Solved one problem and created another!

I have a room I use for band rehearsal primarily. It measures 35'x11.5' with an 8' ceiling. The walls are brick walls which are studded and then gypsum board and plastered & painted. One end wall has 2x Rockwool traps (RW5) and one long wall has 5x traps - mixture of RW3 & RW5. The floor was carpeted. I found the room to be quite muddy and according to the RT60 calc there was a longer reverb time at 125hz and 250hz. It was due to be redecorated anyway so I decided to go with a wood floor instead. I've added a 7'x5' rug which the drum kit sits on. Above this I've flown a ceiling cloud based on designs I got here - using 2x RW3 slabs and 1x RW5 slab. Ive also hung 3 further single traps down the length of the room. In many ways, the room sounds much better. Clearer and brighter. unfortunately it appears to be too bright. Running another rough RT60 calc on the new room shows that my reverb time at 4k for instance is .90 where as 250Hz is .50. Shouldnt the aim here be for the RT60 to be more similar in all frequencies? I guess what im trying to ask here - in a long winded way, is whether I should focus on getting the RT60 of the room more balanced along the spectrum or do I stop looking at this and just add more absorbtion or diffusion into the room. Corner Traps maybe? Drapes? I havent really looked at diffusion at all. Is the reason the room sounds bright down to the parallel. walls with flat surfaces. Would breaking this up with some diffusion fix this? Thanks for reading and for any suggestions you may have!

Hi cbasman. welcome. Please check the forum rules for posting: you seem to be missing something! :) The general goal is most studios is to have fairly even response across the entire spectrum, tailing off a bit at the high end, and increasing a bit at the low end. That's for critical listening rooms, but rehearsal rooms are similar, so it's a reasonable goal to aim for. If you want to get it perfect, the EBU and ITU both have recommendations for RT-60 profiles for different sizes of room and different types of music. The reason your room sounds bright now is because you removed the carpet (which is good! Carpet has lousy acoustic characteristics) and added the bass traps (which is also good!). Carpet absorbs selectively, and randomly (if that makes sense). It absorbs highs quite well, mids somewhat, and lows not at all. That's why you had the "muddy" sound before. Without the carpet, that skewed absorption is gone, and you are hearing more of the natural response of the room. Then you added the bass traps, so you are now dealing with some of the issues that the carpet never could touch. So basically you have switched the response around from bass-heavy to high-heavy. So now the challenge is to even out the response, as you suspected. From what you say, it seems like you don't have anywhere near enough bass trapping for that room. It might sound strange to suggest adding bass trapping to a room where the highs seem to be the issue, but in reality most rooms need bass trapping anyway, and bass trapping is a misnomer, since it also absorbs highs. You have a low ceiling on a long room, narrow room, so this is going to be a bit of a challenge to get right. You might want to start with more clouds on the ceiling, and bass traps in the horizontal corners. On diffusion: Even though your room is marginally big enough that it could probably benefit from diffusers, that might not be such a good idea: you already have to much of the high end in the room, and diffusers will keep it there. Diffusers simply re-direct and scatter energy, but the energy still remains in the room. You might need them as a last resort, if you still have uneven response after treating with absorption, but leave that decision for later. Maybe you could take some photos and do an accurate sketch of your room, so we can get a better idea of what you are dealing with. - Stuart -

Thank you for the very helpful response! Apologies if I missed something! The studio is in Ireland. Is that what I missed? I'll get to work on the corner traps as i've done nothing in that regard so far. Im sure there's some diy corner traps in one of the stickies for me reference. I'll try and get a sketchup layout done too. At least I now know Im on the right track, just havent done enough yet. Really appreciate the help. :D

Please fill in your profile to reflect your geographical location in the world...and we would all benefit by pictures of this room, to determine your existing acoustics...or suggest treatments depending on what the picture reveals.

Hi,Here's a few sketchup images of the room. I tried to upload the sketchup file but its too bog. The big white box on the wall is a mirror, that's why there is no treatment there. Probably information I should have provided in the first message! The next thing I'm going to do is build corner traps in the two corners on the right wall and the one to the right of the right speaker. Hopefully that will improve things! Thanks again.