I have some extra 4" Mineral Wool 8lb density

[brandondrury]

Well, I called my dealer a few days ago and we switched the order out to get 4lb stuff.

Basically, I have a 15x20x9 room that is paneling, spackeling, hard wood flooring, and a drop ceiling. I've been using it for drums and such with no treatment whatsoever. The results are not terrible, but many pros on other forums have heard my mixes and instantly said that my room need "work". Currently, I have a 11x12x9 room that I've been using as a control room, but I think I'm going to swap these around. I've been recording in this setup nearly fulltime for about a year now and really haven't had much of a break from the recording to make changes to the acoustics of the rooms. I went the neutral path and did nothing for a long time. My skills have caught up with the limitations of my room as far as the live room and the control room.

My thoughts are to make the larger room the control room. Not only does it offer more volume, but it is nearly perfectly symetrical while the smaller room is not. While my situation is not ideal, I could also put drums in this room when I record full bands. The adjacent room (11x12x9) that I mentioned would more or less be a live room for guitars / vocals / etc.

I'm guessing a large portion of this is comb filtering and any other problems associated with my completely untreated rooms stem from the early reflections. I hope to minimize these reflections as much as possible using the Rockwool.

I can hear what is wrong with my room, especially when it comes to a loud cymbals or loud electric guitars. The problem appears to vanish when I build an acoustic fortress (blankets, unopened rolls insulation, old clothes, whatever I can find) around my loud guitar amps.

The aim in the larger control room is to get a room that is much more likely to give me more accurate monitoring. Like everyone, I've struggled with this.

To make a long story short, I'm basically looking for even broadband absorpstion. I'll probably have to come up with some bass traps. I'm sure the 8lb stuff will work better for those, but in general I'm just looking clean the acoustics up a little bit, if that makes any sense.

At this stage of the game, I'm trying to acoustically improve my situation. I'm unsure how long I'll be recording in my current location and I try to focus on things that I know I'll need in the future. (It's easy to get a microphone to work in a new studio location. It's harder to take a double layer of drywall with me.)

So that is the goal of the studio. I certainly did not need 1000 sq feet of the 4" 8lb stuff. I may consider tossing the 8lb stuff above the drop ceiling if see fit. I'm sure the 4lb stuff will do a sufficient job of trapping bass if I do it correctly.

Thanks for your help
Brandon Drury