[GarageGuitar]

HI everyone.

My home studio is almost idiotically small (approx 7ft x 8ft x 7.5ft
LxWxH), but provides a dedicated space for a desk (with eqpt rack,
nearfield monitors, computer monitor, etc), a couple of mic stands
and a stool to sit on while I play mainly acoustic guitar and record
vocals.

Currently the "sound treatment" consists of wall to wall carpet (no
underpad) and ten 12"x 48" panels of 3/4" styrofoam onto which I've
glued panels of roughly 1-1/2" thick convoluted foam mattress pad (hi-
tech, eh?). Eight of these panels are hung vertically on the walls,
centered vertically, and laid out about 4 inches apart on the two
walls at the mic stand end of the room. There are 2 more panels hung
horizontally behind the desk at the opposite end of the space behind
the nearfields. I also hang a blanket across the doorway while
recording to cut down on reflections off the smooth door surface,.

All of this helps immensely, but the room still suffers from flutter
echo/tin can reverb, which is mucking up my vocal takes, especially
when I get loud. My question is how best to deal with the situation in
a cost-effective manner. How mich of the drywall should I be trying to
cover with absorptive materials? What about bass traps? Should I treat
the ceiling?

On one hand, I feel like I should treat the entire space as a vocal
booth (it's not much bigger!) and glue foam on every inch of surface
area. On the other hand, I dont want a totally dead room.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, suggestions for treatment mateials, war
stories or any other advice you care to offer.

Thanks in advance!

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:39:13 -0800 (PST), GarageGuitar
wrote:

HI everyone.

My home studio is almost idiotically small (approx 7ft x 8ft x 7.5ft
LxWxH), but provides a dedicated space for a desk (with eqpt rack,
nearfield monitors, computer monitor, etc), a couple of mic stands
and a stool to sit on while I play mainly acoustic guitar and record
vocals.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, suggestions for treatment materials, war
stories or any other advice you care to offer.

It's either a very quiet evening at home or everyone's still
replaying "Survivor" for subtle details. Spoiler alert: no
pretty girls were voted out.

But seriously, how long can you make a pair of microphone cables?
What else do you have available, room-wise? The current lack of
responses is at least partly because the you're asking the old joke
question "Doctor, when I hit my head with this hammer it hurts".

Of course you know that, and I don't want this post to come off
wrong, so maybe a better way to respond is "Is this little room
really the only alternative?"

If so, it'll take someone much smarter than me to help. Fortunately,
they abound.

All good fortune,

Chris Hornbeck
"It's 90% boilerplate, 1% real work, 9% WTF?"
-Les Cargill

[Laurence Payne]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:39:13 -0800 (PST), GarageGuitar
wrote:

My home studio is almost idiotically small (approx 7ft x 8ft x 7.5ft
LxWxH),

snip

On one hand, I feel like I should treat the entire space as a vocal
booth (it's not much bigger!) and glue foam on every inch of surface
area. On the other hand, I dont want a totally dead room.

I think that's your only option. Deaden the room, mic close and add
some artificial life to the recording. Or, as already suggested,
treat it as a control room and run cables to somewhere better. Not
very convenient if you're a one-man operation, I admit!

[GarageGuitar]

LP:

Don't I wish I had another (larger) space available! The irony is that
my room is adjacent to a huge open basement space whch I'd love to
carve a chunk out of, but I've been vetoed by The Spouse.

So I guess I'll be looking onto lots of foam..... Any ideas on how to
neatly foam a ceiling with pot lights in it? Maybe a checkerboard of
12x12 squares with lights in opne spaces......

Thanks for the input.

[Don Pearce]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:04:13 -0800 (PST), GarageGuitar
wrote:

LP:

Don't I wish I had another (larger) space available! The irony is that
my room is adjacent to a huge open basement space whch I'd love to
carve a chunk out of, but I've been vetoed by The Spouse.

So I guess I'll be looking onto lots of foam..... Any ideas on how to
neatly foam a ceiling with pot lights in it? Maybe a checkerboard of
12x12 squares with lights in opne spaces......

Thanks for the input.

Have a look at www.soundservice.co.uk

I know they aren't local to you, but the sort of products they have
must be available there. You will end up with much better (and
spouse-acceptable) ideas than simply gluing up foam.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Ken Winokur]

On Feb 29, 8:04 am, GarageGuitar wrote:
LP:

Don't I wish I had another (larger) space available! The irony is that
my room is adjacent to a huge open basement space whch I'd love to
carve a chunk out of, but I've been vetoed by The Spouse.

So I guess I'll be looking onto lots of foam..... Any ideas on how to
neatly foam a ceiling with pot lights in it? Maybe a checkerboard of
12x12 squares with lights in opne spaces......

Thanks for the input.

Regular foam is a really poor solution (it's almost transparent to
sound). The foam sold for audio treatment is good to break up sound
somewhat but mostly doesn't absorb bass (unless it's quite fat).
Check out bass traps - this will help enormously. Ethan Winer's
designs are elegantly simple and easy to build (and his site has lots
of info about how to use them). He's easily found on a Google search.

I wouldn't deaden the whole room. Put up some wood panels (at
angles) to resonate with your guitar and vocals. You could even make
them so that you can flip them around to change their amount of
reflectivity. Randomize the reflections of the live surfaces so that
you don't create standing waves. Playing or singing in a totally dead
room is really weird - you'll hate it.

How come you can't just use the basement rooms? Acoustic guitar and
vocals doesn't sound that annoying (unless you really suck)? You can
deal with a certain amount of ambient noise in the unsound proofed
rooms, by close micing. At least you could have some choices of
acoustics. Send the old bat to the movies and run some cables into
the living room. Quit your job and make her go out to work every day
while you record any damn where you want.

Why is it that I assume that you're the man and she is the wife? My
appologies if I got the sexes wrong.

[Arny Krueger]

"GarageGuitar" wrote in message

HI everyone.

My home studio is almost idiotically small (approx 7ft x
8ft x 7.5ft LxWxH), but provides a dedicated space for a
desk (with eqpt rack, nearfield monitors, computer
monitor, etc), a couple of mic stands and a stool to sit
on while I play mainly acoustic guitar and record vocals.

Currently the "sound treatment" consists of wall to wall
carpet (no underpad)

Padded carpet usually sounds a little bit better.

and ten 12"x 48" panels of 3/4"
styrofoam onto which I've glued panels of roughly 1-1/2"
thick convoluted foam mattress pad (hi- tech, eh?).

You ought to find your nearest professional insulation contractor and pick
up a 6-pack of Dow Corning 703 or its equivalent. It comes as 2' x 4' x 2"
blankets. Cut each one in half lengthwise and add it to the sandwich, above.

However, you might want to get a 12 pack, and disperse the other 7 pieces on
walls around your little room.

Use it in separated areas, don't butt the pieces together.

[Anahata]

GarageGuitar wrote:

So I guess I'll be looking onto lots of foam..... Any ideas on how to
neatly foam a ceiling with pot lights in it? Maybe a checkerboard of
12x12 squares with lights in opne spaces......

To reduce the bass problems you need *depth* of absorbing material. Put
as much thickness as you can on the ceiling without hitting your head on
the bottom of it, leaving gaps where the lights are.

You should easily be able to add 8 inches thickness of absorbing
material, or possible save money by having a 4" gap and 4" of absorbent
material below that on a false ceiling framework. Dense fibre glass is
better than foam.

On the walls you've covered with foam, instead of covering the whole
wall with foam, cover half the wall with double the thickness. Try to
get bare parts of the wall facing treated parts, so there's no place
where sound can bounce back and forth between them.

It won't be perfect but you'll get less bass resonance and less
"deadness" at the same time.

Anahata

[Ken Winokur]

On Feb 29, 8:41 am, Anahata wrote:
GarageGuitar wrote:
So I guess I'll be looking onto lots of foam..... Any ideas on how to
neatly foam a ceiling with pot lights in it? Maybe a checkerboard of
12x12 squares with lights in opne spaces......

To reduce the bass problems you need *depth* of absorbing material. Put
as much thickness as you can on the ceiling without hitting your head on
the bottom of it, leaving gaps where the lights are.

You should easily be able to add 8 inches thickness of absorbing
material, or possible save money by having a 4" gap and 4" of absorbent
material below that on a false ceiling framework. Dense fibre glass is
better than foam.

On the walls you've covered with foam, instead of covering the whole
wall with foam, cover half the wall with double the thickness. Try to
get bare parts of the wall facing treated parts, so there's no place
where sound can bounce back and forth between them.

It won't be perfect but you'll get less bass resonance and less
"deadness" at the same time.

Anahata

Ethan Winer's bass traps (which I have been planning to build but have
not yet done) use somewhat thin amounts of rigid fiberglass. From
what I gather, the designs he has are quite scientific and use a small
amount of deadening material coupled with a resonant membrane (just a
piece of plywood cut to a specific size and mounted at a specific
depth) to do what we all have mostly done with huge amounts of
absorptive materials. Even the deep bass traps are only 4" deep. So
they would easily fit in your small room (on the walls or ceiling).

There are three slightly different designs that alternately trap deep
bass, high bass and mid/high sounds. Using some of each you get a
nicely balanced sound.

Ethan you out there? Why do your thin panels work?

Here's the website for his designs:

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

[Ethan Winer]

Currently the "sound treatment" consists of wall to wall carpet

Have a look at my Acoustics FAQ for the right way to do this:

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

A cube shaped room needs much more than foam.

--Ethan

[Powell]

"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote

Have a look at my Acoustics FAQ for the right way to do this:

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

Are you aware of any books or links which describe the
specific methodology used to measure actual room
resonances for the Dolby studio facility certification?

[Scott Dorsey]

In article , Powell wrote:
"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote

Have a look at my Acoustics FAQ for the right way to do this:

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

Are you aware of any books or links which describe the
specific methodology used to measure actual room
resonances for the Dolby studio facility certification?

The information is public. You could contact the Production
Services Group in Wootton Bassett and you should be able to get a
manual and a fancy calculator for figuring room modes.

Almost certainly they have isolation and noise floor standards and
some basic rough room mode numbers. Remember, of course, that these
are intended for soundstages and mixing theatres, and the required
acoustics are very, very different than for music recording or for
performance halls. So I would _bet_ that they would have a fairly narrow
range of allowable RT60s for a soundstage, for instance, and I'd bet
those numbers are way too short for a music studio.

Not available in the US, of course.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Powell]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote

Have a look at my Acoustics FAQ for the right way to do this:

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

Are you aware of any books or links which describe the
specific methodology used to measure actual room
resonances for the Dolby studio facility certification?

The information is public. You could contact the Production
Services Group in Wootton Bassett and you should be able to get a
manual and a fancy calculator for figuring room modes.

Almost certainly they have isolation and noise floor standards and
some basic rough room mode numbers. Remember, of course, that these
are intended for soundstages and mixing theatres, and the required
acoustics are very, very different than for music recording or for
performance halls. So I would _bet_ that they would have a fairly narrow
range of allowable RT60s for a soundstage, for instance, and I'd bet
those numbers are way too short for a music studio.

Not available in the US, of course.

I think your information is incorrect. A facility does not submit
theoretical paperwork to get certified. It is based on actual
measurements by company (Dolby) representatives.
*THX Professional Facility certification,* for example.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article , Powell wrote:

"Scott Dorsey" wrote

Have a look at my Acoustics FAQ for the right way to do this:

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

Are you aware of any books or links which describe the
specific methodology used to measure actual room
resonances for the Dolby studio facility certification?

The information is public. You could contact the Production
Services Group in Wootton Bassett and you should be able to get a
manual and a fancy calculator for figuring room modes.

Almost certainly they have isolation and noise floor standards and
some basic rough room mode numbers. Remember, of course, that these
are intended for soundstages and mixing theatres, and the required
acoustics are very, very different than for music recording or for
performance halls. So I would _bet_ that they would have a fairly narrow
range of allowable RT60s for a soundstage, for instance, and I'd bet
those numbers are way too short for a music studio.

Not available in the US, of course.

I think your information is incorrect. A facility does not submit
theoretical paperwork to get certified. It is based on actual
measurements by company (Dolby) representatives.
*THX Professional Facility certification,* for example.

Where did I say this was not the case? Please don't put words in my mouth.
--scott


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

[Richard Crowley]

"Powell" wrote ...
"Scott Dorsey" wrote
The information is public. You could contact the Production
Services Group in Wootton Bassett and you should be able to get a
manual and a fancy calculator for figuring room modes.

Almost certainly they have isolation and noise floor standards and
some basic rough room mode numbers. Remember, of course, that these
are intended for soundstages and mixing theatres, and the required
acoustics are very, very different than for music recording or for
performance halls. So I would _bet_ that they would have a fairly narrow
range of allowable RT60s for a soundstage, for instance, and I'd bet
those numbers are way too short for a music studio.

Not available in the US, of course.

I think your information is incorrect. A facility does not submit
theoretical paperwork to get certified. It is based on actual
measurements by company (Dolby) representatives.
*THX Professional Facility certification,* for example.

You must have posted this message to the wrong thread.
None of the information you proclaim "incorrect" is actually
stated in the message you responded to.

[Powell]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote


I think your information is incorrect. A facility does not submit
theoretical paperwork to get certified. It is based on actual
measurements by company (Dolby) representatives.
*THX Professional Facility certification,* for example.

Where did I say this was not the case? Please don't put words
in my mouth.

You wrote "manual and a fancy calculator for figuring
room modes." I'm not interested in this whatsoever.

meth-od-ol-o-gy (meth uh dol'uh jee) n. pl. -gies
1. a set or system of methods, principles,
and rules used in a given discipline, as
in the arts or sciences.

As in actual tester methodology for certification.

[Powell]

"Richard Crowley" wrote

You must have posted this message to the wrong thread.
None of the information you proclaim "incorrect" is actually
stated in the message you responded to.

Prove it.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
Powell wrote:

"Scott Dorsey" wrote


I think your information is incorrect. A facility does not submit
theoretical paperwork to get certified. It is based on actual
measurements by company (Dolby) representatives.
*THX Professional Facility certification,* for example.

Where did I say this was not the case? Please don't put words
in my mouth.

You wrote "manual and a fancy calculator for figuring
room modes." I'm not interested in this whatsoever.

Well, indeed, that's what Dolby will give you. I have one on my
desk at home. They have a standard kit which includes the aforementioned
manual which describes the measurements and what the allowable limits
are, and includes the aforementioned calculator. I believe if you look
on the Dolby web site you will probably see a mention of this.

meth-od-ol-o-gy (meth uh dol'uh jee) n. pl. -gies
1. a set or system of methods, principles,
and rules used in a given discipline, as
in the arts or sciences.

As in actual tester methodology for certification.

Yes, of course they do that. When did I say they didn't? You seem to
have a severe reading comprehension problem and a bizarre knee-jerk
reaction to anything that involves calculation.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"Powell" wrote ...
"Richard Crowley" wrote
You must have posted this message to the wrong thread.
None of the information you proclaim "incorrect" is actually
stated in the message you responded to.

Prove it.

Even without your apparent perception deficiency,
you attitude makes it easy to ignore any further
outbursts. Bye and plonk to you.

[RobertH]

Good strategy for the ceiling. That's probably where the original
poster is getting all his echo from. In my old house I had a cathedral
ceiling and I always got great acoustics in that room.