Acoustic treatment advice

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Molotovbeatz
Posts: 151
Joined: 29 Jan 2019

06 Jun 2021

Hello :reason: gang,

I am considering to treat my room for professional acoustic treatment.

Please can you share with some link for best acoustic treatment materials, etc? I already have the measurement of my room. Now I have to figure out where to start.

I was thinking about putting acoustic material on the floor of my room as currently the panels of my floor are made of wood. Next I wanted to treat the room with acoustic panels on the side of my walls etc.

If you have any good advice or any link where I can start, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Cheers.

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

06 Jun 2021

Molotovbeatz wrote:
06 Jun 2021
Hello :reason: gang,

I am considering to treat my room for professional acoustic treatment.

Please can you share with some link for best acoustic treatment materials, etc? I already have the measurement of my room. Now I have to figure out where to start.

I was thinking about putting acoustic material on the floor of my room as currently the panels of my floor are made of wood. Next I wanted to treat the room with acoustic panels on the side of my walls etc.

If you have any good advice or any link where I can start, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Cheers.
what kind of budget do you have? and what shape/size of a room are you working in?

usually I think carpeting is the best option as far as floor treatment is concerned, since you obviously need to be able to walk around on it, etc.

I splurged on a semi-custom setup for my room through https://www.gikacoustics.com/ —it was expensive, but since I’m working in a small square room (the worst possible option), it was worth it. they made it really easy to find the right options too—send them your measurements, and budget and they’ll work with you to figure out the best solution. their advice extends past just selling you on their stuff too. they recommended I flip the orientation of where I had my speakers/desk to the other side of the room and recommended some isoacoustic iso stands which I thought were probably a gimmick, but the difference between them and the mopads I had been using was night and day.

if that’s too expensive, you can also make wall panels pretty affordably yourself with some lumber, Owens Corning 703 (or rockwool), fabric, and a few tools. not sure how easy it is to make good bass traps, but in other (better sounding) rooms, I’ve had good results just straddling one of the homemade panels across the corners. pretty sure I couldn’t get away with that in my current room.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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selig
RE Developer
Posts: 11685
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

06 Jun 2021

I second the GIK recommendation, they offer free analysis and also DIY parts. Used them for my 10x10 room and also for my newer/bigger space:
Image
Selig Audio, LLC

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

06 Jun 2021

selig wrote:
06 Jun 2021
I second the GIK recommendation, they offer free analysis and also DIY parts. Used them for my 10x10 room and also for my newer/bigger space:
Image
that setup is stupidly beautiful. 😆 love it.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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DaveyG
Posts: 2499
Joined: 03 May 2020

06 Jun 2021

Molotovbeatz wrote:
06 Jun 2021
Hello :reason: gang,

I am considering to treat my room for professional acoustic treatment.

Please can you share with some link for best acoustic treatment materials, etc? I already have the measurement of my room. Now I have to figure out where to start.

I was thinking about putting acoustic material on the floor of my room as currently the panels of my floor are made of wood. Next I wanted to treat the room with acoustic panels on the side of my walls etc.

If you have any good advice or any link where I can start, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Cheers.
If you have an entirely untreated room you can get quite a big improvement by adding a few rugs on the floor, heavy curtains (or duvets!) on a couple of walls and a few DIY bass traps. Regardless of whether you go for pro or DIY treatment, no room is ever perfect so you need to "learn the room" and make good use of reference tracks when mixing/mastering.

thedude
Posts: 110
Joined: 08 May 2021

06 Jun 2021

Before putting together a plan for acoustic treatment, it may be helpful to understand where the room is affecting sound the most. For this, I would recommend an omnidirectional condenser mic (usb or otherwise) to use with room EQ wizard. From there, you can try moving your desk or workstation while measuring the results. Once you know what you're up against, you can put together a room treatment plan.

DIY will obviously be cheapest, but otherwise expect to spend a fair bit to possibly achieve results you want. For me, that meant about $1500 in custom 4" thick panels. I also supplemented that with Sonarworks EQ software. Now, with the treated room and EQ, I am happier than I've ever been with my setup; the sound is so good.

Molotovbeatz
Posts: 151
Joined: 29 Jan 2019

06 Jun 2021

guitfnky wrote:
06 Jun 2021

what kind of budget do you have? and what shape/size of a room are you working in?

usually I think carpeting is the best option as far as floor treatment is concerned, since you obviously need to be able to walk around on it, etc.

I splurged on a semi-custom setup for my room through https://www.gikacoustics.com/ —it was expensive, but since I’m working in a small square room (the worst possible option), it was worth it. they made it really easy to find the right options too—send them your measurements, and budget and they’ll work with you to figure out the best solution. their advice extends past just selling you on their stuff too. they recommended I flip the orientation of where I had my speakers/desk to the other side of the room and recommended some isoacoustic iso stands which I thought were probably a gimmick, but the difference between them and the mopads I had been using was night and day.

if that’s too expensive, you can also make wall panels pretty affordably yourself with some lumber, Owens Corning 703 (or rockwool), fabric, and a few tools. not sure how easy it is to make good bass traps, but in other (better sounding) rooms, I’ve had good results just straddling one of the homemade panels across the corners. pretty sure I couldn’t get away with that in my current room.
Hi guitfnky,

For now let's say that I am willing to spend 1k EUR on treating my room. The room size is around 15.45m / 33.0m and the shape of the room at the moment looks like below:
IMG_6120.JPG
IMG_6120.JPG (180.51 KiB) Viewed 414 times
I was thinking about carpeting for the floor to treat the room. The question is, regular carpet would work or it has to be acoustic special carpets.
selig wrote:
06 Jun 2021
I second the GIK recommendation, they offer free analysis and also DIY parts. Used them for my 10x10 room and also for my newer/bigger space
Hi Selig, it looks good and very simple, I though in this kind of room there will be more carpet on the floor (at least that's how I imagined it).
DaveyG wrote:
06 Jun 2021

If you have an entirely untreated room you can get quite a big improvement by adding a few rugs on the floor, heavy curtains (or duvets!) on a couple of walls and a few DIY bass traps. Regardless of whether you go for pro or DIY treatment, no room is ever perfect so you need to "learn the room" and make good use of reference tracks when mixing/mastering.
Hi DaveyG, yeah the room is totally untreated at the moment. I moved recently into the new house and I'm planning to treat the room from scratch. My vision is to turn this room into a semi professional studio where I can produce my music and do some vocal recordings.
thedude wrote:
06 Jun 2021
Before putting together a plan for acoustic treatment, it may be helpful to understand where the room is affecting sound the most. For this, I would recommend an omnidirectional condenser mic (usb or otherwise) to use with room EQ wizard. From there, you can try moving your desk or workstation while measuring the results. Once you know what you're up against, you can put together a room treatment plan.

DIY will obviously be cheapest, but otherwise expect to spend a fair bit to possibly achieve results you want. For me, that meant about $1500 in custom 4" thick panels. I also supplemented that with Sonarworks EQ software. Now, with the treated room and EQ, I am happier than I've ever been with my setup; the sound is so good.
Hi thedude, that's a good idea, thank you. I was planning to order the Sonarworks software with the microphone to calibrate my studio monitors. However, before doing that I was thinking about to treat the room first by adding some acoustic panels and carpets as a starting point. The budget is around 1k EUR for now. Adding extra bags to complete the treatment would not be a problem.

Cheers all.

thedude
Posts: 110
Joined: 08 May 2021

08 Jun 2021

I will offer this as a cautionary tale - I purchased 2 inch thick panels for my walls and ceiling before analyzing the sound in my room. It turns out that the 2 inch panels were not as effective for my room as I had thought they would be. I needed 4 inch panels to take care of the very prominent low end problems I had. I could have saved money by not purchasing the 2" had I known.

User avatar
selig
RE Developer
Posts: 11685
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

10 Jun 2021

Molotovbeatz wrote:
06 Jun 2021
Hi Selig, it looks good and very simple, I though in this kind of room there will be more carpet on the floor (at least that's how I imagined it).
I really wanted a fairly live room, so I started by testing it empty, then started by adding the panels I had from my previous "cube" in NYC (10'x10'x10' almost exactly) and testing again, then ordering the corner traps and "bar code" traps (you can see the smaller ones on the front wall in the photo, there are more behind the camera). There are also a handful of ceiling panels just out of the photo as well.

There is still a little more ringing at 40 Hz than I would like, and there are other modes ringing as well but not as bad. There is also a flutter echo you only hear if on the ladder above the ceiling joists (now "beams"), which I may try to solve with diffusion. I'm currently living with it "as is", and it actually sounds fantastic as a drum room (have already tracked drums for a Nashville client). But #1 priority is to be able to trust mixes coming out of the room, and so far so good in that respect.

I've had the pleasure of working in some of the finest (and fwiw the worst) mix environments in my career, and honestly there is no feeling like "just mixing" because you trust the room - it's very different from "knowing" the room, where you know what's wrong and work around it. Just like any workaround, you end up spending more time on things you'd rather not spend time on. While this space will never match the world class rooms, it is already 1000x better than ANY space that was totally mine to setup as I pleased!

As far as your space, any carpet will help - the deeper the pile, the lower the frequencies that will be absorbed (just like with wall panels). No carpet will absorb actual bass frequencies, you need to think more in feet than inches with bass control. Furniture like sofas and beds can act like effective bass traps, just like book shelves full of books can act like diffusers - work with what you got!

Keep in mind that absorbing only the higher frequencies is like putting a low pass filter on your room - you'll still have ALL the LF energy bouncing around as before, so you may tend to end up with mixes that are bass shy. Ideally you want broadband absorption, which is almost never going to be 100% attainable - it's all a compromise, so start with what you got and add treatments as you determine where the remaining problem areas are.
Selig Audio, LLC

Molotovbeatz
Posts: 151
Joined: 29 Jan 2019

06 Feb 2022

selig wrote:
10 Jun 2021

I really wanted a fairly live room, so I started by testing it empty, then started by adding the panels I had from my previous "cube" in NYC (10'x10'x10' almost exactly) and testing again, then ordering the corner traps and "bar code" traps (you can see the smaller ones on the front wall in the photo, there are more behind the camera). There are also a handful of ceiling panels just out of the photo as well.

There is still a little more ringing at 40 Hz than I would like, and there are other modes ringing as well but not as bad. There is also a flutter echo you only hear if on the ladder above the ceiling joists (now "beams"), which I may try to solve with diffusion. I'm currently living with it "as is", and it actually sounds fantastic as a drum room (have already tracked drums for a Nashville client). But #1 priority is to be able to trust mixes coming out of the room, and so far so good in that respect.

I've had the pleasure of working in some of the finest (and fwiw the worst) mix environments in my career, and honestly there is no feeling like "just mixing" because you trust the room - it's very different from "knowing" the room, where you know what's wrong and work around it. Just like any workaround, you end up spending more time on things you'd rather not spend time on. While this space will never match the world class rooms, it is already 1000x better than ANY space that was totally mine to setup as I pleased!

As far as your space, any carpet will help - the deeper the pile, the lower the frequencies that will be absorbed (just like with wall panels). No carpet will absorb actual bass frequencies, you need to think more in feet than inches with bass control. Furniture like sofas and beds can act like effective bass traps, just like book shelves full of books can act like diffusers - work with what you got!

Keep in mind that absorbing only the higher frequencies is like putting a low pass filter on your room - you'll still have ALL the LF energy bouncing around as before, so you may tend to end up with mixes that are bass shy. Ideally you want broadband absorption, which is almost never going to be 100% attainable - it's all a compromise, so start with what you got and add treatments as you determine where the remaining problem areas are.
Make sense. I figured the books on the shelf would be useful as well. Thank you very much for the good advice. I've been learning a lot. Cheers

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