HELP WITH ACOUSTICS PLEASE

hi all. i have a smal project studio that i run semi comercialy. my problem is my room acoustics pretty much stink lol. my control room is about 16x8 ft and my monitors are pretty much centered in the middle of the 16 ft against the front wall. my bass player from my band come up with this idea to cover my 3/4 inch plywood walls with 2 inch thick styrofoam sheeting. what i want to do is order some auralex stuff from sweetwater. and i guess my question would be should i take the styrofoam sheeting down before i put the auralex up, or maybe this is the styrofoam hurting anything. it does seem to help seal out the outside sound. i am very knew to acoustic things so any help wouldbe great here. also if i do take the styrofoam down should i paint the walls and is there a certain kind of paint that works better than others for audio? thanks a bundle tim

Tim, Is the room you are taliking about a control - mixing room only? Or do you track in there as well? First off, the styrofoam is mostly a waste of money. I have found putting styrofoam up on the outside of a building under siding and up against the studs to work as a decent vapor barrier, and thermal insulator. but it lacks mass. Mass (coupled with good sealing practices) is the ONLY thing that is going to make a real difference in reducing sound trasmission in / out. Styrofoam Does provide a little isolation in the form of impact cushioning such as raining hailing people knocking on your siding type of stuff, but that is about it. You basically have 2 issues to deal with. "Sound Proofing", which is the limiting of sound passing from one place to another, and "Taming Acoustics"or sound absorbtion / acoustical tuning which is dealing with the uglies of sound bouncing around inside a given room. They are dealt with in very different manners. If you are saying the sound inside the room is bad for mixing and your mixes don't translate well, then approach your questions that way. Otherwise you will get everyone pointed the wrong direction. My opinion of the acoustic foam you can get is... "It looks cool", but does not work well for any large amount of sound. It mainly absorbs high and mid frequencys around the frequencies of speach. There are many other home build products that are better. One problem might be solved if you can move your monitoring position to fire down the long length of the room because you may be getting a lot of reflections off the back wall. Either way I'd look into putting a lot of broad band absorbing above and behind your mixing position as a starter. (assuming your problem is the mix sound within the room) Others will chime in I am sure. Tom

sorry it took so long to answer. this room is primarily my control room. i have yet to track in there and dont plan on it at all. i have 2 other rooms for that purpose. if you think of my building as a big oblong square 16 wide by about 20 ft long you will be close to seeing what it looks like. i took and walled in 8 ft off the one end for my control room. the whole inside of this room is styrofoam sheeted. i have 1 entrance door made of wood and its hollow. my window that sits directly in front of me is huge i will have to measure this stuff for you. ill try and get pictures to if i can. anyway thanks alot. tim

This is appropriate for the "Studio Design" forum, not here. You will get much better responses there. Andre

I'm not exactly sure what your question is... if paint helps acoustics? and/or if styrafoam on the walls helps acoustics? You have to take a step back here and learn about acoustics and proper design before you go any further. Not only did you waste your time and money lining all your walls with foam, but you may have also created a fire hazard. Styrafoam will give minimal benefit to improving acoustics, and will do practically NOTHING to stop sound from exiting the room. Actually there's a VERY good chance you'll make the acoustics of the room WORSE. Any frequencies styrafoam collects will only be high frequencies. This will leave your room sounding boomy. What you want from "good acoustics" is a flat room response from low to high frequencies. With styrafoam on the walls your room's bass response will be a few db higher than the response at the high frequencies. It turns it into a MESS. What will help sound from going from one room to the next is mass and dead air, and there are certain combinations of the two that work better than others. But before you can learn any of that you have to break away from the myths about sound control and sound proofing. Paint also does nothing for controlling sound inside a room, and does not aid in the stopage sound transmission. If you're serious about making a room that really works for what you're looking for, go to the Studio Design/Construction forums and ask away. Also check out the forums at homerecording.com. There's a plethora and wealth of information at your finger tips. If you spend a little time learning about this stuff you can stop wasting your time with pink styrafoam.