Building a new place... need help.

[jeronimo]

Hey everybody,

I´ve sold my old place a few months ago and now I´m renting a house with a friend and we´ll make to reaharsal rooms, a control room and an ISO booth...

The big reaharsal room have something like 38 sq. meters, the small one have around 18 sq. meters, control room around 20 sq. meters and the ISO has something like... 6 sq meters.

Any ideas on how should I treat the reaharsal rooms?

I´ve already made some drawings for the control room, with bass traps on the corners (I´ll build´em with fiberwool and some kind of... "net" if you know what I mean.
I already have panels made of fiberwool and fabric from my old place I´ll put one behind the speakers and one on the wall behind me... you can see it on the drawing.

I´ll make the ISO as dead as possible with fiberwool and bass traps...

Well... thanks alot for any help.

Peace

[jeronimo]

no love?

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

no love?

Heh, I saw only one question, how to treat the big room. You treat it as usual, with absorption spread evenly around the room. How much absorption is needed depends on how live it is now.

--Ethan

[jeronimo]

Ethan,

Do you think diffusion could help on a reaharsal room?
Should I use bass traps on them too?
Here where I live I only have access to fiberwool... so... no rockwoll or other materials...

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

Do you think diffusion could help on a reaharsal room?

Maybe. It depends on what problems you have. If the room is large and has too much echo, then you need absorption.

--Ethan

[Weasel9992]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

no love?

Not that there's no love, there's just too many variables to answer to question succinctly. It really depends on what you want as the end product; if you want a balanced response and decay time across the spectrum, that takes bass traps, high frequency panels and possibly diffusion. If you're just looking to knock the transient/vocal band echo down, that takes a different approach.

Do you know what you want the rooms to sound like?

Frank

[jeronimo]

What I want it to sound like...
That´s a great question!!!
Ok, I´ve build 2 studios in 7 years...
On the first one, the "live" room, had wood ceilings and floor. It was small, something like... 15 sq. meters, the ceiling was around... 2.6m high and It had fiberwool absortion on two of the small walls, other walls are just painted ciment+blocks... and it sounded great!
The second one had something like 18 sq. meters, again, painted ciment walls, gypsium ceiling with some fiberwool absorbers and concrete floor.
I think this one had to much hi-end floating around... and some wierd bass on the corners... but the highs bothered me more.
What I want is an ok balanced room, live enought so I can record drums if I want to but I can use some moving panels if I need it a little more "dead" on the hi end for a full band reaharsal without feedback crazynessssss.
Sorry, some materials I just can´t remember how you call it in english... It´s been more than 5 years since I built my last room...
I thinking about using wood floors on the big room, build some kind of wood panel with fiberwool behind it and put it on one of the walls, ceiling is gypsium already and I don´t plan on change that ($$$$$), the other walls I´ll just spread some sonnex and fiberwool around...

[jeronimo]

Ethan,

Your videos on youtube are just amazing!!!
And by the way... I love cats too... I have too on my apartment...

[Ethan Winer]

Thanks very much!

[jeronimo]

Ok,

I was doing a research on 2D QRD Diffusers and I have a question...
I´m planing to fill one of the walls of the big room with a 2D QRD...
Using the AcousticCalc application from NHSoft, it gives me the depth and width for each "slice" of the diffusor at some frequency.
Based on calculations of the room modes... should I do diffusers for each frequency let´s say, 500hz, 1K, 2K, 4K??? How should I proceed with difusion on this room?
Thanks!

[jeronimo]

The wall should look like this... each "strip" have different depths ´cause of the frequency they will work on, and inside each "strip" there will be 7 strips based on the software calculations...

By the way, the panels on the corners and ceilings will be 120x60x10cm 32kg/m3 rockwool (I managed to find a reseler on another state...) mounted on woodframes and covered with fabric on the front and back.

There will be 30 10cm deep traps on this large room and around 20 for control room, ISO and small reaharsall room... and 20 5cm deep traps for the same 3 rooms.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

Based on calculations of the room modes... should I do diffusers for each frequency let´s say, 500hz, 1K, 2K, 4K??? How should I proceed with difusion on this room?

Just build one style of diffusor at least 6 inches deep. Diffusion is most useful in the midrange.

--Ethan

[jeronimo]

So Ethan,

Have you seen this soft I´m talking about? That does the calculation for the 2D QRD diffusors?
It makes you input a frequency and then it gives the measures for the diffusor.
What frequency shoul I use as a "main" frequency? something around 1K?

[Ethan Winer]

Yes I know that software. It uses upper and lower frequency limits. If you have it diffuse between 800 Hz and 4 KHz that should be okay.

--Ethan

[jeronimo]

Thanks Ethan,

So my main freq. should be 1.1K that goes from 825Hz to 4K.

How may "wells/seeds" should I go for? 7?11?13 or 17?

Does it make a big difference?

[jeronimo]

One more question
I can get rockwool with the following densities:
- 32Kg/m3
- 48Kg/m3
- 64Kg/m3

The prices of course, go up with the density... $23, $34. $45 per sq. meter (that´s in my currency).

Should I pay more or can I go with 32Kg/m3?

[jeronimo]

Ethan,

One more question.

You mentioned that it should be around 6 inches deep = 15cm deep.

To have 15cm deep wells, the main freq is 700hz and it goes down to 525 and up to 2.5K.

What should I do? the 1.1K ones that are 9cm deep or the 700hz ones at 15cm deep?

Did I miss something?

[Ethan Winer]

You asked a lot of questions for which there are no conclusive answers. Maybe the best way to pick diffusor dimensions is to just copy a commercial model that is known to work well.

--Ethan

[jeronimo]

Well, the point is I don´t have access to those commercial models here in Brasil, and I rather ask someone who knows what they´re doing instead of make a copy of something avaliable here and the could suck...
But anyways... thanks for you help.

[avare]

There are no simple answers to what you are asking beyond what you have already received. Summing up the simple answers, and giving a couple more:

How deep?

150 mm minimum.

How many wells?

The longer you can make with repeating the patter, the better. Using commercial products as a guide, if you are making them 1.2 m wide, 11. Modeled after the RPG 4311 diffuser.

Andre

[jeronimo]

Well,

I´ll build the following

4 x skylines from 750hz to 5K
2 x QRD from 525hz to 2.3K using 7 wells
5 x some regular "sonnex" absorbers...

And I´ll hope for the best...

The other walls will have absortion from fiberwool...

Thanks for your help guys...