PGShadow
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Acoustic room treatments??
Hey folks. I have recently added a yamaha subwoofer to my home setup, and the wife has informed me that it's time to " calm " some of these frequencies down. So i've been looking into room treatments. Rather than just buy a bunch of foam wedges and bass traps, I decided to dig alittle deeper into what kind of treatment (absorption vs deflection) is best suited to my room (approx 10x11). I found a very intresting site, that suggested to temporarily attach a wide strip of Mylar tape to the wall surrounding the speaker, at ear level....and you'll be surprized to see multiple reflections of each speaker. Has anyone tried this out? What have you done to make the most of your acoustic space? Here is the link if anyone is intrested. http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/roomacoustics.html Peace, Kevin
post edited by PGShadow - October 05, 11 1:59 AM
Gateway FX/intel i7-860/ 8gig DDR3/ 1TB Drive/Win7-64/ Sonar 8.5Pro/X1Pro/X2Pro w/QF308/Tascam US-1641/Yamaha HS-50 Monitor's & HS-10sub/ Digitech GnX3 guitar processor/ Digitech BP100 Bass processor/ART DSP II preamp/ MXL 770 &990/ Yamaha RM50 Drum Brain,Custom Mesh head Kit/ rack "O" toyz......And ONE BIG VIsa bill
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PGShadow
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 05, 11 2:13 AM
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OK, so looks like I might have posted this in the wrong place...don't shoot me.
Gateway FX/intel i7-860/ 8gig DDR3/ 1TB Drive/Win7-64/ Sonar 8.5Pro/X1Pro/X2Pro w/QF308/Tascam US-1641/Yamaha HS-50 Monitor's & HS-10sub/ Digitech GnX3 guitar processor/ Digitech BP100 Bass processor/ART DSP II preamp/ MXL 770 &990/ Yamaha RM50 Drum Brain,Custom Mesh head Kit/ rack "O" toyz......And ONE BIG VIsa bill
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Guitarhacker
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 05, 11 9:00 AM
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I thought the whole purpose of treating a room was to eliminate the reflection and calm the modes (standing waves) so you could hear the (closer to truth) sound from your monitors accurately. Reflections do nothing but add confusion. I mix in an untreated room too, with a set of ported monitors and a 10" sub. Furniture & carpet are my room treatments. Mixing at a low level (volume) will help a lot. Keep the volume down and you can still hear the truth and are not bombarded by the large reflections from the walls and ceiling. When the mixing and mastering is done, crank it up to see how it translates at volume. If you did the job right it will sound good. Also, mixing at low levels will protect the ears and keep the wife clam too.
My website & music: www.herbhartley.com MC4/5/6/X1e.c, on a Custom DAW Focusrite Firewire Saffire Interface BMI/NSAI "Just as the blade chooses the warrior, so too, the song chooses the writer "
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 05, 11 9:12 AM
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I had to read the whole article to figure out that the mylar tape served as a mirror so that you can view and imagine the angles of incidence and reflection. I thought maybe it was gonna vibrate or something special like that.
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PGShadow
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 05, 11 10:12 PM
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OK, my curiosity is gonna get the best of me. I'm going to strip down the room to it's bare essentials and lay out the tape just to see how much & where the waves are bouncing around. LOL the room needs a good clean up anyways. I forgot to mention in the OP, I also practice in this room with a small PA....shhh, dont tell her,lol
Gateway FX/intel i7-860/ 8gig DDR3/ 1TB Drive/Win7-64/ Sonar 8.5Pro/X1Pro/X2Pro w/QF308/Tascam US-1641/Yamaha HS-50 Monitor's & HS-10sub/ Digitech GnX3 guitar processor/ Digitech BP100 Bass processor/ART DSP II preamp/ MXL 770 &990/ Yamaha RM50 Drum Brain,Custom Mesh head Kit/ rack "O" toyz......And ONE BIG VIsa bill
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noldar12
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 05, 11 11:45 PM
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Am in an untreated room also... but at some point planning on changing that... Another great site (don't recall the exact address) is GIK Acoustics. <edit> Guess it would be more accurate to say "a known good company, with a very useful site"
post edited by noldar12 - October 05, 11 11:47 PM
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Crg
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 06, 11 7:55 AM
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In a room that small, do yourself a favor and deaden the entire room. The arguements will be endless about this subject. You're going to be chasing echos that are going to reflect, re-reflect, combine, change and become undefinable noise. Every time you change the room by redirecting the reflections you will be left with another variant of the same noise. It's never pretty and it's never cheap. It's a complicated science and when you're in a room that doesn't allow space for dissipation of the wave before reflecting again, you wind up chasing ghosts.
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bapu
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 06, 11 2:15 PM
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PGShadow, I laid about $400 into home made baffles (4'x4' cloud above mixing position), side baffles, rear wall baffles and baffles behind speakers. That tamed about 3db of the wild variations I was having. Then I got IK MUltimedia's ARC system. Best $ I ever spent. That's not to say that the best that can be done (within your budget) to treat the room is not wasted. By all means it can only help. But ARC has definitely helped me to hear the "truth" in my mixes.
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bitflipper
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 06, 11 3:36 PM
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I read the OP to mean there is an issue with sound isolation after the addition of a subwoofer. Bass traps and other absorbers are going to do very, very little to contain low frequencies within the room. The best solution for preserving marital contentment is to use the footswitch that came with the subwoofer to turn it off most of the time, only bringing in the sub for occasional checks of the low end (and warning the wife ahead of time). In a 10'x11' room, the sub will likely cause more problems than it solves anyway.
 All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to. My Stuff
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PGShadow
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 08, 11 12:51 AM
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Thank for all the input folks. I dont think I'll be padding the whole room, I read someplace doing that would suck the mids & highs right out of the room. Bitflipper, I'd better check the box the sub came in...I dont think there was a bypass switch in there...good idea thou. The whole reason I bought the sub was, when mixing with just the yamaha HS50(set flat) I found I was pushing the bottom too hard...sounded like an awesome mix in Sonar, but after converting to mp3 the bass was way too muddy and in your face. Now the sub is turned up just alittle bit louder than it should be, just to force me to pull the lows. Low end mixing & EQing of Kick and Bass is where I focus most of my time trying to get that "tight/punchy" bottom end. Still a work in progress. PS Just ordered 64sq' of 2.5 eggcreate and 2" wedges, aswell as 16' of bass traps
Gateway FX/intel i7-860/ 8gig DDR3/ 1TB Drive/Win7-64/ Sonar 8.5Pro/X1Pro/X2Pro w/QF308/Tascam US-1641/Yamaha HS-50 Monitor's & HS-10sub/ Digitech GnX3 guitar processor/ Digitech BP100 Bass processor/ART DSP II preamp/ MXL 770 &990/ Yamaha RM50 Drum Brain,Custom Mesh head Kit/ rack "O" toyz......And ONE BIG VIsa bill
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PGShadow
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 08, 11 2:07 PM
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Bupa, thanks for the ARC link. I think thats what Ive been looking for.
Gateway FX/intel i7-860/ 8gig DDR3/ 1TB Drive/Win7-64/ Sonar 8.5Pro/X1Pro/X2Pro w/QF308/Tascam US-1641/Yamaha HS-50 Monitor's & HS-10sub/ Digitech GnX3 guitar processor/ Digitech BP100 Bass processor/ART DSP II preamp/ MXL 770 &990/ Yamaha RM50 Drum Brain,Custom Mesh head Kit/ rack "O" toyz......And ONE BIG VIsa bill
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Crg
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 08, 11 8:20 PM
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I'd say that would work if you weren't dealing with a subwoofer. It'll help.
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mudgel
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 09, 11 4:28 AM
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I can attest to how well ARC works in an untreated room. Mind you treated would always be better than untreated but if you can't for some reason it's not the end of the world. Products like ARC can do digitally what room treatment does mechanically. Yoou've mentioned the width and length of your room but don't forget that the height of the room is equally important in considering how you treat it.
post edited by mudgel - October 09, 11 4:31 AM
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slartabartfast
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 09, 11 2:10 PM
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You're going to be chasing echos that are going to reflect, re-reflect, combine, change and become undefinable noise. Not only will you have a confusing set of echoes, but the frequency reinforcement and cancellation will be different if you move the listener's ears even a very short distance. So when you are finished, you will probably need something like this to appreciate your result.
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jhughs
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 09, 11 3:45 PM
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@slartabartfast - ok, I'll bite: What IS that?
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slartabartfast
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 10, 11 11:04 PM
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Crg
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Re:Acoustic room treatments??
October 11, 11 7:35 AM
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It's a borg assimulation device. Just a gadget joke. The problem with sub-woofer level tones in a small room is that they are going to bounce from any bare wall space, from the floor, from the ceiling. While you might be able to reflect around the space where you sit to edit, the rest of the room in varieing degrees is going to be subject to reflections. If you have a client sitting behind you in the room, he might not be hearing what you hear. Your left with somewhat of a conundrum if he asks you to edit the bass levels that sound fine from your position.
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