Jumping the gun

How to use REW, What is a Bass Trap, a diffuser, the speed of sound, etc.

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full_bleed
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:06 am
Location: Arizona

Jumping the gun

Post by full_bleed »

First of all I know I'm jumping the gun a bit but I rather give myself a little extra time to think and be prepared when I have ALL the data in front of me. Basically I am trying to figure out the best and most efficient method of treating my small room. The room is still being built mind you so I have another week before I can actually do any testing in there. The room construction is double stud with the inner wall being built inside-out for space saving reasons. I am not going to extreme levels for isolation because I have to many other issues with the room that in order to make it right it would require major reconstruction of my house and the goal with the room was to keep as much the same as possible i.e. ductwork, most electrical and window placement. The inside out walls will have 2 layers of 5/8 drywall with green glue sandwiched between them. I left a 1" gap between the double stud walls. The existing ceiling already had 3 layers of 1/2 drywall so I am adding 1 more layer of 5/8 along with some green glue there. The door currently swings into the room so I will be reversing that and building a superdoor. To add some mass around the 48x60" window I will be making a plug the will consist of 3/4mdf - GG - 2 layers of 5/8 drywall - GG - 3/4mdf. I have thoroughly sealed the room with OSI 175. The finished room size will be 9' 8" x 9' 7" x 8'. SMALL, and undesirable, I KNOW. I need to work with what I have though.

The room will be used for tracking pretty much everything... drums, amps, vocals, horns and whatever else comes along the way. I'm sort of hoping the lack of isolation help the nasty bass build-up escape a bit :| .

Ok so a quick run with a room mode calculator shows me what I may be expecting to see in terms of problems with the room. My question: How you would handle the acoustics in this room if this was the scenario that you had to work with?

My original idea was to make the room completely dead and cover every inch of space with mineral wool including making corner traps vertically where the walls meet and horizontally were the ceiling and wall meet. Does this sound like the best solution or is this something else I should be looking into for the best results with the acoustic treatment with no restrictions on spending?
Ethan Winer
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Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2003 3:50 am
Location: New Milford, CT, USA
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Re: Jumping the gun

Post by Ethan Winer »

Yes, a small basically cube room like that needs as much bass trapping as you can possibly manage. Don't forget that wall-floor corners are equally valid, assuming you have any space available there. You probably don't need to cover every inch of surface though. Start with corner traps and all the reflection points. Then see what happens.

--Ethan
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