Help with acoustics in live room

I've been recording for 7-8 years now and have been in the studio many times during this stretch. My skill as a producer over the years has become respectable, but I've always been in someone elses studio. I recently bought a house and am being "allowed" :D by my wife to build a studio in the basement. So for the last month I've been learning about acoustics and how to make my live room and control room sound the way I want them too. I'm afraid, though, that I just fall more and more into confusion. Very similarly to the way I felt when I first started recording myself many years ago except for I don't feel like wasting 1000's of dollars to figure out fifty wrong ways to build my room. I'd like to start with the live room first. Its dimensions are 13 1/2' by 12 1/2' and 7 1/2' high. It has concrete floor covered with carpet, no padding, brick walls, and 1/4" drywall ceilings. This is basically going to be the room for recording drums. We're talking a lot of fast double bass here so it needs to be able to handle that. Right now the room is EXTREMELY hot and fluttery with a ton of natural reverb. Its a mess. Since I just bought this house, though, I don't have zillions of dollars to just rush into anything. Do I need to cover the walls with 703? I've read about this stuff on ebay called audimute. Good overall nrc, poor low end nrc, but respectable in the midrange frequencies. Is it a gimmick or what? Do I need bass traps in every corner? Including ceilings? Can I build them just like the ones at http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm That room looks like something I could do. Do these boxes get attached to the wall, or are they movable? I have a couple more major problems in the room as well. There is a duct coming through one corner of the room that is round and metal. Do I box it off and mess with the symmetry or what? I also have two small water pipes running along the front of the room. There is a picture attached to this post of the general layout of my room. Does it matter if I have a desk in there or a sofa? I'm looking to get this room sounding good for a minimum of cost, and then going to work on the control room later. Thanks for any help anyone could give me. Tim Wheat

Welcome to RSD! Good studios are 90% planning and 10% construction. You're going about it the right way. It is difficult to answer clearly with the disjointed structure of your post. In future try and keep all related points together, and include all relevant data. For example what is the height or depth of the water pipes? I have seen basements with pipes out of the floor and sticking down form the ceiling! Several times you wrote about money. What is your budget? Without knowing that ideas are almost useless to suggest. Symmetry is not needed for a tracking room. The audiomute might be good, I don't know it. In future post a link to things on the web. How concerned are you about sound leakage? How much are you willing to do with the ceiling to address isolation? That height of ceiling is very low to be of much for ambiance. My recommendation would be to make it completely absorptive. 4" of 703 type material covered with fabric would do the job. Keep coming with the questions. That is how we get the design done. Andre

Sorry, I have so many questions its hard to keep them all together. The two water pipes are small copper pipe, approximately 1/2" in Diameter. They run the length of the room about 1 foot from the ceiling and then leave the room right next to the door, like in the drawing. They're about two feet from the front wall next to the door. The duct work runs 7 feet along the right wall and actually curves around and runs parallel to the water pipes until it goes up through the ceiling. It is located on the ceiling nestled against the wall. Money isn't as huge a deal as I may have let on. $1000 is a quick number I'll throw out. I could probably come up with more. Also, I'm going to be here for a while so its not an enormous factor. Sound leakage doesn't matter as far as disturbing neighbors goes. It stays relatively quiet outside. My wife would like me to make it completely soundproof so she doesn't have to hear the band practice at all, (We currently use this room as our practice room) but if you're on the second level of the home you really only get the bass guitar shaking through the house. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not super worried about leakage. Maybe in the future, but not now. Oh, and the control room is two rooms away. Lots of dead air. You kind of look down the hall at it. So on the ceiling I cover the whole thing with 4" of 703? That sounds simple enough. Symmetry is only relevant in control room situations? I kind of got that from everything that I've read, but I don't remember reading anything about it. Audimutes website and specs on it are: http://www.audimute.com/AMP.pdf The stuff looks like blankets, but the guy went through the trouble of getting it tested so maybe? I just thought people on here would know something about it. Any reason why it wasn't tested above 5000 khz that you can think of? Does that make a huge difference? OK, that probably leaves plenty for now. Thanks Tim

Great second post. Sofffit (box in) the water pipes and ducts. Money is a concern. $1,000 will barely do the ceiling. If you are happy with the isolation, then okay. You haven't read much memorable about live room symmetry because, well, it is a non-issue and little has been written about it. The audiomutes loks like great moving tarps. Markertek has simialr tested product at probably much lower price. I wouldn't go with it all. 5 kHz is the upper limit for C423 testing. Above that isn't important for the general use of test data. Hope this helps; Andre

Thanks for the help. So do I need 703 for every square inch of the room? Walls and Ceilings? What about bass traps? Where do I need them? Is there strategic placement, or is it just everywhere there's a corner? Soffit shouldn't be a problem, I did that for a few years in high school, AND my bass player is a carpenter. Thanks for the heads up on Audimute. Probably would have given it a chance. Thanks again Tim

timwheat wrote:

So do I need 703 for every square inch of the room? Walls and Ceilings? What about bass traps? Where do I need them? Is there strategic placement, or is it just everywhere there's a corner?

That's throwing a lot in a couple of questions. 703 type on the ceiling,completely, yes. Walls, no. Have a look at all the studios inhttp://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/index.htm to get good ieas of how live rooms are treated. Also read the http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html fro knowledge of the theory being used. Otherwise a lot of rediliy available info to answer your questions will be repeated.

Soffit shouldn't be a problem, I did that for a few years in high school, AND my bass player is a carpenter.

Great!

Thanks for the heads up on Audimute. Probably would have given it a chance.

No problem. The issue isn't that product isn't effective, just that there are many cheaper products out there. Andre

I strongly suggest that you get a filterless ionic air filter. If there is dust in your basement, you don't want it in your gear , and you will always battle it. I have a filter one in mine, but the filters to most of them are so costly that it is worth spending the dough up front for ones that you just wipe the element down every week or so. I intend on replacing mine with a non filter ionizer this year.

On another topic I added my take on the Audimute blankets, in case they can be helpful to anyone. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 0120#80120