Best dimensions and material for live room

[NIGHT'SCHILD]

I am openeing up a new studio and I have a live room that measures 15X9 and the ceiling is 12ft high. It was a studio before and the guys who had it before me put really thick padding up on the walls and on the ceiling they added 2ft. worth of cement like material. I want to replace the padding because it sounds to "dead." What is the best material to put up on the walls to liven up a room.?

Also, are these dimensions sufficient for a live room? I could make the ceiling another 2ft. taller, is it worth taking out thousands of pounds of the cement like material that the guys put on the ceiling? I believe they did this for sound-proofing.

[kittonian]

You might want to checkout QuietSolution. The material they sell is really great for sound control, and the highest STC rating in it's class. Ozzy did his studio with it if I remember correctly.

The engineers and project managers over there are very willing to assist and answer questions. Hopefully they can tell you exactly how to accomplish your goal.

[jajjguy]

If they took this kind of drastic action on the ceiling for sound isolation, i'd guess they had a problem with footfall noise from above (or rain, or noisy AC unit on roof...). Does this sound right? There are other ways to solve that, of course, but they all involve eating up some ceiling height and they're all somewhat expensive, so i'd leave the sand in unless you know for sure that there is no noise problem from above.

As for room acoustic treatments, that's a very personal decision about what you want the room to sound like. Personally, i like a room to be somewhat bright and very immediate sounding with no mud, which would call for good low freq absorption and some reflection of higher freqs.

[Ethan Winer]

Night,

> 15X9 and the ceiling is 12ft high <

That's pretty small for a live room, at least if you hope to get a "big" sound out of it. The main problem is all the walls are close to both the instruments and to the microphones, so you'll get a lot of short echoes and comb filtering.

Thick padding is not usually good for absorption because it absorbs mainly high frequencies. But without knowing exactly what you have it's impossible to comment in more detail. As an experiment you could try covering portions of the pads with thin plywood or Masonite, or remove portions of the padding.

--Ethan

[genericperson]

sounds like you're going to embarking on adventure. may you have lots of fun!

just to put it in perspective. there are many levels of quality in studios. this goes for equipment, engineers, and architecture.

in the "big boy" studio world. your 9x15 room would be the vocal booth, with a big double-paned picture window looking into the SSL-equipped control room.

will you be able to "get work done"? yes. but the big boys take it to a whole different level.

your biggest challenge will likely be recording drums.

that being said, don't deny yourself your turn at bat just because you don't have the ultimate environment. new studios are exciting, so let us know how it's going! in fact, there is a spot on the GS boards where people post pictures of their studio construction projects.

to liven up a room, you need "dispersion" and "reflection" among other things. dispersion willl be a good thing for you to look into. since your room is so small, you will be facing problems of slap-back off the walls. you put diffusors on the walls to break up the soundwaves into a generalized reverb rather than a slap back. for room treatment options, check out www.rpginc.com

i found the book "Sound Studio Construction on a Budget" by Alton Everest to be very informative.

killing outside noises is essential. if someone is in the middle of a great take, and then a foot stomp or a car alarm leaks onto the track in a quiet spot...that's a downer. or getting complaint notices for sound disturbances, another caveat. i'm guessing the previous people were combating a sound leakage problem, probably for good reasons.