Should I carpet the walls AND floor? What should I do?!

[satchriani]

Basically, I have a studio that's almost done in the garage. The room is approximately 10x8. Not too big. I will mainly be using it for sound design, music, and video editing. I can't spend a ton of money (really not much at all), and want to find out the CHEAPEST way to get this room sounding just OK for what I can make it.


should I get cheap thin carpet and carpet the walls? Should I get muslin and drape the walls? Should I get foam mattresses and cut them accordingly? I'll try to take some pics, but in the meantime, any suggestions?

[Jon Best]

Basically, I have a studio that's almost done in the garage. The room is approximately 10x8. Not too big. I will mainly be using it for sound design, music, and video editing. I can't spend a ton of money (really not much at all), and want to find out the CHEAPEST way to get this room sounding just OK for what I can make it.


should I get cheap thin carpet and carpet the walls? Should I get muslin and drape the walls? Should I get foam mattresses and cut them accordingly? I'll try to take some pics, but in the meantime, any suggestions?

Noticed that nobody had posted on this one- here's my not-professional take.

No, no and no.

Cheap carpet, muslin, eggcrate foam, anything thin like that is going to knock the very top end off your sound completely, and leave the mids and lows to bounce around the room at will. You'll end up with a muddy, boingy, dull sounding room- you'd probably be better off leaving *everything* reflective and sitting really close to your speakers (also a pretty bad solution, btw). Mattresses, in my limited understanding, are usually closed cell foam, which doesn't let the air in deep to the foam, which means they don't do crap.

First off, how high is the ceiling? Ideally, it's going to be at least half a foot different than the other two dimensions. If not, that's a little troublesome.

Your goal in this room is going to be getting it fairly dead, as evenly as possible (frequency response wise- different acoustic treatments work with different frequency ranges), but not so much that it feels like it's so quiet that your brain is going to slide out your ears.

If at all possible, look at Ethan Winer's site (the commercial site is realtraps.com, maybe someone will chime in with his personal site where you can get diagrams for panel traps), and build just about as many of his low and high bass traps as you can possibly afford/stand to build. Put them everywhere you can, in as many corners as you can, and at least a couple in each dimension ( ceiling, front and/or back wall, side walls). That should go a long way towards evening out your low end, which is going to be probably your biggest problem. Definitely at least rear wall and some of the side walls in the front half of the room.

Oh, yeah, and leave the floor reflective, with the possible exception of a rug where the sound from your speakers may bounce off the floor up to your ears.

Now it's time for absorption- call around locally, and find a commercial contractor that stocks Owens Corning 703 board. Get at least one box of 2" unfaced sheets (2x4'), and cover them with your choice of fabric. If you get a fairly tight weave (not muslin), you can do it with one layer. Otherwise, the fibers will work themselves out and eventually get breathed in.

Start out with the mirror trick (sit in your chair and get a friend to run a mirror flat around the walls and ceiling, and make a pencil mark anywhere you can see one of your speakers in the mirror). Hang 703 panels a few inches off the walls/bass traps at least on each side wall a few inches forward of mix position, and one above your head in the same place (the one above your head can be slanted down in the front to get a little more air behind it). Maybe two in each position. Then one behind each speaker, and one or two directly behind the mix position on the back wall.

That, with some tweaking, is in my opinion the best way to spend a couple hundred bucks making a small problem room very usable for audio.

Get monitors with a 6.5" woofer and skip the sub, too- check the bottom in headphones.

[Jon Best]

Rereading your post, I'll just give you the super, super cheap version as well.

Still leave the floor reflective. Hang super cheap carpet, doubled or tripled, about 2-3' wide at a 45 degree angle across every corner, across the back wall as far off the wall as you can stand, and in all the places I recommended you hang 703. That will be very, very cheap, and probably passable.

[Tomerb]

hey I gotta pop in here..
Does all this great advice go for a live/jam room with full band as well?
just curious and half deaf drummer here..lol
thanks ya!

[knightfly]

Pretty much - one other way to do corners - if you can find a cheap source of CLEAN used twin-size mattresses (NOT box springs) hanging those across all 4 corners of a room should do a LOT to even out the sound. Takes a fair sized room to have that much in all corners, but they would do a good job of catching all frequencies, they're THICK so they would pull a lot of the low end boom out -

I've not done this, I just know it would work; finding an inexpensive source could be tricky. Maybe ask at mattress places for blem's, torn covers etc, if they'll cut you a deal??

Keep in mind that mattresses, etc, will NOT "soundproof" a room - but they'd sure make it sound better inside... Steve

[Jon Best]

Another idea might be thrift store mattresses, spray them with lysol, and buy/beg/borrow/steal some fabric/drapes/sheets/rugs you can wash and cover them with.

Pretty much - one other way to do corners - if you can find a cheap source of CLEAN used twin-size mattresses (NOT box springs) hanging those across all 4 corners of a room should do a LOT to even out the sound. Takes a fair sized room to have that much in all corners, but they would do a good job of catching all frequencies, they're THICK so they would pull a lot of the low end boom out -

I've not done this, I just know it would work; finding an inexpensive source could be tricky. Maybe ask at mattress places for blem's, torn covers etc, if they'll cut you a deal??

Keep in mind that mattresses, etc, will NOT "soundproof" a room - but they'd sure make it sound better inside... Steve

[knightfly]

Ooohh, Lysol and urine; my FAAYYvorite - although cheap is cheap, and if they smell I bet they ain't as expensive. Hey, wonder if those foam earplugs work in noses too...

Sorry Jon, what can I say? I'm evil, no way was I gonna pass that one up... Steve