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Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 7:13 pm
by WOLF!
I was told by a acoustic engineer that the trick with rockwool for basstraps is not stuffing the whole corner but leaving airgaps.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 8:01 pm
by Lost to the Void
There is a much better paper on why rockwool doesn`t work for much below 200hz.

But this will do

Basically, science......

But essentially it is completely impractical to try to deal with sub 200 with rockwool unless it is a couple of feet thick and at least a quarter wavelength from the wall.
so 100hz = roughly 3 meters. Quarter that is 75cm from the wall at least. So a BIG chunk of rockwool sitting nearly a meter away from the wall to have even a basic effect on 100hz.
And so we begin to see the problem for small, project studios.

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v66341606a37ZnBwy


http://www.recordingreview.com/blog/rec ... dont-work/

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 9:43 pm
by Mattias
Not to mention that the bigger the air gap is, the more self-oscillation occurs. There's definitely reason why acoustic treatment companies have more then just rockwool in their traps for bass absorbing.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 10:02 pm
by WOLF!
Will do the reading Void! Nice stuff you bring up!

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:57 pm
by Root
Bringing this thread up again as it seems to be the most general on acoustic treatment here, besides the one in the archive. So after reading and youtubing the whole weekend and this evening I realize that things seem to be way more complicated than I expected it to be. Like there seems not to be an overall good advise to follow and have a nice sounding room easily.

I know ask myself, and you fellas, where to start? I learned that I should stay away from foam, first focus on absoption rather than diffusion and think about professional bass traps like GIK offers. As GIK offers free advice and is located in MY TOWN, i guess i'll contact them and see what will happen.

Before contacting them I might rearrange my room first, as I'm firing down the narrow side instead of the long way yet. Could change it this way to fire the long way: put my desk in front of the window, so that there will be space in between where i might put my monitors on stands. I haven't found out if it's okay to have them on my desk or if it would be worth it to get stands.

One thing: should i get an omnidirectional mic for measurements or is it somehow conceivable to use my rode nt3? (I ask despite suspecting a big NO, not possible). Or will the advice from GIK be enough and I'll install what they tell me and that's that? I plan to move this winter, so maybe I gonna buy real basic stuff at first, that will be 100% usable in a new room. And after moving I'll see what I can add then. Like my budged now is about 500€.

Is this a plan, or have I missed something? Oh my, that's a lot of things to think of when trying to get my BEDROOM sounding better xD. I'll add a sketch of my room, wait...


...here you go:

Image

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:06 pm
by Mattias
Ok a quickie: Download REW and buy a cheap skate Behringer ECM8000 or similar and start measuring your room. Move your stuff around and keep measuring to see where the best result seem to be. You're looking at reverberation time and how well a smoothed out curve confirms to "flat"-ness (no room is ever truly flat but what is close enough). Look into acoustic panels. You'll always need a lot. Cover all first reflection points / back wall / front wall / corners / other areas of the room where issues might occur (test with filtered pink noise and walk around the room / do more measurements etc etc) and not necessarily in that order. It's tricky since you really gotta cover it all at the same time I guess. There are no real "best to start here" options.

You're right about diffusion, go the absorption route instead. Contact GIK since they're in your town for sure. I'm happy with their stuff and I spent about £9500 on it.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:43 pm
by Root
Great, thanks. Ordered Superlux ECM999 as it seems the same like the ECM8000 but nearly half the price. I'll go one small step after another and improve things a little from time to time and when I have the money. The only thing is that I for sure won't be able to pave my walls with acoustic panels, as I'm living in this room, too and it's my only room in a shared flat. So I'll maybe go for something like two acoustic panels and two basstraps and that's it for the beginning. Can't afford more and don't have the room. I'll see what GIK will tell me and then try and measure what setting will be the best..

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:13 pm
by Root
Okay, now i've rearranged my room and measurements tell me I achieved some improvement.. Got the answer from GIK, and damn, they tell me I have major problems and without spending a lot of money I won't be happy. Seems like they have a very pro apporach, even to homestudios. I shall start with at least four tritrap basstraps. Don't know if I want to fill my room up with acoustic panels and traps when I'm living there, too. Hard decisions to make. Maybe I'll try to learn my headphones better and start to intensify comparing headphone-monitor while mixing.

And maybe I'll have to be more creative, like changing my thin curtains into absorbing ones.. One small step after another^^

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 8:40 pm
by Root
What you think about correction Software like ik arc2.5 or sonarworks? I'm at a point where i'm gonna treat my room a little and try to find the best position through measuring. In the end it won't be perfect and maybe such a software will ad some percent?

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:07 pm
by Mattias
ARC is the IK Multimedia one isn't IT? That is shit. You want at least Sonarwork / Dirac Live / Acourate and only after you added as much treatment as you can.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:05 am
by terryfalafel
Read the John l Sayers forum. In a small room, start with superchunks at the front and preferably at the back.

Don't deal with the mid and high frequencies (easier) until you've got the lows under control (much harder)

In short : get an account on here and start reading...

https://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 1:46 pm
by Root
Looks like a nice forum there. I'm reading for some weeks now and gonna read more, for sure. Things getting clearer and I start to get an idea of how my room is working. So after having a chat with my trusted local music shop and after writing some mails with GIK I tend to implement the following steps:
- rearranging my room (done)
- Getting monitor stands to be able to move my monitors around and measure where the best spot is. Seems like I have to bring them up a bit to have a nice downwards ankle. I had my monitors on mic stands and simulated this and suddenly my mids and highs were way better than before. This has to do with my floor, my couch and my courtains.. (stands are on their way)
- getting a better curain than the very thin ikea one yet, it seems there are some that absorb from 250hz on (still researching)
- adding two to four basstraps in corners (gik tritraps)

and then... there might be the chance to get it a bit better with such a correction software. sonarworks just released a new version and looks very easy to handle. It's sole made for roomcorrection, nothing else. So i might give the demo a try..


Thanks all for the help! Treating your room seems to be a long way, but it's fun, too. At least to me, some people around me think I'm crazy xD

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:42 pm
by Mattias
Root wrote: At least to me, some people around me think I'm crazy xD
This is a good sign, welcome to the dark side.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:26 pm
by dubdub
£9500 jesus christ! Is there even any point getting into this with no budget? :D

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 3:32 pm
by Root
£9500? Where?

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 4:39 pm
by Hades
dubdub wrote:£9500 jesus christ! Is there even any point getting into this with no budget? :D
generally speaking, how are your cock sucking skills ?

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 6:04 pm
by Lost to the Void
dubdub wrote:£9500 jesus christ! Is there even any point getting into this with no budget? :D

Well that's the thing when trying to treat a non purpose built room. You are essentially working backwards and against the architecture. At some point you have to accept that you will have no choice but to compromise between space, cost and actual results/diminishing returns.
You don't need to be spending 10 grand on a room to get decent, tangible improvements, when you are based around nearfields running at reasonable volumes.
I would say your average home studio will get the most noticeable results from the first 1-3 grand wisely spent. After that you are paying a lot of money on ever smaller incremental changes.
I've had a lot of studios over time,, in my opinion once you start looking at buying over 5 grand of pro treatment panels etc you are actually better off spending your money getting in a builder and making structural changes to the room, getting the tuning built in, full inner wall panels and so on,, because otherwise you are chasing your own tail for results that will never be perfect, and filling up all your space with sound treatment, getting a builder\chippy in might actually end up not only more effective, but cheaper.
Also at that level, getting better monitors is as important as treatment. No point blapping out 10 grand of treatment when you are using £1200 monitors or whatever.

It cost me roughly 15 grand to build my mastering room, full room within a room construction, absorption built in, acoustic plaster finish, resonator panels built in, floating floor.... (The space was already a room in the loft, so heavy work like floor reinforcement etc was done already, and I know an acoustician who I only needed to pay mates rates to (booze and weed) for the design consultation and specs to give the builder, who I worked with to save costs)
It's as acoustically perfect as I have ever had, comparable to other mastering rooms I've been in.
Seems like a lot , but to get the same results from somewhere like GIK you would probably be looking at an absolute fortune, and would probably lose a shit ton of studio space to all the crap hanging on the walls and the ceiling. If I wanted to treat the space as it was just by buying panels, absorbers, defusers and so on, it would have cost around 18 grand, I would have lost about a 3rd of the space in the room, and it wouldn't have anywhere near the performance, and it would not have looked as nice.
Fine tuning of my room with limp membrane panels (adjusting for the changes putting in speakers and furniture made) was a mere 400 quid.

So....... it's worth doing basic treatment, to a good level, it will help loads.

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 8:32 am
by Adam
Lost to the Void wrote: So....... it's worth doing basic treatment, to a good level, it will help loads.
Thanks a lot for that post!

I'm in the situation where I've spent around 1.500€ (or more) on acoustic treatment, and I'm considering to invest more. My room isn't ideal (as are most). 2,50m width, 5,56m length and 3,25m height. I've tested several listening and speaker positions with REW measurements and finally found a good solution in my room. I'm working on a pair of Neumann KH120 with KH805 subwoofer. I know, a sub in a 14qm room is challenging, but I have much more possible speaker setups with this combination.

I've treated my room with:
- absorbers on the first reflection points (mixed: EQ Acoustics 50L and Vicoustics Wavewoods on the sidewalls, EQ Acoustics Cloud 25L on the ceiling
- two big bass traps (50x50x115cm) by Browne Acoustics and two GIK Tri traps on one side
- two EQ Acoustics corner bass traps on the other side
- two Basotect DIY absorbers against the flutter echoes behind my listening position

Obviously, my biggest problems are in the bass range. So, I'm thinking about to buy another two big bass traps by Browne. They had the most impact on the reverberation time in the bass range after I installed them. And maybe switch my Vicoustics Wavewoods with larger absorbers like the GIK Monsters.

Here are my latest measurements and a sketch of my room: https://imgur.com/a/MVE06

What do you think? Is it worth to invest more in acoustics treatment in my room? And how good (or bad) is it already?

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 8:35 am
by over9000
thanks for reviving this thread!
ive been thinking and reading about this recently, as i moved to a new house, where i can setup my sound stuff in the cellar, which is quite big (like 20 squaremeters, 2.40 meters high).

I know that alot of you here are pros and need a room that is isolated very good.
i guess i would be happy with making some basstraps myself for a start. i can get all the material from work for free, so its not really an effort.
atleast trying this first, then spending 1 grand on professional products.

now my question is, does anyone of you has experience of making basstraps from the more modern styropor isolation material ? i could do it with rockwool ofc, but i also have some of these 45cm thick isolation branches laying around and was wondering on how good they would absorb bass.
For temprature isolation purposes they work certainly better then rockwool/glasswool, but i dont know what the properties of a material need to be to absorb sound waves ?

Re: Acoustic Treatment Help ?

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 11:10 am
by Mattias
dubdub wrote:£9500 jesus christ! Is there even any point getting into this with no budget? :D
It's not really a lot in the big whole. I visited post production and mastering facilities as well as spoke to acousticians when I had to move my room and
it was roughly around that cost everyone had to spend, take or give a few. Some could spend less in rooms that were ideally built from start, obviously.
I would probably have gotten away with a little less if I could tear down my back wall and expend it 1meter but due to circumstances it's still on a hold.

Originally my acoustician and Real traps worked out a nice batch that ended up costing roughly £10000 but the shipping and customs was too expensive at the time so I had to resort to second best option.

For some reason a room is never done though so there's always improvements to do and build upon.