Sound treatment suggestions for home studio in New York?

Hello everyone! My name is Larry. I'm a freelance engineer and producer based in New York City. This is a wonderful forum and I'm excited to be making my first post. It seems like detail is appreciated around here, so I've tried to be very thorough, but feel free to skim through all the explanations to the Sketchup images if I've been overly detailed. PROJECT OUTLINE I am about to install sound treatment so I can mix and produce in my home studio, which is an approximately 100 square foot bedroom in a 2-bedroom apartment I share with a roommate. The small physical scale of this living and working arrangement might seem a little cramped, but it's not unusual in New York. I'm an engineer by profession and I work out of a handful of different studios in New York. Stylistically, most of the work I'm doing right now is hip-hop or R&B. When it comes to producing tracks, for better or for worse, I have been working at home in my untreated bedroom. Recently, a few projects have come to me that I'd like to mix at home. As New York studios go out of business, gear becomes more affordable, and computer software improves, it's an increasingly attractive option. I have a number of projects lined up to start right away -- as soon as I can treat my room, I can start mixing, so I'd like to be up and running quickly, so I can take advantage of this work. However, I'm also planning to move in July 2007, so the treatment has to be easily removed, non-damaging, and reusable in my next studio. For these reasons, I don't think it's justifiable to build out any walls. For the moment, my only goal is acoustic treatment of this room - not soundproofing or isolation. The building that I live in is pretty tolerant of noise, and I tend to mix at low to medium levels. I don't have a SPL meter yet but I'd estimate levels to be at 40-50 dB or below. I think I can easily get away with mixing during normal waking hours without having to soundproof or isolate the room. I realize I'll still need to take clients who require high monitoring levels to a soundproofed commercial studio. Also, since the majority of what I'm working on right now is hip-hop and R&B, it's programmed music with keyboards, samplers, drum machines, and soft-synths, and I don't need to record many acoustic instruments here at home. For now, I won't be tracking any vocals here either. So I don't need a live room or a vocal booth - only a control room for producing tracks and mixing. By studying the past threads and other resources here and elsewhere on the web, I've learned a ton of valuable information - in fact, from reading all these past discussions, I think I know most of what i need to treat my room. I even downloaded Sketchup and had a lot of fun this weekend making a floor plan for my studio. However, I'd really like to run this plan by the experts here and make sure I'm on the right track and see if there are any other ideas I haven't thought of. For sake of time and convenience, I would ideally like to use pre-made bass traps from GIK Acoustics, RealTraps. I have built compressed fiberglass acoustic treatment for other studios in the past, and if it's necessary or appealing from a budget point-of-view, I'm willing and able to build my own absorbers. My budget for the acoustic treatment is $1000. ROOM DETAILS My room is 10' 2" x 11' 4" with a 9' ceiling. My apartment is on the 3rd floor. The floor is covered in some sort of cheap vinyl tile like you'd find in a restaurant kitchen. Over that, I have an oriental rug that covers 90% of the area of the floor. The walls are thickly semi-gloss painted drywall. The ceiling is also drywall, I think. There are a couple of important features about the room that deviate from a normal, symmetrical, rectangular shape. First, a 1 1/2' x 5' closet is built into the back left corner of the room. For my purposes, it's totally permanent. Also, my bed is in the rear right corner with the long side along the back wall. In lieu of a radiator, there's a 3" diameter metal heating pipe in the front right corner, which seemed like a problem at first but i realized I could work around it. It's never too cold in my room in the winter- sometimes with all the equipment on, it gets way too hot and I'll open the window a little bit to let some cold air in. The left and rear walls go to other spaces in the apartment. The right and front walls are outer walls of the building. There is a door on the left wall and a window on the right wall. EQUIPMENT DETAILS I produce tracks using a combination of hardware and software synths and samplers. In addition to my computer workstation-style desk, I have 2 keyboards on a 2-tier stand, plus an MPC drum machine and a small MIDI keyboard on my desk. I also have a 16 channel external mixer that I use. I record straight into Protools or Logic. I mix mostly in the box, with some external hardware effects. At times I'll mix through my mixer, which helps me take better advantage of my outboard gear. My monitor speakers are Alesis M1 Active Mk2. PROPOSED SOUND TREATMENT Right now, the room doesn't sound great. I can hear lumps and dips in the range in the low end at different places between 60-300 Hz. For mids and highs, i hear slight flutter echos if I clap loudly, the stereo imaging is not great, and generally, things sound blurry. I've just been putting up with it for production but for mixing it's no good. Based on all the examples here, I've made a plan for treatment that I would love feedback on. In general, I think it is a standard-issue approach recommended on this forum. I propose broadband diagonal bass traps in the corners, and sidewall and ceiling early reflection absorber panels. I'm thinking I should start with that, and add more high and mid absorbers if needed. I plan to center my desk to put listening position in left-right symmetry, 38% of the way back from the front wall. The only deviation from this seemingly standard formula I need to make is due to the asymmetrical location of the closet in the back left, and the bed in the back right. Plus, the angles of the bass traps in the front corners need to be adjusted due to the metal pole and the window. Specifically, here's what I have planned: Front wall - 4" or 6" diagonal broadband bass traps like MondoTraps or GIK Monster Bass Traps. I'd like them to be non-reflective - if I make them myself, I'd just put 6" of OC705 in a wood frame and cover it with fabric. The ceilings are 9' high so if I stacked 2, they would go up 8'. I ruled out triangular traps because of the metal heating pole on the right side. Also, for sake of space and mostly because of the window location, I'd have to make the angle shallower than 45 degrees. This would still give me a couple inches of clearance from the heated pole. On the left side, I believe that I would want to do the same thing, to match for symmetry. I have read that symmetry isn't as critical for low end absorption, but I figure that the traps will also be absorbing mids and highs, so I should arrange the traps to be as symmetrical as possible. Rear wall - I'd love to take same floor-to-ceiling approach on the rear wall, but because of the bed on the right and the closet door on the left, I decided to hang one 2' x 4' x 6" bass trap from the corners at the ceiling. Unfortunately, the rear wall is not completely symmetrical, but putting up a wall on the right to match the closet on the left is too permanent, and even a gobo would take up too much valuable space. I thought about turning the bed so it was centered in the room with the short side along the rear wall, but it would encroach on my listening position space and make it very difficult to use the keyboards on the right side. Sidewalls - For the sidewall early refection panels, I plan to mount one 2' x 4' panel of fabric wrapped compressed fiberglass on the door (it's in the correct spot) and one partially over the window. The panels will be vertically oriented, at ear level, using the mirror technique for placement. I'm thinking of 2" OC703, but I'm not sure if 705 would be better. Also not sure if some other thickness would be better. Ceiling - Similarly, I plan on one 2' x 4' OC703 panel, hanging down from the ceiling on wires as a cloud. If needed - additional 2' x 4' OC703 panels around the room for additional hi and mid absorption. SPECIFIC QUESTIONS My plan right now, if i can get or make them, is to use non-reflective corner panels - i.e. 6" of solid OC705 with no reflective membrane. This way, they should absorb highs as well, and I figure I wouldn't have to put as many hi & mid frequency panels up. But - would there be any advantage to having some reflection, whether it's wood, cardboard, paper, foil, plastic, etc.? To approach the question another way, does this kind of membrane for corner traps actually IMPROVE bass absorption, or does it just reduce the high frequency absorption? In general, will this be enough bass trapping? Should I consider hanging horizontal 2' x 8' panels diagonally across the front wall and back wall ceiling junction? Also, how am I doing on hi and mid frequency absorption? Does my proposed plan sound like it will be balanced across all frequencies? How much of a problem is the asymmetry of the back of the room due to the closet? And what about the asymmetrical placement of the bed? Is that a big issue? How far from the ceiling should I hang the cloud? And will 2' x 4' be wide enough, or do I really need to make it 2' x 8'? Would there be a significant benefit to using speaker stands? I have a computer-workstation style desk with a raised second level for the speakers and the computer monitors. I'm a little hesitant to put speaker stands behind it because it might push the listening position too far backwards, plus it seems like the desk would be so close, I'd still get some early reflections from it. Does anyone see a problem with putting the traps in front of, but not touching, the metal heating pole? It gets very hot like a radiator. The room will still be plenty warm, I'm not concerned about that, but I don't want to start a fire and burn the place down. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd very happy to hear them. I'm just following the information I've been able to cull from all the past discussions. I am so appreciative of the knowledge that I've had access to due to the generous contributions by everyone here. Thanks a million for reading! Larry

Larry, you've obviously done quite a bit of lurking/reading, sounds like you've got a pretty good idea already - here's one more for you, since I'm too lazy/under the weather to do it myself http://johnlsayers.com/Pages/Reverb_Calc.htm For practical purposes, ignore the fact that your closet sticks out and just get as close as you can with each wall - note that there are separate calculations for each octave, and choice of metric or english units. The goal for a CR should be as even reverb times as possible across the frequency range, somewhere around .15 to .25 seconds RT would be a good target for that small a room (it's kind of a sliding scale, larger rooms sound WIERD with that short an RT, smaller ones sound wierd with longer RT) You may find that the carpet skews things with too much upper mid/high absorption. I'd treat the bed as if it were an equivalent size of 4" 703, try with and without to see what it does, reality will probably be somewhere in the middle. The good news is, apart from a possible minor "hole" in room response around 63 hZ, those dimensions work out pretty even for modal response including all tangential and oblique modes, so once you get the basics covered (as you've already outlined) you should be doing pretty good. I've got a dehumidifier that puts out more than 50 dB, I think you'll find something closer to 75-85 (C weighted) when you get a SLM... Steve

Hi, if it were me, I'd opt for 3 more of the 2'x4'x6" absorbers, one along the wall/ceiling above and behind the mix position, one along the wall/ceiling above the futon on the back wall, and if you can swing it, one along the floor/wall behind the mixing desk. If that kills the room too much, consider covering the fronts of the traps with a reflective material. But yes, that design with 9 absorbers and the Reflection-Free Zone panels should make the room sound pretty good....

hey steve and jwl - thanks for the helpful replies! i'm definitely going to check out that reverb calculator steve. since i posted, i've been moving forward with the sound treatment. i decided to order the traps from GIK and glenn helped me tweak my plan a little bit, which btw did include some more bass traps as jwl also suggested yesterday. the first stage went in at the end of last week. four GIK monster 6" bass traps, two GIK tri-traps, and three GIK 242 panels connected together for a 4'x6'x2" panel off the ceiling. already a HUGE improvement, especially in the low end. amazing. thanks to glenn for helping me out with that. when i clap, it's already close to dead, but i still hear a short pingy ring that i take to be a hi-frequency flutter echo. the second stage, which we planned on from the start, is going to be the sidewall early reflection panels made from fabric wrapped 2" OC703. from a local lumber place, i ordered one box, which is six pieces, and i got flame resistant burlap fabric from ATS acoustics. if i had known about ATS earlier, i could have just ordered premade panels from them at the same cost of making them myself. anyway, because of the location of the door and window, i'm only putting one 2'x4' panel on each sidewall, which leaves me 4 more panels to put elsewere in the room. i already have the ceiling well taken care of, so i'm thinking of following glenn's suggestion to put 1 panel behind each speaker (directly behind, or in the "mirror test" location? not sure) and maybe the remaining 2 on the back wall. let me know if you guys have any thoughts on that. once that's all finished, i'll post some pictures of the overall sound treatment and also how i did the anchor bolt installation on drywall, in case it helps out any people who are new to that sort of thing (as i pretty much was). that should be done by wednesday or thursday, so i'll check back with you then. larry