Controlling Room Reflections

[ole6string]

I just moved my studio setup to a different room in the house and this room is very live. Lots of reflections, especially when trying to record vocals. Wood floors with an area rug, plaster walls and ceiling.

Any of you guys know of a very inexpensive way to cut down on some of this natural reverb??? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rod

[NickT]

Rod,

I found this for cleaning up a corner(s) of your studio to record:

http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwtip/archive/rw08r.html

I also use a boom mic stand and turn it into a "T" . I then hand a blanket on that and set that up either behind the mic if in the middle of the room, or behind the performer if the walls are treated and they are singing into or towards the treated area.

Very Cheap! 

Nick

[ole6string]

Thanks Nick,

Great suggestion I can't wait to try it out.

Thanks again,
Rod

[Tacman7]

Also if your using near field monitoring you set it up properly.

I was setting mine up like a PA system and I found that when setting up a near field you would have the monitors 3' from your head set 3' apart with each speaker pointed towards your ears, so a triangle configuration. Works like a large set of headphones.

The purpose is to eliminate the need for a lot of room treatment because most of what you hear is the first thing that hits your ears and with each speaker pointed right at your ear your going to focus on the sound from the monitors and not the reflections. Of course it's very program dependent so music with stops and starts would show up the reflections more.

[ole6string]

Thanks tacman... more great stuff!

[j]

Rod -

then there is the old egg carton baffling trick.. open side facing the walls/ceiling. free for the price of the eggs! the paper cartons reportedly work better than the styerfoam type. And they are more eco friendly! 

[Cary]

Rod -

then there is the old egg carton baffling trick.. open side facing the walls/ceiling. free for the price of the eggs! the paper cartons reportedly work better than the styerfoam type. And they are more eco friendly! 

Where are these test results?  I would like to see them.  On the other hand, many pro acoustic designers have said bare walls are better than egg cartons.  Egg cartons are not broad band absorbers and probably do more harm than good.

The egg carton trick is a myth

[j]

don't have those test results with me err.. and I bought all these damned eggs for nothin??

I'll stand corrected, thanks! 

[ole6string]

Everyone over to jaaman's place for breakfast!!!! I'll have mine over easy please.....

[NickT]

Scrambled...well done. 

I have an egg carton story (Of course you do Nick).

We used to rehearse in the basement of a butcher shop. I can't remember who got them, but we had enough of the 1'x1' square egg sheets to do the complete room. I honestly couldn't hear a difference. All it did was give the cockroaches a place to hide. Our stuff was so infested, we put all our equipment in a shed, threw a bug bomb in, and closed the doors. All these roaches came scrambling out of every crack of the shed as we sprayed them on exit! 100's of them! 

True Story!

[j]

hahahaha! thanks for the help guys. dig in! better we eat than me having to wear em on my face 

save those cartons for cockroach motels!

cheers!

[luisma1972]

The purpose is to eliminate the need for a lot of room treatment because most of what you hear is the first thing that hits your ears and with each speaker pointed right at your ear your going to focus on the sound from the monitors and not the reflections. Of course it's very program dependent so music with stops and starts would show up the reflections more.

Yes, that's right, but there is a VERY important aspect we tend to overlook: Speaker placement. In small rooms, standing waves are the single most important and difficult problem to deal with. If the speakers are placed in the wrong spot, you may end up with a very poor response in the bass region. In my case I had the monitors to close to the wall and the response was simply awful and too bumpy. Try placing the monitors on different spots until you find the one you like better.

Near field monitoring principles apply only to frequencies above certain limit imposed by the room dimensions. If you want to improve further, you'll need to apply some acoustical treatment to the room. I'll post some links when I get home tonight.

[mistermikev]

I find it hard to believe that they don't work at all.  Simple physics would suggest they would be good at diffusion based on them providing more surface area.  I'll agree, they probably could add distortion based on rattle, and I doubt they help with negative reflection as the sound likely won't pass through them very well, but as far as high frequency diffusion - they would work on a basic level.  Now I have to egg-carton up my studio and get out my white noise tapes and make some recordings...
on a more practical note: you can find foamvar insulation very cheap.  It's usually pink or tan, but it is such a dense foam that it will definately dampen a room.  I used to have my entire studio covered in it with spacers to give it an angle at every perferation... when from a slap back echo to a dead room in a hurry.  Dirt cheap too.  FYI.

[digitaldrummer]

a good place to start with speaker placement is centered along the longest wall of the room.  I used to have mine haphazard and after a room rearrangment found that the low end was much more present (my mixes would come out quite boomy before because of phase cancellation in the low freq).  then start room treatment.

Basstraps and broadband absorbers can be made pretty cheaply:

www.digitaldrummer.net/basstraps.htm

I got material from www.atsacoustics.com but you can get it from others.  If in a major city, try http://www.spi-co.com/.  they carry Rockwool and also Owens Corning 703 & 705

for bass traps you want at least 4" of rockwool or OC703/705.  I believe that OC705 is even more dense than OC703 and you can get them in varying thickness (1" -4").  It is more rigid than Rockwool so can stand on its own.  You can just wrap them in fabric (muslin cloth or burlap works fine) and hang it on the walls too.  Will work MUCH better than egg cartons and no vacancy for bugs.

also check out http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html  good info here.

Mike

[Appleluza]

A good source for info on room reflections is Ethan Winer, who is one of the owners of Real Traps (www.realtraps.com) and moderates a forum on this topic over at the MusicPlayer web site at http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/24.

A good primer on the subject is http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html.

I have fooled around with this enough over the past six months to have learned that the topic gets pretty technical and is worth getting some help with it from some of the more knowledgeable sound engineers that hang out at that forum.  There is software you can get to shoot your room and find out what the frequency response and standing wave problems are, but again, it is worth getting the help of those who have done a lot of this kind of work and who know what they are doing.

Rob Talbert