How I built my bass traps...

[Scott@RealTraps]

Originally Posted by neon

Hi!
Ok so beside burlap which other fabric is good to cover the OC panels? I mean any fabric that is good and looks good and that you can buy at Joann fabrics for example,

Seriously . . . as others have said, if you can blow through it with *very* little or no resistance, you're good. The main thing that matters here is not to impede the gas flow into the glass/mineral fiber. It isn't so incredibly critical that you are likely to screw something up as long as you have good air flow through the fabric. Simple.

[Cojo]

Originally Posted by A27Hull

Mine aren't as pretty as Cojo' or the rest' but here they are.

Oh yes they are, don't be so modest!

[Scott@RealTraps]

Originally Posted by myfipie

I am sure if you nailed a full can of spray glue on the front it may hurt it, but a little bit will not and I would think that is all it would take.. But if nothing else the sewed idea is not to bad.

Glenn, I'm going for clarity here. Do you *really* want to try to explain to these maniacs *exactly* how much of any particular type of glue people might happen to pick up is going to be too much? Not me, man . . . I'd rather make a reasonably sound *general* recommendation that doesn't end up with somebody using too much glue and/or the wrong kind of glue, and diminishing the performance of their traps! ;-)

Dude . . . we've got people here sawing concrete blocks in half . . . BY HAND, fer f**k's sake!

;-)

[neon]

Originally Posted by Scott@RealTraps

Seriously . . . as others have said, if you can blow through it with *very* little or no resistance, you're good. The main thing that matters here is not to impede the gas flow into the glass/mineral fiber. It isn't so incredibly critical that you are likely to screw something up as long as you have good air flow through the fabric. Simple.

That is interesting! I saw a Ready Acoustic bag from a friend,,I did the "blowing Through test" and really that suede polyester fabric feels nice , is thick and did not let pass air...I blowed like crazy and only could feel a very tiney air going through ..in a very weak way...with my lips so close from the fabric.
So according to that test that fabric should not be good! but they sell that and suppose to be good.....even Michael Wagener have them.

[Sensater]

Originally Posted by Scott@RealTraps

Glenn, I'm going for clarity here. Do you want to try to explain to these maniacs *exactly* how much of any particular type of glue people might happen to pick up is going to be too much? Not me, man . . . I'd rather make a reasonably sound *general* recommendation that doesn't end up with somebody using too much glue and diminishing the performance of their traps! ;-)

Dude . . . we've got people here sawing concrete blocks in half . . . BY HAND, fer f**k's sake!

;-)

I mentioned glue b/c I wanted to get the fabric tight, with no wrinkles. If glue, I was thinking only a little of the 3M spray adhesive, on the back, around the edges. I think the sewing idea will do the job and I can avoid the spray adhesive.

Cheers,
-S

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Scott@RealTraps

Glenn, I'm going for clarity here. Do you *really* want to try to explain to these maniacs *exactly* how much of any particular type of glue people might happen to pick up is going to be too much? Not me, man . . . I'd rather make a reasonably sound *general* recommendation that doesn't end up with somebody using too much glue and/or the wrong kind of glue, and diminishing the performance of their traps! ;-)

Dude . . . we've got people here sawing concrete blocks in half . . . BY HAND, fer f**k's sake!

;-)

he he he, thats it I am going to start a forum to only slam you!!

OK OK we will stick with the "general" recommendation. NO GLUE

BTW Scott sorry we could not take you to Europe with us. Dan from the Woggles went instead. Maybe next time if our "real" drummer can still not get his passport.

Glenn

[A27Hull]

Originally Posted by neon

That is interesting! I saw a Ready Acoustic bag from a friend,,I did the "blowing Through test" and really that suede polyester fabric feels nice , is thick and did not let pass air...I blowed like crazy and only could feel a very tiney air going through ..in a very weak way...with my lips so close from the fabric.
So according to that test that fabric should not be good! but they sell that and suppose to be good.....even Michael Wagener have them.

the 'looser' the weave, the easier high and mid frequencies will pass through.

I've no experience with the bag you speak of, but perhaps its not meant as high/mid absorber fabric.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by neon

Anybody have an opinion about Ready Acoustics company.

Yes, but due to Gearslutz rules it's not appropriate for me to explain more here. If you care to email me from the Contact page of my web site (click under my name below), I have a link I'm sure you'll find very interesting. The same offer is for anyone else who'd like to know more - just send me an email.

--Ethan

[fcorl]

I have a quick question about the "cloud" over my drum set. After all of the corner traps and wall treatment are finished I need to build a ceiling cloud for the drum kit. I have limited "headroom". It is less than 8ft. now (after the floated floor and ceiling). I can build the nice, big wood framed, insulation filled deal, but by the time I hang a four inch thick absorber 2 inches from the ceiling, I will have little room to get the overheads in between the ceiling and the cymbals. Will good foam work here? I need an honest answer. I know the experts are not a fan of foam, but I will have quite a bit of Auralex foam left after I replace it with the homemade treatment. The foam will be a huge space saver as well as easy to hang.

Edit: Another option is to just wrap some 1" or 2" 703 in burlap and attach it to the ceiling without airspace????

Frank

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by fcorl

I have a quick question about the "cloud" over my drum set. After all of the corner traps and wall treatment are finished I need to build a ceiling cloud for the drum kit. I have limited "headroom". It is less than 8ft. now (after the floated floor and ceiling). I can build the nice, big wood framed, insulation filled deal, but by the time I hang a four inch thick absorber 2 inches from the ceiling, I will have little room to get the overheads in between the ceiling and the cymbals. Will good foam work here? I need an honest answer. I know the experts are not a fan of foam, but I will have quite a bit of Auralex foam left after I replace it with the homemade treatment. The foam will be a huge space saver as well as easy to hang.

Edit: Another option is to just wrap some 1" or 2" 703 in burlap and attach it to the ceiling without airspace????

Frank

I am going to give you my honest thoughts on this. NOOOOOOOOO! he he he.. all kidding aside you would be best to use 2" panels spaced 2" off the ceiling. That would be 4" total and that is the thickness you would want to use for foam anyway and the fiberglass will work better over all.

Glenn

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by myfipie

the fiberglass will work better over all.

Well sure, but he already has the foam...

Many types of foam have a sculpted front, which reduces the overall absorption. But if you put two pieces face to face it will work better.

--Ethan

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Well sure, but he already has the foam...

Many types of foam have a sculpted front, which reduces the overall absorption. But if you put two pieces face to face it will work better.

--Ethan

I totally read over the part about him already having the stuff. YES USE IT!

thanks Ethan!!

Glenn

[fcorl]

<quote> I totally read over the part about him already having the stuff. YES USE IT!

thanks Ethan!!

Glenn
</quote>

<quote>Well sure, but he already has the foam...

Many types of foam have a sculpted front, which reduces the overall absorption. But if you put two pieces face to face it will work better.

--Ethan</quote>

I know the 2" with a 2" air space is best. Ok.... ;), between the two (I have both) "sandwiched foam" attached directly to the ceiling or 2" 703/burlap attached to the ceiling.....? Space is such an issue.... I'm worried that with the extra two inches the overheads may be too close to the kit. I will experiment of course...... and if I can afford the 2" space in the end, I will use 703 panels and leave the space.


If the treatment without the 2" space is worthless, then I guess I will lower (it's about as low as it goes) the drum kit.... This is my home studio, so I don't have to worry about a 6'4" drummer coming in with his seat hight like Alex Van Halen.

Thanks, Frank

[A27Hull]

Use the foam if you have it, but if you want a little more...

Go for rockwool / mineralwool / 705

Here's a cloud that is rockwool covered in polyfil (furniture poly '"cotton" fill), wrapped width wise on with simple utility wire, covered in fabric, then fastened to the ceiling.

[pan60]

have you thought about lowering the floor a bit?

[fcorl]

Originally Posted by pan60

have you thought about lowering the floor a bit?

hahaha, right..... It's only 2".....

[Scott@RealTraps]

I have a sort of drum booth/gobo-type thing built in my place (used to be a loft bed, now it's basically a storage loft that I hiked up 8 feet -- I'm in a loft apartment with 13 foot ceilings). I put my drums under this, and I've basically got my entire drum kit surrounded with MiniTraps (on three sides and the "ceiling", with one end open).

I've got about 3-4 inches of space between the ceiling of the booth/gobo and the backs of the MiniTraps -- I've got plenty of room for overheads. Would I like more room? Sure . . . but it actually sounds very nice in there . . . cymbals sound great too!

Part of the idea is that you want to try to get the ceiling to acoustically "disappear" as much as possible.

If you are using cardiod mics as overheads, you should be OK having the mics up fairly close to the traps (especially if you aren't using panels with FRK or some kind of membrane across the front).

One boneheaded mistake I made recently was to leave one of my overhead mics in the figure of 8 setting. Given the fact that the MiniTraps I have above the drums are the standard MiniTraps with the membrane, I ended up getting a large amount of HF reflection into the rear of the fig 8 mic I had setup as the OH on the right side . . . so on that track I hear the hihat equally in the left AND right overheads. DOH!!!! But I digress . . . .

If you are using 4-inch panels with a couple of inches gap from the ceiling, you should be in pretty good shape, I would think, and *should* have enough room for the overheads. As an aside, and part of the reason I related the story above, if you have a fair amount of balanced absorption around and above your drums, I think you will find significantly less problem with that funny phasing thing you can sometimes end up with when you record cymbals . . . this can give you a bit more flexibility with the placement and distances of your overheads.

You may need to position them so they are picking the cymbals up a little more off-axis (among other things to avoid some of the wah-wah type effect you get from cymbals moving back and forth on the stands).

I guess some of the benefits of this may depend on the tonal qualities of your cymbals as well. I tend to use darker sounding Istanbul and Sabian hand hammered cymbals, and I like being able to get a nice clear sound out of the lower overtones of the cymbals. But having the thicker traps up above will also help deal with some with room modes related to the height dimension of the room.

If you still feel the 4-inch panels will not give you as much room for the overheads as you will need, at least get SOMETHING up there to deal with the highs and mids.

Foam is not bad and not "wrong" (though cheap foam is often not the right stuff to use), as long as it's proper acoustic foam. (I'll also second what Ethan said about the sculpted foam). But my gut feeling with this is that, if you have to use thinner panels it might be better to use the fiberglass panels. Leave a gap if you can, and if you can't leave a gap I would think even a 2" thick 703 or 705 panel flush against the ceiling will help.

Do what you can, and balance out the rest.

Maybe try it with the 4" panels first, and if it doesn't work for you, then go with the 2" panels.

[matucha]

I'm continuing with my poly-panels... I "wanted" to make central-one with semi absorbtive area where I have 1st reflections of the monitors, so I drilled/sawed the wholes. It is not finished... need to fill it with rockwool and put some fabric on the back side of the holes.

[Cojo]

Originally Posted by matucha

I'm continuing with my poly-panels... I "wanted" to make central-one with semi absorbtive area where I have 1st reflections of the monitors, so I drilled/sawed the wholes. It is not finished... need to fill it with rockwool and put some fabric on the back side of the holes.

Those looking really nice! I like the design. Are they for a certain frequency only?

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by matucha

I'm continuing with my poly-panels... I "wanted" to make central-one with semi absorbtive area where I have 1st reflections of the monitors, so I drilled/sawed the wholes. It is not finished... need to fill it with rockwool and put some fabric on the back side of the holes.

I would use these in the back of the room if you are a good 6 to 8 feet from them. For the 1st reflections you are better to absorb as much as you can.

Glenn

[Ibvee]

Originally Posted by dim light

Those look pro man - Can you please add more picture how you build them? I like to know how you manage to keep the panel bent like that. Do you make like a long notch that holds the panel?

Awesome stuff - I need to learn this.

Well Scott, lets wait another 12 hours, and we get to see Dim's new panels!!
Looking forward to it Dim!

[matucha]

Well it is nothing special at all. I also made it a bit more sturdy than it is needed, because I wanted to use plywood instead of this Sololit. But plywood was almost impossible to fit in and I was afraid if I fit it in it may "explode" one day... So if you want to copy my design, you should think about making it lighter.

How did I got the bend curve? Well I've fit the sololit plate in between the studs and draw the curve to the bottom bulkhead that was not cut yet. When I've got this curve, I've took saw and saw it off. So this is how I got form for other bulkheads.
I did my first (2 out of 3 - this is nr 3) using arc done with piece of rope and pencil ;-), but I wouldn't recommend that, it is less effective acousticaly and it is against natural curve that plate does when you squeeze it. So I had some hard time forcing it into circle and it isn't perfect. But since I went that way I had to do other one because of symetry. This third is much better ;-).


I didn't tune it nor calculate the frequencies. I just followed what is written in the everests book about these. There are some graphs of the measurement of some polys and I took it as... if I make something similar in the dimensions and construction I'd be near that. All I wanted was diffusion, bass absorbtion and a bit of "near" broadband absorbtion in part of the central piece. After some thinking I decided to go with this old idea of perforation. What I know, when perforation goes over ~20%, it isn't behaving too much like a helmhotz resonator, but more like wideband with less high-end attentuation. Ideally I'd place only fabric there, but it would be almost impossible to shape it like this, so... so I thought maybe some wire mesh or alike could do it, but it was not cheap at all, so I took a drill and made the perforation myself ;-).

[matucha]

Originally Posted by myfipie

I would use these in the back of the room if you are a good 6 to 8 feet from them. For the 1st reflections you are better to absorb as much as you can.

Glenn

I'm like 2.5m (~7') away from them. The perforated part should absorb (at least part of) the 1st reflection.

BTW now I'd make plain old flat 100% absorbtive panels for the front wall, but it is too late ;-). This was 1000% more work than flat-fabric ones and who knows how effective they ar going to be. I wanted my room to be live so I wanted more diffusion than absorbtion. Also I'm aware of that I'm doing pseudo-acoustics that is just another way of placing egg-boxes on every surface in the room ;-).

this was the idea:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/attac...dio_bcn_03.jpg

[matucha]

studioshots... nah... at this moment I'd rather wait until I get it at leat partly done

[matucha]

More like building a one room studio in the flat mostly for my projects, but also for some comercial stuff such as voiceovers, post-pro, mid-end mastering, some small tracking... you know what comes along ;-).

However I found out, that I can't leave the holes like this, because when i put it at the place it performs worse than the rockwool even when it is bent (ie diffusing). So I've been shoping for some fabric to cover this plate (2 layers, one thick for absorbtion, other "nice" for finish). I'm really sad I'm loosing the holes, but sound comes first and preliminary tests with the fabric are satisfying.

[matucha]

I'm not measuring anything it is an ear check only ;-).

Speaker position... that's a touchy one, I was able to find a good spot for bass and I don't want to move them now ;-), so covering holes isn't a big deal.
It was better further away from the sweetspot, but still worse than plain rockwool (myfipie was right on that).

I don't have a console (and don't plan any), but I'm going to build desk for the "technology" and I'm counting with some inclination that will geometricaly avoid reflections. Hopefully. But I have to admit, that reflections that I get off the desk are not very audible, I've placed some things at those spots, that break them a bit and it is ok.

I might have the same things as you have... rhodes, upright piano and philicorda organ occupying back of the room. Above it I'm going to put shelves for a lot of garbage I need to place somewhere and I hope it is going to serve as a diffuser.


There are no deadlines as school is creeping on me again and it will put all the "unnecessary activities" on hold in a short time again.