Room overhaul ideas...

dymaxian · Post by **dymaxian** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 6:35 pm

Well, I've decided to build a second ceiling in my room, which means I have a whole bunch of low-end absorption to make up for. the 12" deep bass trap that is my ceiling will be gone. The room sounds great as it is, but there just isn't enough isolation.

Anyway, it's a basement room, and all the walls are furred out (in some cases there's concrete right behind, sometimes it's another stud wall) but not drywalled. I plan on tipping the side walls down, drywalling the back of them, and then covering the front with cloth and then wood slats (there's fiberglass blanket insul right now, I'll leave that there). If I space the wood slats enough to make a 50/50 balance of absorption/reflection, I think it'll sound pretty good. Does that sound like a decent idea to you guys? I'm not trying to make a helmholz resonator out of it (the studs are all steel, so there's holes everywhere- I'd have to double up all the studs). But as far as overall room balance goes, most of the folks here seem to recommend an even balance. I'll have to play with the pattern of the wood slats, too- any recommendations for this? There's a bunch of examples in the 'past projects' file; how well are those working? Anything I should try to achieve, or absolutely avoid?

On the back wall, I'm planning on screwing 2x4s end-to-end into the existing studs to make the cavities between 7" deep if I drywall the back face. With 703 over the top and 3" fiberglass between, that wall should soak up quite a bit. I'm still debating whether I should make this deeper... don't want to lose too much floor space, but extending the wall the depth of a 2x4 puts me at about where my panel traps are right now.

I'm thinking of covering the face of this wall with expanded metal (like the front of guitar speaker cabinets) over fabric, basically so no one puts their hand thru it. I wouldn't think that the little bit of flat facing would reflect high freq's very much (it'd probably diffract as much as it reflected) but I wanted to see what you guys thought, or if anyone's tried this. I haven't even looked into pricing it yet, but I can't imagine it's very expensive. I see the stuff everywhere.

The other question I have is about the panel traps I've put up around the room... I'll be abandoning many of them (the mid/high absorbers won't be needed, because they'll be in all the walls) but in losing the absorption from the ceiling, I think I'll need the low end traps. If I put these up against the walls, will they block the absorption from the walls (stud cavity insulation) or will some of it still make it back thru there? Should I just put the low bass panels near the corners and leave the rest of the wall to do it's thing? I don't want to just scrap all those panels, but if the wall cavities will do more work for me, I'm sure I can find something else to do with the lumber. I'd rather have the whole room act the way John's inside-out walls do; it's certainly be a cleaner construction.

Any thoughts you guys have about this plan are welcome, even if it's to shoot the whole idea full of holes. I plan on making a cloud of some sort over the mix position, so my next few clicks will be to go hunting thru the searches...

Anyway, speak your minds please! Thanks in advance!

Kase
www.minemusic.net

Jai · Post by **Jai** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 10:24 am

hey Kase,

I dont know the dimensions of your room, but would it be possible to extend that back wall out to 24" and hang some hanging bass traps? Then do the 703 thing on the studs, then fabric. this would give you the high end as well as low end absorption. if you are going to float a cloud over mix position you can get good broadband absorbsion there. Remember the further from the ceiling the lower it will absorb. My cloud worked like a charm. I was really really suprised how well it worked actually.

Do not buy the grill cover metal stuff from anywhere but a welding fabricator. I had a client redo his cabnets (Guitar) and searched for the stuff. Retail was three times the amount of a fabricator. The only difference is you get it raw. Then go to walmart and buy you an 88 cent can of flat black, or whatever color you want. It might even be feasable to get it powder coated.

My 2 cents.

jai
www.themixstudio.com

dymaxian · Post by **dymaxian** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 12:19 pm

Hey Jai!

I've been thinking about putting hangers in there, but I don't have the floor space to spare down there. Thanks for the tip about the expanded metal tho- I'll check into it that way.

Kase
www.minemusic.net

dbluefield · Post by **dbluefield** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 5:22 pm

Kase,

how about a pic?

show us where the sound is leaking, what you have/what you want.......I had trouble viualizing the issues at hand.

Best,

Dave

dymaxian · Post by **dymaxian** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 5:37 pm

Well, I know where sound is leaking... the doors and ceiling. I'm just trying to formulate a plan on where to make up for all the low-freq absorption the current ceiling is giving me...

I don't know if pics will help you out much here. It's pretty messy construction- I have a lot of cleaning up to do.

Kase
www.minemusic.net