John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi guys, I am suddenly having an issue with flutter echo after installing laminate wood flooring. Previously I had bare cement floors. My room is 9'Lx9'6"Wx8'H. I have built the room with insideout double stud walls. Between the studs I installed 3.5" Bonded Logic Ultratouch Cotton and the entire ceiling is covered in 2" Auralex Wedges. Everything was fine and dandy prior to installing the thin padding and wood flooring but afterward there is a noticable echo. Any ideas as to how this happened or more importantly how I can remedy it? The goal was to have an extremely dead room so I can add artificial reverb later on.

Thanks

It's strange that you say you are getting flutter echo after installing laminate flooring that was not there before. If that is, indeed the case, then obviously this is a problem only in the vertical axis, and has nothing at all to do with your walls, so the simple solution is thick absorption on the ceiling.

The goal was to have an extremely dead room so I can add artificial reverb later on.

So I'm assuming that this is a tracking room, not a control room, right?

You say you have the entire ceiling covered with 2" of foam but that most likely is not enough, and from the rest of what you say, I suspect that there isn't enough treatment at all in the room.

However, the only real way to tell where the problems actually are, is to test the room with REW and see how it is reacting. So download REW, calibrate your system, and do several measurements with the mic and speakers in different locations, but do make sure that you make careful measurements of exactly where you put the mic and speaker for each measurement! You must be able to reproduce those locations exactly, accurate to within a few mm, in order to do valid comparisons later, after you add treatment.

So do the REW tests, and post the results here, for analysis.

- Stuart -