Acoustic Advice Needed

Started by takk on 5 March 2007. 0 replies.

Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 8354.

I'm in the process of putting together a home studio. I have a control room 11' x 15' and a larger room for performance/tracking which measures 13' x 21' (both with 7.5' ceilings.) My primary objective is to get the tracking room ready by means of acoustical treatment. I've already bought some materials, which I will detail below. At this point, I'm pretty much over my budget so I am looking for advice to get the most out of what I already have. I'm only concerned with the tracking room within this conversation, so let's refer to the tracking/performance room as "the room." (I'd like to take on the control room as a separate topic.) The room has all 90 degree walls and a flat ceiling. There is one large open doorway in one corner which measures 5' wide by 7' tall. There is also a large window in the room measuring 6' wide by 3' tall. The floor is commercial grade carpet with padding underneath, on top of concrete slab. The walls and ceiling are painted wallboard. To put this project into context, I'll mostly be recording rock bands (drums, electric guitars, bass guitar, and vocals.) I do have a couple of smaller rooms adjacent to the tracking room that I could use. For example, I could put a guitar amp and/or bass amp into their own little rooms. But I would prefer to put everything in the one room. Everything would be close mic'd with dynamics except the drum over-heads would be SDC's. So here's the material I already have: Qty of 6 – 4' x 2' x 2” panels of SAFB mineral wool (density 2.5 lbs/cubic ft) Qty of 6 – 4' x 2' x 2” panels of Owens Corning 703 (density 3 lbs/cubic ft) Qty of 2 – 72” x 80” heavy cotton moving blankets (8 lbs each) Here are some of my thoughts and where I need advice: I will make the assumption (and I could be wrong here) that my immediate need is to reduce the “echo” effect of mid-high to high frequency sounds. When I clap my hands in the room I get a ping-pong effect. I am assuming that trapping low frequencies is more important in the control room for mixing, than in the room for tracking. Or at least based on the materials I have, I need to put most of my resources into removing that ping-pong echo effect. I am planning on hanging the moving blankets over the open doorway and over the window. This would be mostly for keeping sound in the room, not so much for absorption, but I'm sure those heavy blankets would catch some of the high frequencies. Now, what to do with all this insulation material? Here are some ideas I have, and I'm open to other ideas: Option 1 – Cut all panels into 2' x 2' squares, making a total of 24 panels, cover with burlap and hang them evenly spaced around the four walls. Option 2 – Make three 4' x 2' x 4” thick panels, by combining three 703 panels and three mineral wool panels and covering in burlap. Put one of those in each of the three corners of the room halfway between floor and ceiling. That would leave me with twelve 2' x 2' panels left over to use as described in option 1, to evenly distribute. Option 3 – Sort of like option 1, but leave the panels in their 4' x 2' x 2” size and evenly distribute. I like the idea of leaving at least half of the panels in a 4' x 2' size, because I can see using these panels as a quick n' easy vocal “booth” by hanging three or more of them on a couple of mic stands around a condenser. Or even just taking them down and throwing them into the corners of my control room when mixing. Please keep in mind that anything I do here would be hung in some kind of temporary fashion (I have a wife who is not crazy about burlap hanging everywhere!). And I am trying to avoid building any kind of frames for these panels. I don't care if they get “saggy” when they hang on the walls. When I'm not using them I'll take them down and put them in a storage room. I realize that none of my options consider treating the ceiling, so that may be a big flaw in my reasoning. I also have a couple of office cubicle dividers (the ones with metal frames and covered with fabric), one is about 5' x 4' and the other is 4' x 3'. Unfortunately at this time I don't know what material they are made out of besides that the fabric they are wrapped in is a porous material. But I don't know if they are made of high-density fiberglass or just plain old particle board. I'll have to check them out. Thought they might be good to put between the drums and the guitar amp. Wow, I really rambled here! Any advice would be much appreciated. - Takk