Best placement of acoustic treatment???

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Piplodocus
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Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:48 pm
Location: Southampton, UK

Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by Piplodocus » Mon Apr 29, 2013 1:04 pm

Hello!

I've managed to get a whole load of decent acoustic foam for free from work, as they got rid of a room they used to do some audio interference measurements on phones - not fully anechoic, but pretty decent stuff for my home studio!

So, where's the best places to put it? My music room is also a general room of my house, so I don't want to glue stuff to the walls or ceil (it's supposed to be a dining room!). I'm gonna glue it to some boards and place it around the room so I can get the deadest sound while recording vocals. By balancing it about I can hear how the reasonably small room sounds a load better. I figure the large majority of the time the foam can stay in place if flat against the walls. The ceiling is a bit tricky though if it's going to be non-permanent.

So, is the ceiling and some removable thing worth all the effort (i.e. more of a 'booth' lid principle? Or if I just concentrate on the walls is this a better plan? Any general advice on placement, what you'd do, or any good links to info on this? There's a set of stairs run up one side of the room which doesn't help either so I figured a chumk in front of the middle of this, then stuff in the corner above and below at each end is probably the best I can do. I'm never gonna be able to totally make some pro job, but any tips on making a non-permanent way to tighten the sound with a shit-load load of foam, but far from ideal placement limitations.

Any tips greatly appreciated.
Live relevant things: Suite 12, MacBook M1 Max, RME UFX II (kext drivers), Push 1

Jack McOck
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Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:06 pm

Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by Jack McOck » Mon Apr 29, 2013 4:32 pm

You've got all this...

Image

...in your dining room?

:x

Piplodocus
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Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:48 pm
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by Piplodocus » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:29 pm

Jack McOck wrote:You've got all this...in your dining room?

:x
There's no space for it anywhere else! It's not much of a dining room, the table is in the kitchen, so it has a sofa in there too and is more of a party lab than dining room. There's currently an electronic drum kit in there too as I got fed up with that being at the end of my bed. Think I need to sell it, it's a pretty small room.

trevox
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Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:58 am

Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by trevox » Mon Apr 29, 2013 7:45 pm

Sit in your optimum listening position and place foam at all mirror points between your head and the speakers. The idea is to have the foam at all first reflection points. Both side walls should take priority, then the wall behind your head and the ceiling. If you have enough, doing the wall behind your speakers is a good idea too. Note that this will do absolutely nothing for bass - you would need bass traps in the corner of your room to deal with this. There's a really good sound on sound article on room treatment - worth having a look for it.

cotdagoo
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Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by cotdagoo » Mon Apr 29, 2013 8:03 pm

check out a few studio rescue vids.. http://www.youtube.com/user/rodemicroph ... id=&view=0

pretty decent at showing you how to setup mirror points and ideal locations, etc..

Piplodocus
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Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:48 pm
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by Piplodocus » Mon Apr 29, 2013 10:37 pm

trevox wrote:Sit in your optimum listening position and place foam at all mirror points between your head and the speakers. The idea is to have the foam at all first reflection points. Both side walls should take priority, then the wall behind your head and the ceiling. If you have enough, doing the wall behind your speakers is a good idea too. Note that this will do absolutely nothing for bass - you would need bass traps in the corner of your room to deal with this. There's a really good sound on sound article on room treatment - worth having a look for it.
My monitors are in a terrible place. This is kinda mostly for helping the recording in the middle of the room, but yeah, would probably be a good idea to sort the monitoring situation out too. I figure no matter how good the monitor situation I can't polish I turd that's badly recorded!

I'll go check SOS. Cheers for the tip.
Last edited by Piplodocus on Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Piplodocus
Posts: 825
Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:48 pm
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by Piplodocus » Mon Apr 29, 2013 10:38 pm

cotdagoo wrote:check out a few studio rescue vids.. http://www.youtube.com/user/rodemicroph ... id=&view=0

pretty decent at showing you how to setup mirror points and ideal locations, etc..
Cheers, I'll go check it out now.

In other comedy news one of the rather large boards I'm gonna attempt to attach the foam to is now stuck half way down the stairs. Think I'll have to remove the banister to get that out. :oops:

cotdagoo
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Re: Best placement of acoustic treatment???

Post by cotdagoo » Mon Apr 29, 2013 11:51 pm

Piplodocus wrote:In other comedy news one of the rather large boards I'm gonna attempt to attach the foam to is now stuck half way down the stairs. Think I'll have to remove the banister to get that out. :oops:
I trapped myself moving a couch into my basement by myself.. got stuck halfway too!

Had to remove the banister first, and then take out a big square of drywall in the ceiling lol.. pure comedy

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