First post, I need opinions on treating my room.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:00 pm

First I would like to say that I appretiate this site and all the helpful info. The occasional trolls can be entertaining too.
Shown below is the layout of my room. Along with those dimensions, the ceiling is 8ft high. The floor is oak, the walls and ceiling are plaster. Empty it rings and flutters like you wouldn't believe. I did treat it though......
I got some material from a local company that sews up bed comforters to be used in hotels, the stuff is made up of batting with cloth sewn on both sides in a quilt pattern. It was almost free so I said what the heck, I knew I was wrong in doing what I'm about to tell you, but, I had to find out for myself. I ran a cable along the perimeter of the room where the wall meets the ceiling and draped this stuff over the cable 2 ft and let it hang to the floor.( I see you shaking your head). I have a couple of rugs on the floor, a love seat behind the mixing desk and the ceiling is untreated. The room has no presence.(DUH) My mixes translate very heavy in low frequency. It was a learning experience. What I want to do now is install some trapping, treat the ceiling and walls in the right way. I can build all the traps and diffusers myself and have all the tools and space to do it. I have read Ethans articles and anything else I have found on this and other sites about room treatment.

The room is going to be primarily for mixing and some tracking. I like the size of the room, not to small. I do question what the offset space in the rear of the room would do with the sound or if there's any issue at all with it. I need to pointed in the right direction, that's all I ask, just need some opinions on this size room and what you would do. Thanks.

[img]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/365257729_7f015a3100.jpg?v=0[/img]

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:26 pm

Sorry image doesn't show up on post, I must have missed something. The address does take you to the diagram.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:31 pm

It seems the ? or = might have confused the board.

[img]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/365257729_7f015a3100.jpg[/img] worked.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:47 pm

Thanks Zemlin!!

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:23 pm

Lutherieman wrote:

What I want to do now is install some trapping, treat the ceiling and walls in the right way. I can build all the traps and diffusers myself and have all the tools and space to do it. I have read Ethans articles and anything else I have found on this and other sites about room treatment.

I didn't see any real questions so all I can offer is general advice. A large (well, long) room is good, but the downside is that means you need a lot of panels to treat it properly. So I'd focus on treating as much corner surface as possible, including wall-ceiling corners. The batting you already put up is not terrible, but you probably have too much surface covered. So I'd fold it up to be twice as thick, and treat only half of the side walls in stripes maybe four feet wide. You should also treat some of the ceiling, especially any places where you'll use overhead microphones close to the ceiling.

My one-room studio is also long and narrow, though maybe not as long and narrow as yours. The good news is given enough bass trapping and broadband absorption you should be able to get very good results.

--Ethan

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 6:12 pm

Thanks for your thoughts Ethan, sorry that I didn't ask any meaty questions, guess I already know in theory what to do. One thing about all that wall to wall treatment that I have up is when I play a cd through the monitors, I can walk around the room and to every corner and the low frequency seems to stay the same. The quilting, I thought, would just kill the high reflections. Anyway. I want the room to have more life in it so I'm going to space the fabric around and see what happens.

I have a question about 475 FRK. When I built the duct work for my shop I used what is called "duct board". It comes in 4'x10' sheets and is 1 inch thick. It's labled Dow Corning 475-FRK. I'm wondering what a large sheet of this would do to a rooms sound if it were suspended away from the wall a bit. Seems to me it would affect lows below 100hz because of it's size. A thought also would be to suspend the sheets from my ceiling, it would take 7 sheets and would leave about 2 1/2 feet on each side. That just might be a good idea, any thoughts on this?

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 3:02 pm

Lutherieman wrote:

It comes in 4'x10' sheets and is 1 inch thick. It's labled Dow Corning 475-FRK.

One inch is not thick enough for bass trapping. You need three inches thick or even thicker if possible for that. See my Acoustics FAQ here:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Especially see the section about bass traps, and the section Optimizing the air gap.

--Ethan

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