John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello Everyone!!

I have been recording vocals in my basement with Digi002R. I am having a problem with too much reflections. I came up with the following idea. Put a piece of foam on the wall 2" thick. Buy one of those room dividers with the 3 panels and put foam on one side. Can I get over with this solution. I really don't want to go out and spend alot of money. I also can't build a vocal booth because my wife will kill me plus the room is small and I use it for other stuff. Any suggestions or comments? Thanks.

DJ,

> Put a piece of foam on the wall 2" thick. Buy one of those room dividers with the 3 panels and put foam on one side. <

Sure, that will work fine for vocals. The goal is to reduce reflections at mid and high frequencies from nearby surfaces. See my recent article Recording Spaces from EQ Magazine which describes this problem and the solution in more detail. Here's a direct link:

www.realtraps.com/art_spaces.htm

--Ethan

Thanks. I wasn't sure if it would work. I didn't want to start ordering the stuff and then when I set it all up it didn't give me the results I was expecting. But you are right the sound I record sounds like it's far away.

I too am having the same problems, and since I can't get my hands on any OC 703, I was planning on buying some auralex foam and using Ethan's idea of putting it in a corner.

Just as I was about a mouseclick away from buying $100 worth of lame, 2" thick Auralex foam, I realized that I already have something better--sofa cushions! The sofa cushions I have are made from foam that is 6" thick, and upon measuring and weighing them, I found that they were just a bit over 3 pounds per cubic foot.

The problem is that I only have three 2" X 2" cushions and one 2" X 3" cushion. I'm not sure that will be enough to cover the walls properly.

Maybe buying a cheap couch (if i'm not mistaken, they sell some of them for less than $100) from the thrift store would work if it had something like three 2 X 2 cushions that are 6" thick. Each cushion could then be cut into 2" thick pads, and there would be 6 of them. That might work better than the Auralex, because it would be more dense, and also not have "wedges" or "pyramids" cut out of them.

jack,

Just a few notes on your "lame" sofa cushion idea: ( )

1. If you are prepared to put cushions on your wall, you should be aware that not all furniture is made to be as flame retardant as our acoustical foam is. Most furniture has some flame retardancy to it, but cheap sofa cushions...???

2. The covering on the cushion may reflect a lot of high frequencies. Leather would (I hope obviously) be a bad choice. Cloth should work out OK, but many tightly woven fabrics stretched over foam cushions will reflect like drywall above 2 kHz.

3. The wedges or pyramids or other scupted "cut-outs" to our foam is what makes it work well at higher frequencies. Just FYI. I didn't know if you were commenting on the performance or the look when you mentioned these. I would assume it's the look, but then I'd have to come to terms with sofa cushions looking better than our foam on the wall. I guess as long as they're not my great-aunt's sofa cushions...

After looking at some of the sofas at the thrift store, I have come to two conclusions:

I. The thrift stores don't sell sofas as cheaply as I thought

II. Second-hand couch cushions are pretty filthy things. After unzipping a few cushions to find various stains and pet hair (among other things ) on the foam, I have decided that this was not such a great idea.

So much for that. The cushion idea might be a good one for someone who already has a lof of couch cushions on hand, though. Thanks for the info, lovecow.

As for me, it looks like I'll be purchasing some of that Acoustic foam after all.