Attic studio acoustic improvements!

[imlikeajungle]

Hi!

A few months ago I had the chance to use an old attic and 'rebuild' it to a rehearsal space/homestudio. At the moment of the build, the acoustic isolation towards the outside world was my main concern. By using tips gathered from here, school & the co-builder, we managed to make a very loud drummer sound like a very far away sort of drummerboy outside

After finishing up the inside of the space, I now found that I have some acoustic issues. I tried to read up as much as I could on the subject (via Gearslutz, this forum, Ethan Winer's information, Google), but was not able to find information applicable to my case.

My goals:

- As I also rehearse in the room, I want to keep it as big as possible (i.e. not moving the speakers 1/3rd into the room, if possible, etc.
- Apart from that, I want an as good as possible mixing position (which I am not having at the moment). My ears tell me the room is too reverberant at the moment.
- Acoustically, the fact that I am rehearsing there makes no difference to me: the acoustic treatment can be used solely to improve the room as mixing room.


The room:

The inside of the room is constructed from plasterboard. The floor is OSB (a sort of pressed wood, is OSB an English term?). As the drawing shows, it is not symmetrical because of two things: the 'entrance hall' with the stairs, and the chimney which was encapsulated during the build on the other large wall. There is a large wooden beam in the middle of the room, which I tried to sketch in Sketchup too.
The way I am set up at the moment is shown in the pictures I have included. As you can see there, I have the left yellow KRK monitor close to the encapsulated (?) chimney. The desk is placed in exactly the middle of the room's width & about 2 feet from the back wall (except for that KRK monitor on the left, which is very close to that wall because of the chimney).


The questions:

- How do I improve the mixing position acoustically? Where should I place absorbers, bass traps & diffusors? My first guess was to construct large broadband panel absorbers to put in the four corners, and maybe one behind the monitors too, but what to do with the early reflections & with the back wall?

PS. I just bought 25 Minifusors from Auralex (from a friend, good dea & figured I could get rid of them if I can't use them) - could I use these?


Any help or ideas are very greatly appreciated!

Kindly,

Jungle from Belgium

[imlikeajungle]

Did I miss any of the things in the 'Rules'?

Could someone point it out then?

[John Sayers]

No mate - you diodn't miss anything - we missed your post

As you said - the room is obviously too reverberent but to take down a room that big requires lottsa treatment.

I'd use the auralex to create a tight area within the room - maybe put them on room dividers?

cheers
john

[imlikeajungle]

Hi John, thanks for the reply!

Not sure what you mean with tight area in terms of acoustics... My guess was to put them on the back wall and the back parts of both sides of the ceiling. That's about what you're telling me now, isn't it?

I figured this:
Next up is 3 wideband panel absorbers behind the monitors & on the front part of the ceiling, and then try to fit in a few basstraps...? Should I go for normal ones or superchunk ones?
Does this sound good ( ) to anyone?

[jwl]

I would think superchunks in all corners would work well. I'd particularly pay attention to the peaked ceiling; you could build a fabric-covered false ceiling there at the peak and stuff some serious 703/rockwool/acoustic cotton mass in the corner peak of the roof. Bottom line, you need some absorption in the room to reduce reverb, as well as get bass nodes under control.

Another option that I've used in my space is to build some freestanding units that can act as absorbers to create a RFZ while mixing, that can also be moved to be used as gobos during recording or practicing.

A combination of the two approaches -- superchunks in as many corners as possible, and freestanding gobos/side absorbers -- should give you good sound with a good amount of flexibility.

As far as the minifusors, I'd probably experiment with placement. Start with putting them on the rear wall behind the mix position. Another possibility is spacing them throughout the room. But I think that these devices will be more like "salt and pepper" for the main dish, in other words alone they probably won't have much of an effect, but can enhance other forms of treatment.