I see that Owens-Corning has a ceiling treatment package called
Solserene with "outstanding sound absorption properties" (quote from
their ad promo, of course). It consists of acoustical panels that are
attached directly to the ceiling drywall or studs, then a fabric that
is stretched across the ceiling tightly. It's being marketed to
home-owners, and I can't find any actual numbers on its acoustic
properties anywhere on the site -- but I know that Owens Corning
fiberglas panels are often recommended for acoustic dampening, so it
might just work.

When planning my home project studio (for classical chamber music), I
got some great advice here, including that I add some bass traps to the
corners and try to leave the floor bare wood and put absorptive
material on the ceiling. I didn't have a practical way of doing the
ceiling, so I put a large oriental rug on the floor to reduce the
echoeyness of the room. The musicians in the group prefer the more
"spacious" sound that we get when we play in ten-foot-ceilinged rooms
elsewhere in the house (but which for spousal reasons are not good
candidates for home studio), which I'm assuming is because of the 2
foot higher ceiling than in the studio. The higher-ceilinged room has
no other obvious advantages -- hard flat ceiling, oriental rug on the
floor, approximately the same size. I certainly don't want a "dead"
room, since I am recording classical music with one stereo-pair for the
whole group, but I know the parallel solid ceiling and floor are not
ideal. As I understand, an acoustically treated ceiling should make the
room behave as though the ceiling is higher.

Has anyone looked at the Solserene system? Is there a reason to believe
that it does or doesn't control an appropriate range of frequencies?
One particularly attractive feature for me is that the whole system
only drops the ceiling by 1.5 inches, and since my ceiling is already
only 8 feet high I don't want to lower it any more than needed. (I also
can't find anywhere how much it costs, so that may also make it
impractical....) Thanks for any comments and observations.

Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com

wrote:
I see that Owens-Corning has a ceiling treatment package called
Solserene with "outstanding sound absorption properties" (quote from
their ad promo, of course). It consists of acoustical panels that are
attached directly to the ceiling drywall or studs, then a fabric that
is stretched across the ceiling tightly. It's being marketed to
home-owners, and I can't find any actual numbers on its acoustic
properties anywhere on the site -- but I know that Owens Corning
fiberglas panels are often recommended for acoustic dampening, so it
might just work.

Get the data sheet. Look at the absorption curve. Is it flat?

Most of these materials absorb a lot of midrange and not much else.
This makes them a good thing for applications like restaurants where
you want to reduce sounds that interfere with speech. It's usually
not such a good thing in a studio application where you want pretty
much the same level of reverberation at all frequencies.

But the absorption curve on the data sheet will tell you what you need
to know.

When planning my home project studio (for classical chamber music), I
got some great advice here, including that I add some bass traps to the
corners and try to leave the floor bare wood and put absorptive
material on the ceiling. I didn't have a practical way of doing the
ceiling, so I put a large oriental rug on the floor to reduce the
echoeyness of the room. The musicians in the group prefer the more
"spacious" sound that we get when we play in ten-foot-ceilinged rooms
elsewhere in the house (but which for spousal reasons are not good
candidates for home studio), which I'm assuming is because of the 2
foot higher ceiling than in the studio. The higher-ceilinged room has
no other obvious advantages -- hard flat ceiling, oriental rug on the
floor, approximately the same size. I certainly don't want a "dead"
room, since I am recording classical music with one stereo-pair for the
whole group, but I know the parallel solid ceiling and floor are not
ideal. As I understand, an acoustically treated ceiling should make the
room behave as though the ceiling is higher.

A higher ceiling is always going to be a good thing, and if you have an
attic above it you might consider raising the ceiling up to roof level
in there.

Ideally, you want a room that is bright, but not too bright. You want it
to have a long reverb time with a lot of reflections that arrive a
considerable time after the original sound. BUT, you want it to have the
same reverb time at all frequencies, and you don't ever want any discrete
echoes that stand out above the level of the reverb tail. Since you can't
get this combination in a small room, you have to make compromises, and
picking a more dead sound instead of a boxy sound with slap echoes is a good
one.

Has anyone looked at the Solserene system? Is there a reason to believe
that it does or doesn't control an appropriate range of frequencies?
One particularly attractive feature for me is that the whole system
only drops the ceiling by 1.5 inches, and since my ceiling is already
only 8 feet high I don't want to lower it any more than needed. (I also
can't find anywhere how much it costs, so that may also make it
impractical....) Thanks for any comments and observations.

Does your room NEED to be more dead? That's the first question. Does
it need to be more dead in the range the system absorbs? That's a harder
one.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In general, the thicker the material and (to a lesser extent) the farther it
is from the mounting surface, the greater the bass absorption and the lower
the frequencies at which it's effective.

Unless Owens-Corning has developed some altogether new material, you'll be
buying Fibreglas panels at a premium price.

You might just as well buy plain yellow Fibreglas and cover it with
inexpensive synthetic fabric. (I've done it, an it works.)

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

wrote:
I see that Owens-Corning has a ceiling treatment package
called Solserene with "outstanding sound absorption
properties" (quote from their ad promo, of course). It
consists of acoustical panels that are attached directly
to the ceiling drywall or studs, then a fabric that is
stretched across the ceiling tightly. It's being
marketed to home-owners, and I can't find any actual
numbers on its acoustic properties anywhere on the site
-- but I know that Owens Corning fiberglas panels are
often recommended for acoustic dampening, so it might
just work.

Get the data sheet. Look at the absorption curve. Is it
flat?

http://www.owenscorning.com/around/s.../Solserene.pdf

page 8

Frequency/Absorption

direct
to over
drywall joists
125 .07 .79
250 .32 1.06
500 .76 .81
1000 .99 1.04
2000 1.05 1.08
4000 1.06 1.10

wrote:
I see that Owens-Corning has a ceiling treatment package called
Solserene with "outstanding sound absorption properties" (quote from
their ad promo, of course). It consists of acoustical panels that are
attached directly to the ceiling drywall or studs, then a fabric that
is stretched across the ceiling tightly. It's being marketed to
home-owners, and I can't find any actual numbers on its acoustic
properties anywhere on the site -- but I know that Owens Corning
fiberglas panels are often recommended for acoustic dampening, so it
might just work.

When planning my home project studio (for classical chamber music), I
got some great advice here, including that I add some bass traps to the
corners and try to leave the floor bare wood and put absorptive
material on the ceiling. I didn't have a practical way of doing the
ceiling, so I put a large oriental rug on the floor to reduce the
echoeyness of the room. The musicians in the group prefer the more
"spacious" sound that we get when we play in ten-foot-ceilinged rooms
elsewhere in the house (but which for spousal reasons are not good
candidates for home studio), which I'm assuming is because of the 2
foot higher ceiling than in the studio. The higher-ceilinged room has
no other obvious advantages -- hard flat ceiling, oriental rug on the
floor, approximately the same size. I certainly don't want a "dead"
room, since I am recording classical music with one stereo-pair for the
whole group, but I know the parallel solid ceiling and floor are not
ideal. As I understand, an acoustically treated ceiling should make the
room behave as though the ceiling is higher.

Has anyone looked at the Solserene system? Is there a reason to believe
that it does or doesn't control an appropriate range of frequencies?
One particularly attractive feature for me is that the whole system
only drops the ceiling by 1.5 inches, and since my ceiling is already
only 8 feet high I don't want to lower it any more than needed. (I also
can't find anywhere how much it costs, so that may also make it
impractical....) Thanks for any comments and observations.

Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com

It looks to me as if it's a re-packaging of existing product. From the
..pdf, I see that there's an "acoustic core" -probably their 703 or 705-
and a mounting system for the fabric, which is the Solserene...like Mr.
Sommerweck said, you can do this yourself for less money.

wrote in message
oups.com
Thanks for this and the other answers... I see it works a
whole lot better over joists in the bass area, which
isn't surprising; but since there's blown insulation in
that attic space this is obviously not a weekend project.

I don't see the issue with the blow-in insulation. The blown-in insulation
is over the joists, and the Solserene goes under them, right?

Arny Krueger wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com
Thanks for this and the other answers... I see it works a
whole lot better over joists in the bass area, which
isn't surprising; but since there's blown insulation in
that attic space this is obviously not a weekend project.

I don't see the issue with the blow-in insulation. The blown-in insulation
is over the joists, and the Solserene goes under them, right?

There's no technical problem, really, just a lot more work. What at
first looked like a project where I tack stuff below the existing
ceiling, turns into a project where -- to do it right -- I pull the
existing ceiling wallboard down (since I improve the bass response by
attaching the Solserene directly to the joists) -- and that wallboard
is holding up blown-in insulation, and I'll either have to shovel it
off first or let it fall on the floor, but I make a mess either way --
then I put up the new acoustic boards, and put the insulation back on
top of them... this is basically getting past the area where I'm
confident I can do it myself. As Scott says, who knows if my room even
needs to be deader. I just feel that since I've got a hard ceiling and
a hard floor that are eight feet apart and parallel, the sound would be
-- in theory only, of course -- better if I could deaden the ceiling
somewhat. But what do I know, I'm just a musician :-)

Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com

wrote in message
oups.com
Arny Krueger wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com
Thanks for this and the other answers... I see it works
a whole lot better over joists in the bass area, which
isn't surprising; but since there's blown insulation in
that attic space this is obviously not a weekend
project.

I don't see the issue with the blow-in insulation. The
blown-in insulation is over the joists, and the
Solserene goes under them, right?

There's no technical problem, really, just a lot more
work. What at first looked like a project where I tack
stuff below the existing ceiling, turns into a project
where -- to do it right -- I pull the existing ceiling
wallboard down (since I improve the bass response by
attaching the Solserene directly to the joists) -- and
that wallboard is holding up blown-in insulation, and
I'll either have to shovel it off first or let it fall on
the floor, but I make a mess either way -- then I put up
the new acoustic boards, and put the insulation back on
top of them... this is basically getting past the area
where I'm confident I can do it myself. As Scott says,
who knows if my room even needs to be deader. I just feel
that since I've got a hard ceiling and a hard floor that
are eight feet apart and parallel, the sound would be --
in theory only, of course -- better if I could deaden the
ceiling somewhat. But what do I know, I'm just a musician
:-)

Thanks for the explanation - it all seems to make sense.