First of all I would like to thank everyone on this forum for the wealth of information! I have already found a lot of great information. I do however have a situation that I would love some advice on.
The Room:
The room in question is our main tracking room. The room is unfortunately very small ( 12 X 10 with 8' ceilings). The room itself is floating on Auralex U Boats with a subfoor and hardwood and the walls are double dry walled. There is a set of sliding glass doors on one of the long walls (we have curtains that we can draw if we want). I have almost completely deadened the celing and have bass traps in all the corners as well as absorbtion on the walls.
Goal:
Although it would be easy to completely deaden a room that small, I am very interested in techniques to create the illusion of much more space (arent we all!) with a combination of diffusion, reflection and absorbtion. We will be recording all sorts of instruments in there but my main concern is drums!
Initial thoughts:
I am fairly certain that with such low ceilings, a fully absorbant ceiling is necessary. I was considering all sorts of dissusors and am torn between skyline and cylindrical diffusors. Should I create alternating diffusion and absorbtion? Create an entire wall of diffusion? I had also planned on building my own "Aralex Space Couplers".
I know the benefits of creating curved plywood panels on the back wall of a control room but in such a small space I dont know that it would be very helpful. My idea was to create different sized half round columns on the walls but instead of plywood using flexible plastic. My thoughts (as misguided as they may be) were that the plastic would reflect and diffuse the high and high mid frequencies. Using flexible plastic would allow me to create not only different size "columns" but fairly tight arcs which from what I understand would help with the high frequencies. Would this thin material work? Should I do one wall entirely in this treatment? Do I need to fill behind the plastic with absorbtion?
Notes:
I have a full wood shop available to me and am experienced in building things from rooms to instruments and furniture so that is not an obstacle. I am willing to get as creative as I need to and as extreme as I need to to really get the most out of the space.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for your consideration!!
Eric
Making the most of a small tracking room
Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 9435.
Its very hard to get a real picture of the room because of its size but here are a couple that show come of the current acoustic treatment. you can see about half the room here.