Choose one: Diy acoustic treatment or Converter

[brassmoose]

I treated my small room and consider it my best investment. Hellomusic.com has Auralex for cheap. Includes bass traps and regular pads. Perfect for your size room. Monitor pads were huuuge immediate improvement.

[aldaraia]

Auralex is a waste of time and money. Look up how to build acoustic panels, go to the ATS Acoustics website and buy some insulation, go to Home Depot and buy some wood and put em up in your room. Pretty sure I built 3 panels for about $25 total each. Best investment in time and money you can have.

[AgustinZubillaga]

Originally Posted by aldaraia

Auralex is a waste of time and money. Look up how to build acoustic panels, go to the ATS Acoustics website and buy some insulation, go to Home Depot and buy some wood and put em up in your room. Pretty sure I built 3 panels for about $25 total each. Best investment in time and money you can have.

+1

[Lights]

I heard on The Home Recording Show that Lowe's Hardware now sells Roxul Safe'n'Sound for super cheap. ($40 for 12 panels of 4" thik rock wool). They indicated it was good acoustic treatment but it's not clear they really know their acoustics that well so it would be best to check if this stuff is equivalent to OC703 or 705.

If you really can get stuff that cheap, you can probably afford both treatment and a new audio interface!

[retrogradeorbit]

That's an easy one. DIY acoustic treatment. Go the floor to ceiling corner 'super chunk' trap design if you can fit it.

[kasmira]

Acoustic treatment all the way. Safe n Sound does work great if you can find it. Post a thread in the acoustics section...lots of helpful posters in there.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[drycappuccinoguy]

What good are great converters if your room will not let you hear the difference?

[x_25]

Whateveryone else said. I havn't done treatment myself yet, but it is next on the list (when I find some time and get my room sorted out...). I have heard well treated rooms and there is no substitute.

[CPhoenix]

Treatment.... unles you're using a MobilePre or something lol.


Hoenstly... this might not be as cut & dry.. b/c if the Fast Track's converters are the same (or close to) the FireWire410... then an upgrade in the converters might actually be warranted.

[CPhoenix]

Originally Posted by drycappuccinoguy

What good are great converters if your room will not let you hear the difference?

I work in a poor acoustic environment (unfortunately).

I upgraded my converters (by accident actually).. and i noticed a huge difference. It was night & day. My monitors simply re-produced frequencies that my prior converters did not. I was shocked... so much so I thought somethign was broken from me switching interfaces lol.

I agree that treatment is the #1 fix. With me being in a poor acoustic environment.. I have to go SO much back and forth work getting the mix right... however, I can't lie that I still heard a difference.

If treatment is the #1 fix... converters are a close 2nd place.

[Aaron Miller]

treatment!

[AldenW]

Treeeeeeaatmeeeent. And make your own bass traps. Easy and cheap to do, with parts from your local hardware store. As everyone else has said. I used Rockwool for insulation; it's less nasty than fiberglass.

[doulos30]

the converters are already flat form 20hz to 20khz by under 1 db. The frequency response of your room can swing - 30db to +30 db in an untreated room with parallel walls do the math

[TurboJets]

I hate to go against the grain here - well, not really, but upgrade your gear first while you have the cash and while you have the interest. Because upgrading your ADAC is one of the least sexy things you'll do when it comes to popping coin on upgrading your studio. ADAC is out of sight, you can't show it off or fondle it. But your ears will absolutely love it and you'll be very happy with the move. Especially on the DAC side of it all.

Then you can start a plan of attack on your room, maybe a diy project or maybe researching inexpensive panels that are a good investment. And yes, Auralex is overrated IMO.

I understand the argument, and when I first treated my room with ATS panels it was an amazing "in-your-face" difference. People get excited about this of course because the results are so evident and dramatic. And you (and others) can see the difference in your room, it's visually impressive (sexy).

But consider that after you can hear better how inefficient your current interface is, you'll want to upgrade as soon as you can and you won't have the $800+ to do it. Treatment is instant gratification, yes, but in the long run it's quality of capture that will instantly "upgrade" your mic locker and pre's. You'll hear an enhanced quality to all your tools.

[RoadToNever]

Are you a troll?

Anyway, no contest, go for room treatment.

[TurboJets]

Originally Posted by RoadToNever

Are you a troll?

Me?

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by CPhoenix

I work in a poor acoustic environment (unfortunately).

I upgraded my converters (by accident actually).. and i noticed a huge difference. It was night & day. My monitors simply re-produced frequencies that my prior converters did not. I was shocked... so much so I thought somethign was broken from me switching interfaces lol.

I agree that treatment is the #1 fix. With me being in a poor acoustic environment.. I have to go SO much back and forth work getting the mix right... however, I can't lie that I still heard a difference.

If treatment is the #1 fix... converters are a close 2nd place.

Of course you'll hear a difference. If it actually WAS night and day (I think that term is horribly over used and over exaggerated, but there you are), your converters prior to upgrading must have been crap. Because the difference between Apogee/Lynx/192s/Lavry etc is NOT night and day - it's small percentages!

But, hey I'd agree with you. Out of the choice of 2, converters do indeed come 2nd.

Originally Posted by TurboJets

I hate to go against the grain here - well, not really, but upgrade your gear first while you have the cash and while you have the interest. Because upgrading your ADAC is one of the least sexy things you'll do when it comes to popping coin on upgrading your studio. ADAC is out of sight, you can't show it off or fondle it. But your ears will absolutely love it and you'll be very happy with the move. Especially on the DAC side of it all.

If you ask GS, you'll find conversion is a very sexy thing to upgrade. To the point where it's all that newbies seem to want to do - "I have a cheap chinese condenser, I record in a closet and record in a closet, I monitor in an untreated room through $30 computer speakers...I want a more professional sound, what $500 converters should I buy?".

If the room is bad your ears won't love the difference, because they won't hear it. It MIGHT make a difference if you're purely recording and mixing elsewhere. But if you can't hear what you're doing...?

Originally Posted by TurboJets

Then you can start a plan of attack on your room, maybe a diy project or maybe researching inexpensive panels that are a good investment. And yes, Auralex is overrated IMO.

Auralex is fine for the job it's designed for - flutter echoes and lo-mid absorbers. For the bass, you need to build or buy proper bass traps.

Originally Posted by TurboJets

I understand the argument, and when I first treated my room with ATS panels it was an amazing "in-your-face" difference. People get excited about this of course because the results are so evident and dramatic. And you (and others) can see the difference in your room, it's visually impressive (sexy).

I WOULD argue that acoustic treatment is a "night and day" difference (blindfolded, I can tell instantly from listening if a room has been acoustically treated or not - even if I've never been in it before. Can you say the equivalent with conversion?)

Originally Posted by TurboJets

But consider that after you can hear better how inefficient your current interface is, you'll want to upgrade as soon as you can and you won't have the $800+ to do it. Treatment is instant gratification, yes, but in the long run it's quality of capture that will instantly "upgrade" your mic locker and pre's. You'll hear an enhanced quality to all your tools.

Might happen, might not. I still defy anyone to suddenly "hear" their converter isn't cutting it, without A/Bing it against "better" converters, in a good room. I don't know about anyone else, but I never listen to a CD player and bemoan the converters - even with material I'm familiar with. I just don't have a reference point for that system.

[TurboJets]

^^^^^

I hear ya and I'm not necessarily arguing with anyone over this. As I posted above, the difference after you treat your room is definitely "in your face".

Personally, though, I upgraded my conversion first and then treated my room properly with bass traps and quality panels. Doing things in that order worked out for me perfectly well. No big deal. I was just happy I made the "big" investment in conversion first because treating my room was far less expensive and I was smart enough to pop the big coin on better conversion when I had the cash and the inclination. Smartest thing I ever did really. Treating the room for mixing purposes was a no-brainer that followed soon after and for less than half the money.

[RoadToNever]

This reminds me of something a GS member, who shall remain nameless wrote, to the effect: "Having a $1000 pre is a matter of ethics"

[Melgueil]

Room treatment. By the way Auralex isn`t junk in and of itself, it`s just another tool that gets a bad rap because folks believe or try to make it do something that it is not capable of (controlling lows); I have a very tough room and my solution was a combination of DIY Super-chunks, ceiling cloud, thick stand-alone bass traps (again DIY), yes and the lowly Auralex to damp the highs.

It ain`t sexy, DIY sucks unless you really love construction and dealign with Rockwool fibers etc. It`s time consuming. Unfortunately, no combination of gear or plug ins can take the place of that hard work. I hated it, but I`m done now - and ready - more than ever, to consider that long-awaited converter upgrade.

Cdlt

[Gax]

Proper room treatment requires lots of space to sacrifice, and you really need to know how to do it, anyone can build absorbers from rockwool and other insulation materials, like majority of commercial or diy absorbers that we see all the time on forums, but most of the time those aren't doing anything constructive in control rooms, they do not eliminate real problems in control rooms (especially in smaller ones). Low-end stays intact while important early-reflections in mid and high frequencies are totally killed. Good control room should sound neutral, but provide great stereo imaging and true bass response (without fake bass build up or phase cancellations) and that requires serious amount of money and work, but before that room needs to be big enough.

Musicians like you should focus on songwriting, and making music happen, rather then letting technical part occupy their time and waste energy into something that won't make big differences because you have little to begging with (room is small so you cant do much).

You should read this article: Pro Studio Reviews - Home Studios Are Killing Music - Ronan Chris Murphy

[AldenW]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

Might happen, might not. I still defy anyone to suddenly "hear" their converter isn't cutting it, without A/Bing it against "better" converters, in a good room. I don't know about anyone else, but I never listen to a CD player and bemoan the converters - even with material I'm familiar with. I just don't have a reference point for that system.

I think this is true and very telling. And yes, I have experience with very high end converters.

Originally Posted by RoadToNever

This reminds me of something a GS member, who shall remain nameless wrote, to the effect: "Having a $1000 pre is a matter of ethics"

Lol

[Huff]

wow thank you guys for your input. I have decided to go the way of acoustic treatment and will be using the safe and sound that lowe's has. I'll have to decided on a few things but I feel like you guys got me going in the right direction.

Thanks again!

[Lights]

Before you use the SafeNSound, make sure you compare it to OC703 and 705 to see if it has the right properties. I haven't seen a thread on this verifying that this stuff is equivalent, but if it is... it's an AMAZING deal.