Is their such thing as having too much absorption

[HIGHENDONLY]

One my room's is 16 by 22. I have the wall's and ceiling treated well, all corner's properly bass trapped. But i have a thick carpet in the room. Now should i remove the carpet to make the room sound more live. It seems that it's almost too muddy sounding with the carpet. So i was thinking if i remove the carpet you would have the floor as the first reflection, instead of the the sound hitting the carpet and being absorped...any idea's

[BOWIE]

Originally Posted by HIGHENDONLY

One my room's is 16 by 22. I have the wall's and ceiling treated well, all corner's properly bass trapped. But i have a thick carpet in the room. Now should i remove the carpet to make the room sound more live. It seems that it's almost too muddy sounding with the carpet. So i was thinking if i remove the carpet you would have the floor as the first reflection, instead of the the sound hitting the carpet and being absorped...any idea's

Take that shit off the walls and ceiling and look into diffusion. I hate to see people dump so much money and time into absorption only to end up w/ sonic mud. Dissusion and deflection are where it's at.

[beats workin']

i believe you're wrong Bowie- with regards to a small room like this. absorption is key. diffusion and deflection in a small room will do nothing for standing waves.
i would definitely remove the carpet if your ceiling is well-treated. live floor/dead celing is a standard studio treatment. it's worked very well for me. if you've really got the corners taken care of you'll be in good shape.

[YZ!]

Originally Posted by beats workin'

i believe you're wrong Bowie- with regards to a small room like this. absorption is key. diffusion and deflection in a small room will do nothing for standing waves.
i would definitely remove the carpet if your ceiling is well-treated. live floor/dead ceiling is a standard studio treatment. it's worked very well for me. if you've really got the corners taken care of you'll be in good shape.

I second that.

Taking into consideration that the existing treatment is good.

But keep a small thick rug hanging around to take care of tapping feet...

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by HIGHENDONLY

One my room's is 16 by 22. I have the wall's and ceiling treated well, all corner's properly bass trapped. But i have a thick carpet in the room. Now should i remove the carpet to make the room sound more live. It seems that it's almost too muddy sounding with the carpet. So i was thinking if i remove the carpet you would have the floor as the first reflection, instead of the the sound hitting the carpet and being absorped...any idea's

Your room is large enough to benefit from absorption and diffusion. A reflective floor is great for tracking acoustic instruments, and it's common in one-room studios to have carpet in the front third and wood or linoleum etc in the rear. However, wherever you have a reflective floor you should also have absorption on the ceiling.

As for diffusion, the standard place is the rear wall behind the mix position.

Before you go to all the trouble to tear out the carpet, experiment with pieces of thin plywood or even box cardboard. Lay that down over the carpet and live with it for a week or so to see how you like it.

--Ethan

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Your room is large enough to benefit from absorption and diffusion. A reflective floor is great for tracking acoustic instruments, and it's common in one-room studios to have carpet in the front third and wood or linoleum etc in the rear. However, wherever you have a reflective floor you should also have absorption on the ceiling.

As for diffusion, the standard place is the rear wall behind the mix position.

Before you go to all the trouble to tear out the carpet, experiment with pieces of thin plywood or even box cardboard. Lay that down over the carpet and live with it for a week or so to see how you like it.

--Ethan

i agree

dead rooms blow..

i have diffusers in a 14 x 11 foot room..

designed by nick collerian and it sounds great..you have a much larger space why waste the acoustics?

[ricfoxx]

Yes there is such a thing. A dead room is musically uninspiring for most recording situations. To get a good lively room in which recordings seems to sparkle is an artform. Experiment until you get the sound you want and good luck to you

[deuce42]

And I totally agree with Ethan W. The most intelligent thing you can do is to go to a hardware store and buy some 3mm plywood (or something similar) that covers a decent area and leave it on the floor for a few days of testing. This way you can hear the reflections off the "hard" floor without ripping up carpet etc. I did this and found that there were all sorts of booming issues I hadn't thought of.

I did some homework and realised why a lot of studios have half the room with wood laminate and half with Carpet. Perhaps a combination may be the best for you as it was for me. So try the temporary piece of wood on the floor first and see how you go before hand.

I also concur that you can deaden a room too much. Try recording an accoustic guitar in a completely dead room. You find yourself hitting the strings really hard to get some tone without noticing your doing it. Live rooms are essentially for being inspired although they can be difficult to record in. A balance between the two is therefore imperative!

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by HIGHENDONLY

One my room's is 16 by 22. I have the wall's and ceiling treated well, all corner's properly bass trapped. But i have a thick carpet in the room. Now should i remove the carpet to make the room sound more live. It seems that it's almost too muddy sounding with the carpet. So i was thinking if i remove the carpet you would have the floor as the first reflection, instead of the the sound hitting the carpet and being absorped...any idea's

You have gotten some great advice, but just to clarify a little. You can over absorb on the higher end, but when it comes to the low end it is REALLY hard to put in to much bass trapping. What kind of bass trapping do you have in the room now?

Glenn

[peeder]

Generally vocal booths are dead, because of two factors I believe...

1) The singer will be monitoring in cans, where some reverb is pumped in, and

2) The vocal track will have reverb put on it anyway.

Thus you don't get into the problem where you are overstrumming an acoustic guitar or overhitting drums or something to get some resonance out of them, and at the same time, you don't get any unwanted, colored early reflections cluttering your choices when adding artificial reverb.

[SpiderM69]

Probably not ideal, but what about just putting on the carpet some of those plastic carpeting cover thingies used for office chairs with rollers?