John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi, I'm new to this forum and to music production, and am currently planning to give my room some acoustic treatment. I'm using my bedroom as a studio, and the room is in the loft, so there are sloping walls. I have included a SketchUp drawing of the room, with my main work desk and bed in place. I have also drawn in 2 bass traps (Ethan Winer style) which I do not have, but this is where I think some should go. I have been through this forum and also Ethan Winer's Acoustics page and bass trap construction page.

My first question is, do the normal guidelines for treating a room apply in my situation. Traps along the back wall are meant to minimize standing waves, but since my walls are not parallel, will there even be any standing waves?

Should I place mid/high frequency absorbers on the walls to the side of the desk and perhaps another panel above the desk?

After reading Ethan's page, I came out thinking that the air space between the rockwool and wall in his membrane absorbers and bass traps needed to be airtight. However, I recently read a magazine article where they construct similar traps, but just hang them on the wall, meaning they are not airtight at the back. This will make a fairly large difference to me, because for the traps in the corners, making them airtight against the wall will me alot more work than just placing them across the corner.

Any help at this point would be appreciated, I apologize if I have left anything out, and the SketchUp drawing isn't perfect, but I'm still getting to grips with it. (By not perfect I am not referring to the dimensions. The dimensions are accurate, just which walls I have left out for better viewing etc. may be irritating)

Thanks for your help.

can you post an image of the room? There is no sketchup version for Linux (though I'm hoping the Google folks will soon remedy that as they did with Google Earth), which is what I use for everything except music production.... and my only Windoze machine isn't connected to the net for obvious security reasons....

Thanks

I've done some shots of the Sketchup drawing because I can't take any decent pictures.

too bad no one has replied. pics look fine.

I just added traps like the ones you've penciled in. The only suggestion I would offer you is: the corner where your wall meets your floor could be treated as well. Most people don't treat the floor/wall corner because they can't afford to lose the floor space. In your case, you can't use it anyway as the ceiling slopes in.

stratotom - the reason you have absorption along the back wall is not because of standing waves, it's to stop you from receiving rear reflections off the back wall that can interact with the original signal and muddy the signal.

cheers
john

Thanks for that John, I'm stilling trying to get to grips with it all.

Ok so I'm thinking, I'll do those corners as shown in the pictures, and then also do the two corners opposite behind the desk. (Moving of bed will take place)

What do you think of that? I may reposition the monitors further back from the desk on stands and add a couple of aborbers on the walls beside the desk, at the reflection points.

I could hang a heavy curtain across the bay window too if it helps, but it would mean no natural light from the larger window in the room.

How strongly would you recommend treating the floor/wall corners? I could add some of those, along with some aborbers along the back wall. I'm guessing the fact that they are mounted at an angle won't make much difference?

Thanks for the help, both of you, it's appreciated.