Bass traps and Acoustical panels

Okeydokey and hello, Well It's my first post and I wanna get it right, read the "DONT EVEN THINK OF POSTING UNTIL YOU READ THIS POST", searched my #*" off looking for use of thermafiber in acoustic panels, made sure my location was in place, Denver, CO if it didn't work. I am currently finishing up a soundproofing project and attached a drawing of the rehearsal space. we are embarking on the sound conditiong phase and all my hours of research have left me with many questions. 1) Bass traps, OK where, I am thinking far end of the room, what then behind speaker cabs, ie: bass & guitar, looking at Jon Risch's Tube bass trap plans. 2) Acoustic panels, seen a ton of DIY which is what I want to do across the board, could there be more material choices and design specs?, I certainly hope not! I am looking at thermafiber mineral wool for acoustical panels and would a 4" deep x2'x4' pine frame with 4" of thermafiber work well, obviously covered front and back with poly batting and front with burlap, or is there a better option, cant find 703 in my neighborhood. 3) where to place the acoustical panels? everything I look at takes into account the central listening location of which I see none in a rehearsal space, should I spec it at the couch and band player positions? I have a great deal more questions and hope that I have not overwhealmed anyone, If you read this and say to yourself "jackass didn't read the rules" then please respond with the like and I will try and correct my short comings as my intent is to make it as easy as possible on the kind and knowlegable folks who offer there expertise on this site. Respectfully Mike

my BMP file wont attach, I have tried many times, I hate feeling like an idiot, I am shure I should get use to it! ha ha

attachment C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\My Pictures\jam Space (608 x 458).bmp

Didn't work and I am leaving the room for some air, well even though I am the only one posting it makes it look like a hot topic, until you read it!

Try uploading your bmp file now Mike. cheers john

I don't know what is going on, I hit browse and get file from my documents, hit add attachment when file is shown in browse/filename area and it doesn't work.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, no workie

This is my bass rig, cheking to see if it is a problem with the BMP file

Try again

Here is a bigger view, I think!

Looks like you're almost there; now all you need to do is crop all the white space in Jam Space 2.jpg, resize to under 750 pixels wide, and replace it... Steve

Trying again, OK now that I have had a complete tutorial research class on BMP, JPG and the in's and out's of conversion/resizing, I am ready to move foreward, BTW the ceiling height on the rehearsal space is 7'6" Not quite; your version was still 900 pixels wide, I resized after removing extra white space. In Paint, click Image>Attributes to see actual size; then click Image>Stretch and Skew, and choose a percentage for both H and W that will lower that number to 750 (a calculator can help here) and you're done... Steve

Thanks steve, so I am OK to move foreward now? : :oops: damn myself sometimes

Yup; join the club - 2 steps forward, 3 steps back :?

OK, so I think after reviewing the different bass trap and acoustical panels I would like to build the jon risch stuff and have a couple of questions: the room I am conscerned with now is the rehearsal space and I would like the room to have a little livelyness for that reason, although not so lively that it hampers recording. Based on this: 1) can someone help with location and number of traps and panels, being new to all of this I will express my thoughts and hope for some input. a) bass traps: do I want them in all corners, and if so do I want them stacked 2 high based on jon's 3' design, should bass traps be behind the guitar and bass amps. b) acoustic panels/absorbers: once again, everthing I have read regarding placement of absorbers are based on first deflections and a central listening location, this leaves me confused as there are three band members and possibly listeners at the couch. c) also, regarding the construction of the absorbers jon says to space 1x4s every 14"in the back of the frame for attaching the insulation via the paper, I read where Ethan Winer said that you would not want solid materials across the back of the panels as this would hamper performance. all input is welcome and thank you in advance Mike

Ground control to Major Tom. anybody. :(

at the beginning of this forum it says ACOUSTICS> what is a bass trap? this is a basic question and I cant even get anybody to respond on where to put it, why are some people so high on themselves that they build a forum that describes basic questions and then wont answer slightly more complex questions, It seems to me that it started as a help forum and has become a forum for high end sound people to belittle the new guy. Come on and hark back to your beginnings and help with more than how to work with jpg files. Mike

all of the answers you seek are here, you just have to look around. being such a beginner it would be wise for you to research, rather than demand people give you answers.

I have researched and I just purchased OC 703 to build my absorber panels, I once again did a search for "Bass Trap location" Finding first deflections", "positioning of absorber panels" and find little specific in answering those questions. My quandry, as I stated before is that ALL MY RESEARCH regarding the placement of absorbers takes into account a CENTRAL LISTENING AREA, with a band we are all playing and listening from different locations and this confuses me regarding the placement. regarding the traps I will build, my reasearch has found that many say to put traps in all corners, my question regarding that was should I put them behind the Guitar and bass amps which sit in corners, i have read extensively on Ethan Winers site, Jon Risch's site, this site, homerecording.com and have obtained some great info, some conflicting, and some not found, I have sat in front of this computer for hours on end and bringing my questions to this forum I felt appropriate. I demand absolutely nothing, what I have seen here on a larger scale is people willing to turn there heads on an assumption that I haven't researched shit and want quick answers. I am new to all of this and am attempting to learn a great deal in a short period of time, I just completed framing a basement with 2 sheets of drywall and green glue, insulation, isolation tape, acoustic caulk etc, etc and now I am ready to move on. If anybody out there thinks I have done enough to this point and would deserve 10 min of your time that would be fantastic.

Mike, > I demand absolutely nothing < When I saw your first post, the drawing looked familiar and it seemed I had already answered you somewhere. So I figured I'd see who else had something to offer. Did you post that in my forum at Musicplayer.com? Or did you send it to me via email? Regardless... > bass traps: do I want them in all corners, and if so do I want them stacked 2 high based on jon's 3' design, should bass traps be behind the guitar and bass amps. < With bass trapping, the more the merrier. While you can definitely make a room too dead sounding at mid and high frequencies, I don't think it's possible to have too much bass trapping. In fact, I'm sure of it. :) I have 40 traps in my living room, and every time I added more the low end continued to get flatter and tighter - both audibly and measurably. > acoustic panels/absorbers: once again, everthing I have read regarding placement of absorbers are based on first deflections and a central listening location, this leaves me confused as there are three band members and possibly listeners at the couch. < Reflections off nearby surfaces create comb filtering, so it's a good idea to treat walls right behind a couch, and often behind a drum set too. There's no hard and fast rules though. Sometimes you want the characteristic sound of reflections. Though I personally prefer things more on the dead side. > regarding the construction of the absorbers jon says to space 1x4s every 14"in the back of the frame for attaching the insulation via the paper, I read where Ethan Winer said that you would not want solid materials across the back of the panels as this would hamper performance. < First, listen to me, not Jon Risch. 8) Second, small cross braces are not a problem. What is a problem is when the entire rear of a fiberglass panel is covered with plywood or MDF, and the panel is mounted straddling a corner. I think even Jon knows that. :P --Ethan

Hello Ethan, I emailed that to you and spoke with you on the phone a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with the boys and we all agreed that your product seems awesome although we are all a few thousand away from divorce and decided DIY was the current way to go, Sorry. Thank you soooooooooooooooo much for the response as I am sure that this will get us off and running, to some this may seem like basic information and I tip my hat to Mr. Ethan Winer for helping the little guy. BTW, I saw your music video and was very entertained, excellent work. Respectfully Mike

Mike, > I emailed that to you < I knew I'd seen it before. :) > BTW, I saw your music video and was very entertained, excellent work. < Thanks! I still get emails almost daily from people that saw it and liked it enough to track me down. --Ethan

Not to bump this thread but to tell something about Graphic formats so other MIGHT learn. A graphical picture in BMP is an uncompressed Bit Map Picture. Where EVERY pixel is a byte (or word if 16bit color schema). This can result in large filesizes. It's a bare format. Very clear pix but huge filesizes. Uploading huge files is not allowed, hence the upload error. (also the dimensions do make file sizes grow. the bigger the picture, the greater filesize ofcourse) What to do? Well COMPRESS the picture. For example to JPEG, GIF or PNG. Those are all compressed file formats. It's kinda like WAVE file versus MP3 file. Compressing a picture can result in ratios of 1:100 for example (ofcourse depending on the source) So, conclusion: - Do NOT upload BMP files - Do NOT oversize the pictures (640*450 is web standard) - Compress BMP files to JPG, GIF or PNG first Which program to use? hmm, in ms office there's a little extra applic called "photo editor"(off 97) or "Office Picture Manager" (off 2003) which I use a lot. Other sofware is Photoshop, Imageready and such. good luck!