cheap studio foam

[beats me]

I'm going to drop some serious shocking knowledge here. You'd be horrified to know how much in your home is flammable if you simply hold a lighter to it for a bit.

The terrorists know this and now so do you.

[ethios4]

I've got a whole wall of things called books, which are like pdf's printed out on paper. If you hold a lighter to one of those 'pages', man they really go up quick!

[eightbit]

I'm really not an expert, but my understanding is that the wall foam products only help with high frequencies. While the highs may be an issue in your room, the real problems usually lay in the bass frequencies. Tossing a few bass traps in corners and broadband absorption panels at the first reflection points will make a huge difference, and will most likely tame a good bit of any high frequency problems you may have. After installing 7 panels at various places (corners, two on side walls, one hanging from ceiling), my room sounds MUCH better from the mix position. There's really a lot of info to be gleaned from the Gearslutz acoustics forum on this type of thing:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bass-tra ... -foam-etc/

In short, this type of foam isn't really going to help all that much.

[ethios4]

Not true. Mid and high frequency reflections cause comb filtering which definitely colors the sound. It's like having a static flanger on everything. I can't speak to the value of this foam over eggcrate foam, but it most definitely helps.

+1 to bass traps too!

[arafel]

You do need to check the Fire Rating on materials you add to a working space.

Surrounding yourself with flammable foam is not great.

Yes.. paper is flammable, as are many materials in everyday use.
But...lots of materials are more than flammable - they are really accelerants - any open flame or spark will instantly ignite them and then your studio and possibly occupants is gone. Many types of 'Foam' has been banned from household/ commercial use (in Canada anyways).
Lots of 'Foam' is like this.. think about a canvas tent (flammable) compared to a modern nylon tent (flammable).. one burns slowly.. the other ignites and melts into a pool of burning semi-liquid fuel.

The term 'flammable' is not very descriptive.. wood is, so is gasoline.. which do you want to be inside when it burns.
Even Gyprok (standard wall/ ceiling mat) has a fire rating that gives some time to escape.
*Rant over

Used this material on a project once... great stuff, cuts with a band saw to any shape. http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/sound ... el.htm?d=2

[illsub1]

OC 703 is the material of choice!!! The company real traps takes 2 pieces, glues them together, and charges hundreds of dollars for a bass trap. This is a little industry secret. You can get enough to do an entire room for less than a hunderd bucks. Find some good fabric or burlap to wrap the sheets when you get them.

[ethios4]

Good info arafel!

[Tone Deft]

I'm really not an expert, but my understanding is that the wall foam products only help with high frequencies. While the highs may be an issue in your room, the real problems usually lay in the bass frequencies. Tossing a few bass traps in corners and broadband absorption panels at the first reflection points will make a huge difference, and will most likely tame a good bit of any high frequency problems you may have. After installing 7 panels at various places (corners, two on side walls, one hanging from ceiling), my room sounds MUCH better from the mix position. There's really a lot of info to be gleaned from the Gearslutz acoustics forum on this type of thing:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bass-tra ... -foam-etc/

In short, this type of foam isn't really going to help all that much.

if you check the site they specify which foam works for what frequency range.

[iflux]

"
Actually, the foam does work.
"

Aight dude. Test your monitoring position and post the screenshot.

Join us at Ethan Winter's forum before you waste your money. I hate that company because they make crap. Unless something has changed in the last 4 years then they are still making crap. If they are not making crap anymore... i apologize and respect the decision to get with the program. Otherwise, the most cost effect thing you can do is start with rigid fiberglass. I do not want this company to make money on this and I would like to help. Ethan is a very cool person, you do not have to buy his products and he will help you without buying his products.

[ethios4]

Right, so I guess I just imagined that the flanging ring sound that was previously there disappeared when I installed the foam? Maybe it's not as good as higher end treatments, but it was certainly worth the $30 I spent on it. It certainly didn't help at all with low frequencies. I'm not going to waste my time on proving anything here when my ears plainly tell me the foam helped.

Ethan's website is great, and he is a very very generous guy for sharing his knowledge like that. I don't mean to dispute anything on his site, but I have to defend that the cheap studio foam really did help my situation.

[wehkah]

2 shops in germany:

http://myschaumstoff.de
http://www.schaumstofflager.de

cheers
Tino

[djgroovy]

Thanks for the links.

[Tone Deft]

"
Actually, the foam does work.
"

Aight dude. Test your monitoring position and post the screenshot.

Join us at Ethan Winter's forum before you waste your money. I hate that company because they make crap. Unless something has changed in the last 4 years then they are still making crap. If they are not making crap anymore... i apologize and respect the decision to get with the program. Otherwise, the most cost effect thing you can do is start with rigid fiberglass. I do not want this company to make money on this and I would like to help. Ethan is a very cool person, you do not have to buy his products and he will help you without buying his products.

if you learned from Ethan maybe you can share with us what you learned rather than just saying everyone's wrong and pointing to some source elsewhere to read up. his pages on the subject are TLDR.

[iflux]

that foam does not work for what you need to do in full. Many commercial foams are not very effective. Not all, but very many. Mostly because the thicknesses and density.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/density/density.html

This is why you need to use thicknesses of rigid fiberglass. Its the most cost effective, >EFFECTIVE< solution.

This is not a subject you can just learn in a few paragraphs. So im pointing to a place where you can take your time and do your own research. And join us at the Ethan winters acoustic forum, thats where you should be. But let me break it down really primitively. There is more to this. But this applies to a small to mid room situation...Very primitively.

Start with frames of 4 inch rigid fiber glass. Owens corning(whatever that companies name is) FRK 402 or 403 is what I used years ago i believe. There are other brands which are acceptable. Its been a few years since ive done any maintenance on my studios acoustics.

Start by trapping your corners always. Thats where there is the most builds up. You can never trap enough corners. But start with the axial corners using the 4 inch thickness. Your ideal monitoring position IN THEORY will be about 40 percent from the front wall firing long wise. A perfectly square room is pretty much going to be impossible. You'll want to offset your positional slightly to the left or right. Read Ethans site on correct monitor placement. Now do your reflection points, using 2" thicknesses. Read Ethans site if you missed what those are. You can use 4" but what i did was sacrifice space and placed 2" far off the wall so the wavelengths cancel out more frequencies. If you do not have a large room forget about diffusion totally. Just use rigid fiberglass.

Now, the test. Place a mike at your listening position. Run a sine from bottom to top and record it. You can get an app named room ETF... i believe is the name. You can also use Sound Forge it has a sine generator. Or ethan has one for you on his site in wave format. Pop the results in room ETF, sound forge, adobe audiotion, whatever. And take a look at the spectrum. Your problems are mostly going to be nulls... standing waves which cancel eachother out. Or spikes which actually happen much less than nulls. So if your rooms acoustics are not accurate at your listening position your literally not hearing certain frequencies.

Once you find your problems, there are a few ways of going about this. You can try to calculate your room modes. Thats a subject you will have to dive deep into. But what you really want to do is just tackle all your reflection points. Test, move things, test, move things, add more traps at refections, test again and again and again. And wear some plugs cause those sines get annoying and could be damaging. Dont forget about ceiling reflections. Like the corner on the ceiling in front of you or the reflection point above your head. Doing these things will make your monitors and mixes sound like a whole new experience.

Anyone interested should go to Ethan Winters Acoustic form and dive into the subject deeper. This is squeezing things down A LOT. Im not a pro at this but my studio is spot on and I understand this subject very well. Im not logged into this forum a lot and I always forget my user/pass. And Im fucking baked atm trying to explain this.

[ethios4]

I can't wait to get around to putting up proper bass traps and the rest. While the cheap studio foam did help me out a lot, I'm sure it's nothing compared to a proper acoustic treatment. Building from scratch certainly seems affordable as well. I hate that bass changes so much with listening position and frequency!!