners? Sorry if that is too wordy. :) Also, how do the DIY standard fiberglass panels covered in high-frequency reflective (or should they be absorptive?) cloth compare to the products that e.g. Auralex sells? Would there be a major improvement just buying them premade, or could I save the money and do it myself with the same quality? One more question: I have only seen "clouds" on floorplans for studios. How big would it need to be, what does it need to be made of, and how much of an angle should there be from the front to the back of the cloud? I am going to consult with the other two people that will be living with me in the fall residence to see whether they will permit me to have the upper right room on the plan. As for the summer residence, I will be the only one living there, so it doesn't matter where I sleep. I am perfectly fine with sleeping in the living room for the sake of having a nicer sounding music room. If these are too many questions for you to field, please feel free to tell me to RTFM some more. I am asking them here in this post because I have limited time, and I would like to start ordering materials now in preparation. thank you all kindly for your time, I would be floundering in confusion were it not for this forum! - Nick

also, is their a possibility that I could use the smaller 8'7" x 10'2" room for a studio? It also has a closet. - Nick

Unforunately, I do not think it will be possible for me to do much damage to the walls in the roooms since I am renting.

I kinda figured that. The term "residence" kinda gave it away, especially when near the term "semester". ;) No problems tho. Just gotta build temporary stuff. Nailing won't be a problem, and you won't create any more holes in the drywall than someone with a lot of posters to hang up. They might be a little bigger, but not by much.

Does just having a closet converted into a back-of-the room basstrap perform just as well as having traps in the corners, by directing sound into itself instead of causing it to build up in the corners?

I'd do both. In either of the rooms you mentioned in the multi-bedroom unit, the closet door is near the middle of the back wall, so you'll have room in the corners to install rigid fiberglass panels in the corners. From what I've heard, those LENRD things are great if you can afford them. If you can swing a hammer, you can save yourself a lot of money. For the closet door replacement, make a frame out of 2x2 lumber, as close to the height and width of the existing closet door as you can get. You may need to install a cross-bar at the middle to make it robust enough. I'd put 1" rigid insulation on both sides- wrap it in fabric (absorptive fabric- the best back wall of a mixing room is one that absorbs as much sound across the entire sound spectrum as possible. For the corner units, do basically the same thing- a frame built from 2x2 lumber, 2' wide and just short of the ceiling height of the room. Put fabric-wrapped rigid insulation, 1" thick, on each side of this, and just stand it up in the corner if you don't want to attach it. You can use drywall anchors if you don't want it moving around. Then, on the walls in spots where you'd get early reflections from the monitors to the listening position, just take a few 2'x4' rigid insulation panels, right out of the box, wrap them in fabric, and put a single mounting screw right thru the face of it (use a big fender washer, tho!) and into a drywall anchor in the existing wall. You just hang them like posters, wherever you need. I'd put at least a couple on the flat parts of the back wall, one on each side wall in the right spots. The ceiling will be trickier. Building a cloud is pretty much just hanging rigid insulation panels a few inches off the ceiling. Since you don't want to make any more holes than necessary, you may want to just hang a single 2'x4' rigid ins. panel in the right spot over the mixing position. Again, find the place where sound from the monitors will reflect directly at where you're sitting. You could buy Auralex stuff if you wanted, but this kind of thing will be about as effective, certainly more effective dollar-for-dollar. Any of the rooms in the plans you've posted will function- but the biggest room will almost always sound best- it's a matter of nodal freq's evening out before they get into the easily-audible sound spectrum. Unless they're square or something unfortunate like that, a bigger room almost always sounds better if treated the same. Kase www.minemusic.net

Kase, Thanks so much for your great replies, I am almost completely ready to go out and get materials now. One more question: Should I get diffusers, too? If so, what is generally the optimal way to place them within the room? thanks, - Nick

*bump*