My small tracking room, how to tame the sound ?

Hi Last few days a couple of builders have been doing my garage, putting up a small tracking room for me. Now that the walls are up and the glass and the doors are coming tomorrow I can´t help but wonder what to do about the sound. the carpenders want to cover the walls and the ceiling with foam. I am a little worried that it would be too much. Today it´s all stone. And it sounds not too good. I want to tame the sound. I don´t mind the room being on the dead side. But I don´t want it to sound bad. So how about: Put foam on every wall and the ceiling but not cover it completely. Maybe 70% foam. Put hardwood on the floor to get some life in there. Does this make sense ? The tracking room is on the upper part of the image. thanks, Kalli

Hardwood floors, yes; foam - if you've read more than half a dozen posts here you know that foam isn't as cost-effective or as good for balanced sound in a room as rockwool or semi-rigid fiberglass insulation - plus, unless you buy REAL acoustic foam from a company like Auralex, the chances are REALLY good that you're getting BED foam, which is NO WAY as good as the real foam, and even FURTHER away from the rockwool/mineral wool/rigid fiberglass group of materials. Wanna know what cheap foam is good for? Ask Great White http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02 ... club.fire/ Seriously, tell your carpenters NO FOAM and find out what's available in your area from the above list of wools instead. What you want is around 3 pounds per cubic foot insulation (48 kG/m^3) - place it diagonally across your vertical corners, hang some batts of it from your ceiling, and maybe some 2x2 foot squares randomly on the walls. Start with the corners and ceiling, and stop adding when it sounds good... Steve

Steve, I'm in a similar situation with my live room. I just finished it. No parallel walls, hardwood floors and the room is approximately 18 x 18 with an 8 foot ceiling that has a gradual slant from one end to the other. I have a good ammount of Roxul leftover from my building... Are there some good plans somewhere on here as far as making some bats and some squares so I can get rid of the "liveness" of the room? It would be great to use these leftovers instead of trying to return or sell... It's CRAZY LIVE right now. Much appreciation.... -S

S, if you can post a diagram of your space and give the dimensions of your Roxul scraps, etc, it'll be easier to help - odds are, you'll want to make part of the room more live than the rest, so you can use positioning to help control ambience of different instruments; so a rough idea of what instruments you intend to track in which area of the room would help too... Steve Meantime, check out the new "sticky" on DIY acoustic treatments...

Here is a rough diagram. Sorry for my lack of skills on that end of things. I plan to mostly do drums. My main concern is making it great for drums. Some guitars and bass (I've tracked those in there already and it works ok). I have quite a bit of Roxul leftover from the construction. They measure 3" x 16" x 48". They come 12 to a package and I have 6 of them.

u still there knightfly? :D