Opinion on acoustic treatment

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

So my studio just made one year old!! This first year was great, specially because i made everything ( construction, treatment, choosing equipment, tracking, mixing, etc) by myself, wich gave me a lot of experience in areas I didn´t have when i worked somewere else. I had a lot of bands and overall I´m pretty satisfied with the results, considering my possibilities so far.

Now i want to move on forward. So I want to start with what i find the most important, the acoustics.

My rooms only have auralex treatment, not a real acoustic work intervention. Although the rooms don´t sound bad at all, i find my monitor room to be too boomy. I have some modes around 35 70 140 etc. This means that sometimes I am not sure what i´m cutting or boosting. It also makes mixing hard and slow. The room were I track is too livish and sometimes i have to eq too much.

So i asked solutions and prices to 2,3 different companies. One from Phil Newell. They both suggested the same solutions, only the price was different!! The most affordable one is asking $ 6500 for a ceiling bass trap of 25 m2, 4 corner bass traps and a big diffusior wood wall of about 12 m2 - for the monitor room, and 16 diffusors and some absortion material for the other room. Maybe this can´t be answered but I have no idea if this is an acceptable price or if I should do it myself. What do you think?? I could buy so much nice gear with this money but I really feel that acoustics will make a bigger difference in the end.

Thanks

Ed

[Glenn Kuras]

>Now i want to move on forward. So I want to start with what i find the most important, the acoustics. <

Good to hear.. Or should I say, now you will be able to hear.

>My rooms only have auralex treatment, not a real acoustic work intervention. Although the rooms don´t sound bad at all, i find my monitor room to be too boomy. I have some modes around 35 70 140 etc. This means that sometimes I am not sure what i´m cutting or boosting. It also makes mixing hard and slow. The room were I track is too livish and sometimes i have to eq too much. <

Very commen to have this problem. The best way to deal with it is as much bass trapping as you can get into the room. 4", 6" ridged fiberglass panels or Super chunks in corners of the room is the way to go. I would start with front corners then move to the back.

>So i asked solutions and prices to 2,3 different companies. One from Phil Newell. They both suggested the same solutions, only the price was different!! The most affordable one is asking $ 6500 for a ceiling bass trap of 25 m2, 4 corner bass traps and a big diffusior wood wall of about 12 m2 - for the monitor room, and 16 diffusors and some absortion material for the other room. Maybe this can´t be answered but I have no idea if this is an acceptable price or if I should do it myself. What do you think?? I could buy so much nice gear with this money but I really feel that acoustics will make a bigger difference in the end.<

$6500.00????? wow not to pimp our company but I can save you THOUSANDS of dollars and that is with a finished product and we can help you with placement of product.

Glenn

[Ethan Winer]

Ed,

> So i asked solutions and prices to 2,3 different companies. <

If you're on a tight budget and have the means to do it yourself, see my Acoustics FAQ:

www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Also follow the link to my company's site under my name below. There's a huge amount of information there - articles, videos, measuring tools you can download - regardless of whether you plan to buy treatment or make your own.

--Ethan

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

Thanks. Well I didn´t know how much reasonable was...But the thing is, I don´t want to buy more auralex or similar stuff. First because i already have plenty of that and secound because that is not going to help with frequencies under 200 or so. I need to treat 70 Hz! This means a huge bass trap with. I have that amount of space in the ceiling and back wall.

Ethan, i already know your site and learned a lot from it. I made all my room measures using your tools and program. But tell me, do you think it´s possible to treat 2 rooms and make them sound good buying foam? Also would all the stuff i need, plus shipping and costumes from the Us to Europe cost far less than $6000?

This company will make all this with specialized people and a pair of enginneers with a lot of experience building HIgh.end studios all over the country and in UK. I´m not saying that they are cheap, by the contrary, I has expecting a cheaper price. I´m just looking for some feedback from people who know more than I do in this area and trying to realise if this is a good option.

Thanks

Ed

[Ethan Winer]

Ed,

> I need to treat 70 Hz! This means a huge bass trap <

Better is a number of smaller bass traps. This way you can spread the absorption around the room. That gives much better results than having one huge trap in only one place.

> do you think it´s possible to treat 2 rooms and make them sound good buying foam? <

If you read our site you'll know that we do not use or recommend foam.

> Also would all the stuff i need, plus shipping and costumes from the Us to Europe cost far less than $6000? <

Without knowing the size and shape of your rooms it's impossible for me to say exactly what you need. Likewise, "sounds good" can vary a lot too. In my experience treating a room is more like a curve, with "this sucks" at one end and "friggin' amazing!" at the other.

If you'd like me to quote on a proposed treatment plan, email me from the Contact page of our site, and be sure to tell me the size of your control room. If you can include some photos, all the better.

--Ethan

[bpape]

$6500 does seem like a lot - even for the large amount of square footage that is being quoted.

There are lots of DIY and pre-made solutions that can be had for a lot less than that.

I'd agree with Ethan to a point that you'll want to spread the absorbtion around a bit.

Bryan

[jayfrigo]

Originally Posted by bpape

$6500 does seem like a lot - even for the large amount of square footage that is being quoted.

That doesn't sound like a lot to me. Depending on what exactly they are building and out of what materials, for custom construction, design expertise, and installation on that scale, it sounds like a really good deal to me. You can easily spend $8k on just an average wood diffusor from RPG for the back of a control room, shipping and installation not included. You can certainly buy off-the-shelf parts and put them up yourself to save money and generally improve the acoustics, but it really depends on what exactly you want to accomplish and how you want it to look. If they're building quality, custom wood diffusors, it's a whole other ballgame from molded plastic ones you can order online. I'd need to know more specifics to say for sure, but that figure is not out of hand at all if it's the kind of work I think it is.

[AlexLakis]

You could probably do it yourself for under $1000. I'd recommend reading Ethan's site again, and looking thru the forum linked on his site. I treated nearly every square inch of my studio for under $600. The difference in sound quality is astounding. Took me about a week (around 28 hours of real labor.) One of the best investments I've ever made.

What are they giving you for $6500?? Acoustic panels stuffed with Rick Rubin's beard trimmings?

[bpape]

Quality diffusors can certainly be expensive. But they don't need to be. As far as design, sounds to me like that's not included in the $6500 as they've already told him what he'd need.

Bryan

[edham]

Ed,

I can tell you that my recent purchase of Ethans traps (realtraps) was super effective and by far the best money I have spent on my studio in years.
They were worth every penny. ( I am I am a cheap SOB)

The best thing about them was that they are designed not to suck the high end out of your room. Low end problems resolved and I don't feel the need to run out and buy a batch of diffusers which is how I always felt after building my own 703 type traps.

Unless your $6500 guy is going to do amazing woodwork that will make them look better than top of the line RPG stuff - you may want to look elswhere for an effective and cheaper solution.

[Scott R. Foster]

Ed:

If you start buying pretty hardwood factory made diffusers you can blow through $6,500 pretty quick... quick enough you would never get to absorptive treatment. So I couldn't say the deal offered was not a reasonable one without a lot more information.

That said, you could buy about about 50 Ready Acoustics RT424 4" bass traps [including shipping to Europe] for that price and have enough change left over to build miles of polycylindrical diffusers. If you used DIY acoustic bags AND built your own polys, you could save thousands of $.

Godd Luck!

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

Thank you all for your posts. Ethan, I will send you a PM as soon as I have the description on everything that this company is purposing.

My room 1 is 4.7 m x 5.2 m ( almost cubic!) and 3.3 meters high
Room 2 is 4 m x 7 m and 2.8 meters high

The price given (around $6000) includes:

for room 1 ( monitor room):

1 large wood diffusor 4 x 3 = 12 m2 or 36 sq feet
1 rising ceiling bass trap ( this costs 2000!) the whole ceiling =25 m2 or 74sqfeet
4 bass traps ( not auralex type), for corners. Built to fit space.

for room 2 ( tracking room)

16 wood diffusors ( about 40 cm wide and 2.8 meters high)
Absorvent material ( I think rockwool or something like it) and other material to treat 4 strange arcs I have in my ceiling

Includes hand work and tax.

I will post some pics of both rooms. Thanks for your help. I really can´t tell if this guys are offering me a good deal or not...It would look great though...

Thanks again

Ed

[Ethan Winer]

Ed,

> My room 1 is 4.7 m x 5.2 m ( almost cubic!) and 3.3 meters high. Room 2 is 4 m x 7 m and 2.8 meters high <

For rooms like that you need bass trapping much more than you need diffusors! Diffusion is nice and all, but it's more like the icing on the cake. Bass trapping and first reflection absorption are far more important.

> I will send you a PM as soon as I have the description on everything that this company is purposing. <

Easier (for me) is if you email me through my company's site. I visit here only once or twice per day, but I check my email constantly. I'll be glad to work up a proposal that I'm certain will be more appropriate for rooms the size of yours.

--Ethan

[Ethan Winer]

Karl,

> import duties can double the retail cost of items <

I guess it depends on the cost of the items. For our traps, shipping to Europe by air adds more like 25 percent. Which is only about twice what it costs to ship by FedEx Ground from our factory in Connecticut to California. Boat shipping can be even less, but it's not practical for typical size orders. There is duty though.

--Ethan

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

I asked Phil Newell also how much it would cost me to treat both rooms. His company (reflexion arts) is not that far away from Lisbon (4/5 hours driving). He charges 6000 euros only for the project with his name on it and all the work and material needed has to be added on to this price, I guess it won´t be for my first studio.

Ethan, room1, as you said, is all about bass trapping. The guy purposed only 1 diffusor. All the ceiling will be a huge bass trap(75sq feet) together with 4 corner bass traps (around 4 feet each) handbuilt to fit my space, so his purposal actually makes sense.
Anyway, thank you all for your help and input here.

Thanks

Ed

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Dog_Chao_Chao

I asked Phil Newell also how much it would cost me to treat both rooms. His company (reflexion arts) is not that far away from Lisbon (4/5 hours driving). He charges 6000 euros only for the project with his name on it and all the work and material needed has to be added on to this price, I guess it won´t be for my first studio.

Ethan, room1, as you said, is all about bass trapping. The guy purposed only 1 diffusor. All the ceiling will be a huge bass trap(75sq feet) together with 4 corner bass traps (around 4 feet each) handbuilt to fit my space, so his purposal actually makes sense.
Anyway, thank you all for your help and input here.

Thanks

Ed

Once it is done post some pictures. I am sure it will look pretty cool and sound great.

Glenn

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

Originally Posted by myfipie

Once it is done post some pictures. I am sure it will look pretty cool and sound great.

Glenn

I will. I´m sure it will look amazing. I just hope it will sound amazing too!