Room acoustic treatment

[BillHicksRIP]

Quite a timely thread as I've been looking to get my new studio assessed and treated properly. I moved in recently and was horrified to find there was no bass at all in the listening position from a pair of KRK Rockit 8's. And I do mean, no bass as it was all hiding in the corners. I had Joe from Blue Frog Audio round all day taking measurements and discussing requirements. Very knowledgeable guy and easy to deal with, even if you don't know a great deal about acoustic treatment. My room has wooden floors, is practically square shaped and has a patio window down one side, so not ideal. After a barrage of testing, measuring distances and moving traps around, he identified 3 areas of concern, in order of seriousness and showed me the graphs where the dips were. He's gone away to put together a plan with the best suited treatment based around the room's issues so looking forward to that.

Would be happy to post pics and results further down the line if anyone's interested.

 

[Nick1881]

Joe has been great for me. Do you live fairly close to Blue Frog? It's a fair trek from me. He has drawn up some plans though, just awaiting prices.

 

[BillHicksRIP]

By a massive stroke of luck, he's only 30 mins away from me so was happy to get him in for the day rate and travelling expenses. I've had a studio room in the past and never got it treated, and it just made learning to produce a great deal harder so wasn't going to let that happen again. Very interested to see the final plan but I imagine it will be a few weeks before I can get it installed, whatever the solution comes back as. I'm looking at colour schemes for the traps now!

 

[Nick1881]

Well after lots of help from Joe at Blue Frog I have finally placed my order and paid a deposit.

I'm having large L shaped soffit traps in the rear corners, a tall one standing horizontal front left, across the ceiling front right and a ceiling cloud.

Then I'll see how all that does, it's a lot less than recommended but I'm spending a lot less money. I can always add more later as funds allow.

It's going to take about 4 weeks though due to how busy he is.

 

[BillHicksRIP]

Good stuff. My quote was a fair bit more than I was expecting but they're going to be custom fittings for my room shape so I'll probably bite the bullet. Which fabrics did you go for? I'm still mulling over colours at the moment. Got white walls and ceiling with light brown wooden floors and I don't want anything too "in your face" as I've got a lot of panels going in and will have to live with it for years to come, hopefully.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Not sure if it has been mentioned as I only skimmed the thread...has anyone mention trying the Anti-mode?

 

[Nick1881]

I'm getting somewhere now, still waiting for my traps from Blue Frog, but in the mean time I decided to make my own bass trap to completely fill the bay window. Basically I bought the earthwool insulation they use to make the bass traps and mostly filled the bay, I'm just waiting for 2 more packs so it will be totally full. I've made a frame and covered it in material so it will cover it all.

Here is the measurement from my front left before



And here it is with the partially filled bay



It's sounding better, should improve further once finished and the other traps arrive, which should be next week.

I'm also currently trialing PMC OB1i speakers, to my surprise they don't sound too boomy, the graphs above are from my KEF R500's with the ports bunged.

Here is how the OB1i measures.

 

[Lowe]

OB1i are lovely. Look at that transmission line doing its job as well, none of this sub port-tune roll off!

 

[9designs2]

To understand boom and drone you need to be looking at the Rt60 time. A flat response isn't actually all that important, and doesn't give an idea of boom etc. where as shorter decay times will give you less boom, tighter more accurate timing and far better detail and information.

Adding the those traps will be doing just that so you should be starting to really reveal what can be achieved from your system.
It's quite a revelation when you've fixed a room, something very few people including audio fools get to hear or try.

It's interesting when you read how some people grade headphones better than speakers, hmmm try hearing speakers in a fixed room and perhaps rethink that view

 

[Nick1881]

How do you measure the Rt60 time? Can I do it with REW and an SPL meter?

I'm considering keeping the OB1i they are really nice, not a huge amount better than my KEFs though, the above graph of my R500 is with the port bungs in, it does take away some of the low end. I'm surprised how well the OB1i work just as they are, I also tried Spendor D7 but they were too boomy.

I agree about headphones, nothing I have heard comes anywhere close to a decent speaker setup.

 

[9designs2]

The measurement software measures/calculates it... I use the XZT set-up, and gives me times at various frequencies.
I'd keep the PMCs, not that I'm biased of coarse

 

[Nick1881]

My bass traps are now finished and will be delivered this week. Here is a pic of my rear corner units



I also finished my bay window trap, surprisingly totally filling it didn't bring much more of a gain.

I also traded in my KEF R500 for the PMC OB1i.

 

[BassPunk]

Why are you not using the bass management with ARC?

Your graphs are pre correction and not post.

 

[Nick1881]

I am when I watch films, for music I don't use the Anthem. I use MDAC - Musical Fidelity M6i to PMC OB1i.

I just ordered a UMIK-1 mic to do some more measurements with both F&L speakers at the same time.

 

[BassPunk]

I am when I watch films, for music I don't use the Anthem. I use MDAC - Musical Fidelity M6i to PMC OB1i.

I just ordered a UMIK-1 mic to do some more measurements with both F&L speakers at the same time.

Great mic, almost plug and play with REW. If you can flatten your bass without audio processing I'll be surprised. I'm fond of the parametric EQ on the DSPeaker Anti-mode 2.0 Dual Core.

The MDAC and three-way PMC are a great combination, they make vocals especially sound authentic.

 

[Nick1881]

I've managed to reduce my peak quite a bit, the biggest hump is just over 80 dB now.

I looked at the Anti-mode but I read that it will basically down sample the music, also worried it will reduce other areas. The soundstage is so good now, instruments hang individually in 3D.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I was watching MTV cribs a few years back and I noticed a rapper had made a vocal booth out of old mattresses.

You can get foam mattresses of ebay for pennies.

I don't know but wouldn't just buying some of them or buying some normal foam and using that be a lot cheaper and work just as well as these very expensive options?

I'm sure if you really wanted to you could tart them up on the cheap too to look nice.

Also if it's mainly for personal use who really cares what it looks like?

I was shocked when I saw it on MTV cribs tbh they were showing off this multi million pound home with it's own recording studio where the vocal booth was simply 2 mattresses in the corner making a square with the 2 walls. He slid one mattress along and you walked into the booth and then he simply slid the mattress back.

This guy could afford to spend £100,000 on it if he wanted but he had done the job for free most likely. He's also a professional artist and world famous music producer. So if it's good enough for him then it's good enough for anyone tbh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Jon

 

[lucid]

You've answered your own question...

1) it's a vocal booth i.e. it's only got to deal with the limited vocal range of the human voice and not full range sound

2) the voice to mic distance is a matter of inches. So in reality the "booth" is doing nothing more than providing some absorption to take away echo and deaden the sound field for the vocal recording. That's very different from what happens in a real acoustic space with live or recorded playback. Dead rooms for music playback sound bad

3) he's a record producer. All he needs is to get a clean vocal recording with as little ambient intrusion as possible. It'll then be processed to hell on the desk an in the recording software.

In short, managing full range sound at high SPLs in a room to produce a flattish frequency response and deal with the reverb' time so that the space works well is a far different task to capturing a vocal on a mic a couple of inches from the singers lips. That's why old mattresses won't work.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

You've answered your own question...

1) it's a vocal booth i.e. it's only got to deal with the limited vocal range of the human voice and not full range sound

2) the voice to mic distance is a matter of inches. So in reality the "booth" is doing nothing more than providing some absorption to take away echo and deaden the sound field for the vocal recording. That's very different from what happens in a real acoustic space with live or recorded playback. Dead rooms for music playback sound bad

3) he's a record producer. All he needs is to get a clean vocal recording with as little ambient intrusion as possible. It'll then be processed to hell on the desk an in the recording software.

In short, managing full range sound at high SPLs in a room to produce a flattish frequency response and deal with the reverb' time so that the space works well is a far different task to capturing a vocal on a mic a couple of inches from the singers lips. That's why old mattresses won't work.

cheers for the pro explanation as always.

i was amazed when i saw it on tv. I was like wtf this guy has some flashy cars a huge house, big screen tv's, etc, etc and then uses 2 mattresses in the corner of a room to make a vocals booth.

so my master plan won't work lol

 

[lucid]

so my master plan won't work lol

If you're going for the 'padded cell' look the fire away.


Besides, if it was as easy as that don't you think we'd have all latched on by now?