Acoustic Treatment help please

[poseidonmusic]

Hi guys

Im a bit clueless when it comes to acoustics, but one thing that I do know is... my rooms sound bad.

I've got two rooms: a control room and a live room. Both are the same dimensions- 4m wide, 5m long and 2.5m high.

The walls are made of 3 layers of plasterboard. Im monitoring on some mackie 824s and at the moment both rooms sound like ass. Really muddy and way too live.

Ive been reading the thread by Cojo called 'how I built my bass traps' and Im going to attempt a similar thing. I'd really appreciate some advice on how many traps I might need to tame each room. Id like the control room to be nice and dry, and the live room to sound less muddy, but without sucking away all the ambience so that I can get some ok drum sounds.

Any ideas? Thanks - Tom.

[Ethan Winer]

Tom,

Im a bit clueless when it comes to acoustics

Start here:

www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

I'd really appreciate some advice on how many traps I might need to tame each room.

See this page on my company's web site:

http://www.realtraps.com/placing_mt.htm

Even though the information is meant for customers of our products, all of the advice applies to DIY projects too. In fact, there's a huge amount of technical info on our site I'm sure you'll find useful. Magazine articles, educational videos, and more.

--Ethan

[poseidonmusic]

Thanks alot for your help, reading that article has given me a lot of information to work with and has helped a lot! do you know anywhere where i can download sine wave mp3's to play through my system so i can seek out the problem frequencies and where they occur in my studio so i get a better idea of how to treat it. thanks again
tom

[A27Hull]

If you are using a DAW, it might have a tone generator built in somewhere..

[Ethan Winer]

Tom,

do you know anywhere where i can download sine wave mp3's to play through my system so i can seek out the problem frequencies and where they occur in my studio so i get a better idea of how to treat it.

You can get sine waves for this on my company's site too:

http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

Understand that raw response is only half the story. Low frequency ringing and flutter echo are important too. See this for more about ringing:

http://www.realtraps.com/art_etf.htm

But regardless of what you might measure, the solution is exactly the same. All rooms need:

* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps straddling as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.

* Some additional amount of mid/high absorption and/or diffusion on any large areas of bare parallel surfaces, such as opposing walls or the ceiling if the floor is reflective.

--Ethan

[poseidonmusic]

Ethan, again thanks for your help. i read all the information on your website, this helped alot as to where to position all the traps, i worked out last night that in the control room i am going to have a total of 19 panels 6 bass traps around the room and the rest mid/high frequnecies positioned in a simlar way as to your website. i have taped on the wall the sizes and where they will be, after they are built the surface area covered by absorption is quite significant, i was wondering also, would it be usefull to put a diffusor on the ceiling about mid way in the room inbetween my lights to spread the reflections coming from the ceiling? and also would it be best to put a diffusor on the back wall. thanks again for your help
tom

[Ethan Winer]

Tom,

would it be usefull to put a diffusor on the ceiling about mid way in the room inbetween my lights to spread the reflections coming from the ceiling? and also would it be best to put a diffusor on the back wall.

Good diffusors need to be at least 6 feet or farther from your ears. I'm not a fan of diffusion at nearby reflection points. Absorption works much better there. Diffusion can be useful on the wall behind you if it's far enough away. It depends mainly on how far away, and how good the diffusors are. Those inexpensive thin plastic thingies can be closer, but they don't work well to a low enough frequency to be very useful IMO.

--Ethan