Live venue, brick walls, unknown ceiling.

[Almy]

We're starting a small Church that will be doing around a 6 piece rock band and we have a bit of a limited area :). The room will basically be a shotgun barrel...about 25 feet wide and around 80 feet long. The ceiling is going to be around 20 feet tall, won't be sure until we get rid of a 2nd drop ceiling.

My first order of business is to get bass traps put everywhere. I was thinking of having people wear bass traps too...but I don't think I can get away with it!

So far I'm at two questions I'm not sure about. The side walls are brick. Should we just cover them with as many bass traps as we can, or should we try and build some kind of a wall over it? The ceiling is the other odd thing. I have no idea what we should do with that for acoustics. Any suggestions at all would be really appreciated.

James

[Ethan Winer]

For a room that size you need broadband absorption spread more or less evenly around the room. If you have a drop ceiling, fiberglass or mineral wool above the ceiling will help reduce bass boominess and you won't even see them. But that's only part of the solution, and you need broadband absorption all around the space.

--Ethan

[Almy]

Thanks for the info! Yeah I was thinking just put up a ton of bass absorption on the brick walls, rather than build any kind of wall really. So the ceiling could basically be whatever material with the bass trap material above it? I was thinking we should have the ceiling be the absorption so as to avoid a reflective surface?

I appreciate the thoughts, every little bit helps. I'll probably wait til we know more before I really bug with more questions. Like what is actually above that last drop ceiling we'll take out. Thanks again.

James