Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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" Stacking foam or building insulation in the room corners is nonsense when it comes to low frequency energy management."

http://www.acousticfields.com/dont-be-an-audio-fool/
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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I`m moving the studio in about 2 or 3 months.
I will be building my own resonator/Helmholtz panels based on the research I have done and speaking to a good deal of acoustic engineers.
It sort of combines the 2 types of low energy reduction units, mostly wood construction, I am still pricing materials to use as the loose vibrator.
Sound wise they should damp down to 50hz so far far more effective than rockwool etc

Price should come in at around £60 per unit, 4 units should stabilise the low end in a small room.
I`m going to be making probably 8 or 12

I`ll document it all when the time comes.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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surface wrote:There's always something to the sow the see of doubt! Good luck with the "boxiness traps" :D
Oh.. It makes a nice change having something outside of one's brain casting shadows haha
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote:Resonator panels is what you need, good luck with all the calculations

http://www.sae.edu/reference_material/a ... encies.htm
I would LOVE to have the space to make something like that but alas, my room is far from ideal. It's a perfect box. I will not be able to do anything other than what I am trying to do atm, which is to somewhat control / tame shit.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Dead End Dance wrote:
ICN wrote: Yep.. they look straightforward. What I like about them is that they have more surface area because they dont have the wooden sides. It seems preferable to me but then again there are probably other arguments against omitting them.
as far as i know, the only argument for having them is for purely cosmetic reasons, since the front side (the one without a frame) will look a bit soggy. other than that, having the front frame does take away more surface area from the absorbing material, involves more wood and screws and cutting and screwing. so, yeah, fuck that shit.
ICN wrote: Did you bother to measure the nodes in your room before after? What are the dimensions of your room? Do you think they made a difference?

Where did you position them in the end? (SO many questions lol - just intrigued as a comparision - sorry! :D )
i bought an omnidirectional mic and captured snapshots of my room using REW (Room EQ Wizard) by recording a sine sweep from 20 to 20K Hz. my room is really small, 13w x10l x 7h (in feet), and it has a bunch of annoying irregularities that makes it harder to treat. the low end is fucked - lots of pretty substantial spikes and nulls. i can post a graph later tonight.

unfortunately, i won't be able to make a true A/B comparison because i'm also changing the location of the monitors/listening position (i'm along the longer wall right now). and i can only install the corner traps when everything is moved away and i'm too lazy to set everything up just so i could do measurements and then tear everything apart again to do the install. obviously, can't tell you if they made any difference, since i haven't installed anything yet. will do it this weekend. but i will basically have these square soffits in the corners behind the monitors going from floor to ceiling. then i will have 2 2'x4' panels in the first reflection points on each side wall. and i still have a bunch of rockwool left over, so i'm going to make a bunch of smaller panels that will serve as a ceiling cloud. so i'll see how that goes. but i might try to do something to the back wall later (since i now know how easy it is to make these stupid things), though that might be pretty hard since the back "wall" is really a built in closet and the door out. not sure what i can really do about those.

i actually documented the whole process with a camera and maybe i'll finally use that as a motivation to start my blog and do my first post on this. but i snapped a few pictures with my phone that you see here. one of the smaller soffit frames (the other is almost twice as big - two per corner). and 3 of the 2x4s, where you can see that the front doesn't look as nice since there's no frame. and i fucked up some of the folds (which is the most annoying part of the whole process). but, whatever, doesn't really bother me.
They look great.. Sorry, what is the rectangular box one for? Corners? Sorry if you've mentioned & I've misunderstood. Actually saw someone making these online today & wondered what the benefit would be. He had loads of foam/rock wool stuffed in there. Looked to be a corner type unit.. Possibly double the height of yours. I wouldn't fancy cutting all that RW shite up into little squares. Messy work!

Cheers for the pics!
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote:" Stacking foam or building insulation in the room corners is nonsense when it comes to low frequency energy management."

http://www.acousticfields.com/dont-be-an-audio-fool/
For fucking sure. Everything I read points to this. I guess becoming an audio fool is my destiny :)
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote:I`m moving the studio in about 2 or 3 months.
I will be building my own resonator/Helmholtz panels based on the research I have done and speaking to a good deal of acoustic engineers.
It sort of combines the 2 types of low energy reduction units, mostly wood construction, I am still pricing materials to use as the loose vibrator.
Sound wise they should damp down to 50hz so far far more effective than rockwool etc

Price should come in at around £60 per unit, 4 units should stabilise the low end in a small room.
I`m going to be making probably 8 or 12

I`ll document it all when the time comes.
Staying at home Steve or moving? Are you moving out countryside direction?

That sounds ideal. I don't think it would be too much of a headfuck to calculate / build.. It's getting the right (less wrong) space, with a good size area to begin with.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

Post by Mslwte »

How much does volume (audio) affect a rooms response? Ie I don't play my music that loud when producing and I think the 2 rockwool traps I have in my room are doing a good job. I have one in front of me and one behind me, with an ikea book shelf stuffed with vinyl, CDs and other things acting as a diffuser and 2 foam traps in the corners for the hi's and I can't hear any reflections or standing waves in my listening position (not that I can't tell anyway) my room is noticeably flat when you walk in as well. Not sure if I would be over cooking the treatment by adding more to the room.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Gonna give this room eq wizard a whirl though when I can be arsed and see what that says.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote:" Stacking foam or building insulation in the room corners is nonsense when it comes to low frequency energy management."

http://www.acousticfields.com/dont-be-an-audio-fool/
it seems like a lot of people would disagree with that. in any case, it's not really subjective. that's what measurements are for. i installed one of these corner traps so far and can clearly see that it somewhat flattened out a bunch of peaks and nulls.

also, he's probably talking about fluffy pink stuff, which indeed won't do shit for low frequencies. i'm using roxul comfortbatt R30, which has been verified by a bunch of people to work really well for this exact purpose.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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ICN wrote: They look great.. Sorry, what is the rectangular box one for? Corners? Sorry if you've mentioned & I've misunderstood. Actually saw someone making these online today & wondered what the benefit would be. He had loads of foam/rock wool stuffed in there. Looked to be a corner type unit.. Possibly double the height of yours. I wouldn't fancy cutting all that RW shite up into little squares. Messy work!

Cheers for the pics!
yeah, they are basically corner traps. i would've gone with triangle "superchunks" as they call them, but my room has this stupid wooden panel going to about half way of a couple of walls and is about 8 inches thick. so after some recommendations form gearslutz, i decided to go with this approach instead. so my 16" square trap should be the equivalent of a 32" superchunk. same amount of material. and that's also why i had to make 4 of those of 2 different sizes, to account for that stupid panel. you can see it in the picture below (picture taken before i bought this house).

cutting rockwool is not bad at all. it's really soft and cuts like butter with virtually anything. in fact, i think i did use a long butter knife for that. haha. just wear a mask and long sleeves, since this stuff is supposedly pretty itchy if it touches your skin.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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ICN wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:I`m moving the studio in about 2 or 3 months.
I will be building my own resonator/Helmholtz panels based on the research I have done and speaking to a good deal of acoustic engineers.
It sort of combines the 2 types of low energy reduction units, mostly wood construction, I am still pricing materials to use as the loose vibrator.
Sound wise they should damp down to 50hz so far far more effective than rockwool etc

Price should come in at around £60 per unit, 4 units should stabilise the low end in a small room.
I`m going to be making probably 8 or 12

I`ll document it all when the time comes.
Staying at home Steve or moving? Are you moving out countryside direction?

That sounds ideal. I don't think it would be too much of a headfuck to calculate / build.. It's getting the right (less wrong) space, with a good size area to begin with.
Country way, well, suburban/rural
Looking for a place with a barn I can convert to a full size mastering studio
Either that or something with a large basement.
3rd option is something with a large or double garage I can convert.

I`ve got a really great method to deal with low end, just got to enter the jiggery and pokery of finding the right property.
We really have to move regardless, but I need to accommodate these bad boys
Image

Considering investing in a cutting lathe too this year, huge step, will involve a conversation with a bank. Urgh.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Dead End Dance wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:" Stacking foam or building insulation in the room corners is nonsense when it comes to low frequency energy management."

http://www.acousticfields.com/dont-be-an-audio-fool/
it seems like a lot of people would disagree with that. in any case, it's not really subjective. that's what measurements are for. i installed one of these corner traps so far and can clearly see that it somewhat flattened out a bunch of peaks and nulls.

also, he's probably talking about fluffy pink stuff, which indeed won't do shit for low frequencies. i'm using roxul comfortbatt R30, which has been verified by a bunch of people to work really well for this exact purpose.
Not really, talk to any half decent acoustic engineer or any decent studio, rockwool or fibreglass does shit all for sub 200hz unless you are dealing with 2 foot thick lumps of the shit. You can`t argue with the science.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote: Not really, talk to any half decent acoustic engineer or any decent studio, rockwool or fibreglass does shit all for sub 200hz unless you are dealing with 2 foot thick lumps of the shit. You can`t argue with the science.
i don't know, looks like a pretty nice difference in the sub-200 region to me (as one of many examples).

Image

http://www.radford.edu/~shelm/acoustics/bass-traps.html

in any case, i'm going to find this out for myself. once everything is set up, either i can see and hear the difference or i can't.

one corner installed.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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It really is worth looking at the article linked by John on the previous page as it is bang on the money.

To make a bass trap that actually does anything worthwhile in the real low frequencies, you need to have pretty much the same or double the space between the trap and the wall in relation to the thickness of the trap, and the thickness needs to be 4-6 inches MINIMAL to start really dragging out sub 200, and especially sub 100.
Rockwool or Owens and corning 703, whatever, the density isn`t the issue, it`s the ability to move with those very long wavelengths, and whilst dense fibreglass has the density, it as a consequence of this density, does not have the ability to move effectively with the longer wavelengths. It simply cannot take the energy out as it is too stiff.

What would be ideal is sand, though obviously this is too much of a nightmare and too heavy. So a resonator is needed, this can then move but still has the density to require a decent amount of energy to move, thus pulling out energy and converting it in to heat.

I`ve been looking at high density paper pellets, or activated carbon pellets, put in to long rectangular sacks, and sandwiched between porous wood panels, with a resonator in front and then a thinner resonator behind, all in one unit. This should deal with stuff going down to 50 possibly 30 hz with good efficiency. Fibre panels just aren`t efficient at this frequency, so either you need to buiild MASSIVE traps like the Megatraps from real traps (those things are huge) and still have some space between them and the wall, or you need a bigger room and thinner panels with more space between them and the wall.

But just wacking your standard 2-4 inch fibre panels in your corners ain`t gonna do the job.
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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I'm considering piling Emmanuel Confucio's excuses up in the corners of my room & see if that makes a difference.
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Dead End Dance wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote: Not really, talk to any half decent acoustic engineer or any decent studio, rockwool or fibreglass does shit all for sub 200hz unless you are dealing with 2 foot thick lumps of the shit. You can`t argue with the science.
i don't know, looks like a pretty nice difference in the sub-200 region to me (as one of many examples).

Image

http://www.radford.edu/~shelm/acoustics/bass-traps.html

in any case, i'm going to find this out for myself. once everything is set up, either i can see and hear the difference or i can't.

one corner installed.
Look at the frequency spread though, he`s just made a broadband reduction, he`s still got really bad performance for the effort
That big null at 105 hasn`t really been addressed, it`s shifted down a tone or so, but with negligable difference, that whole 60-120 region is pretty much unchanged.

He`s damped the room but the response doesn`t appear to be flattened in anyway at all (which is weirdly unusual)
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote: Look at the frequency spread though, he`s just made a broadband reduction, he`s still got really bad performance for the effort
That big null at 105 hasn`t really been addressed, it`s shifted down a tone or so, but with negligable difference, that whole 60-120 region is pretty much unchanged.

He`s damped the room but the response doesn`t appear to be flattened in anyway at all (which is weirdly unusual)
the test was done at 70db. so that 105 "null" is not really a null, but almost where it's supposed to be. he still has bad spikes, obviously, but he did flatten the low end somewhat. now whether all that effort is worth it for that result, that's a judgement call. to his ear, the difference was ASTONISHING (in his own words). i don't think the majority of us bedroom producers can aim or achieve a truly flat response. we are just looking for some reasonable improvement that's affordable and not too difficult so we could DIY it.

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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Dead End Dance wrote:
the difference was ASTONISHING (in his own words)

I put that down to expectation Bias, the evidence doesn`t go along with that.

sure it is incredibly difficult to treat small rooms, that`s precisely why you need the most possible efficiency for the space you have, and your standard fibre particle boxes just don`t provide that efficiency on their own.
They need to be coupled to some kind of resonator. It`s really not that hard to do.
I`ll log everything I do photographically when I build the new mastering studio, I`m also working to a tight budget so I should be a good guinnea pig for the process
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Re: Acoustic treatment, where to start?, what to do?

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Lost to the Void wrote: I`ll log everything I do photographically when I build the new mastering studio, I`m also working to a tight budget so I should be a good guinnea pig for the process
*thumbs up*

looking forward to seeing what you come up with. i personally can't even spell "Helmholtz resonator", so I'll hold off on attempting to build one for the time being.


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