Huge loud room - where to start?

[lehmannmusic]

Hi - I own an arts school and we have recently built a new dance studio. The sound in it is really terrible.

It's 25' X 25' and has 14' ceilings. The ceiling is rough commercial decking and the walls are drywall. The floor is raised and wooden.

In addition to dancing in this room, we watch movies as I've installed a projector. I would also like to try recording in this room as well.

How can I inexpensively reduce the reflections in this room?

[Jules]

Try it first. It might sound amazing..

What type of stuff did you want to record in there?

[lehmannmusic]

Well, even listening to movies is really washy in there. We might want to track drums in there, but I wouldn't mind it sounding better for watching movies and even as a second set of speakers for A/B work.

[mikahanau]

in a huge space like your`s i would start with some basstrapping, and alot of diffusion.

I have not that much experience with big room acoustics, but i belive a nice live room that size ist great for drums.
I would avoid to bring in too much absoption, when i had a place like this.

adrebrito (a member here) is a better man to ask for this.
cheers

[DanDan]

Difficult one, this happens very often. Build it, then think about the purposes for the room. It would require massive amounts of treatment to make it suitable for listening. It may already sound great for recording. The ceiling material sounds interesting, however the practical solution here is probably a hanging ceiling with 50mm or thicker slabs of Fibreglass instead of the normal harder ceiling tiles. RealTraps sell such panels with a white facing.
It would be worth allowing a decent gap, say two or three feet, over such a ceiling and put some layers of fluffy attic insulation in there.
DD

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by lehmannmusic

It's 25' X 25' and has 14' ceilings ... In addition to dancing in this room, we watch movies as I've installed a projector. I would also like to try recording in this room as well. How can I inexpensively reduce the reflections in this room?

Inexpensive? Not possible. It's a large room and thus needs a large amount of treatment. One of my customers is a local dance studio with a room about twice as large as yours. Surprisingly, they use the room for the exact same purposes as you - dancing, live recording, and music and movie playback. They had the same problems as you too until they installed a bunch of our absorber panels. For DIY, the solution is absorption thick enough to work well down to bass frequencies, spread more or less evenly around the room. You will not benefit from diffusion because you need to reduce ambience, not preserve it or make it sound nicer.

--Ethan