OT: acoustic foam question

I'm going to be working on a project for a few months that will have me temporarily relocating my entire studio setup into a converted garage space....cement walls, large and empty, VERY echo-y as it is. I have some nice Auralex wedge panels I'll be bringing with me, but not nearly enough to treat this entire space...so I'm looking at some cheap/quick fix options. I have no illusions about putting together a mastering-quality studio here...just need enough as that I can get relatively neutral results when tracking and rough mixing.

going to get a cheap/ugly carpet for the floor, use up the panels I have in the immediate vicinity of my DAW, but beyond that, any suggestions for treating a large space like this? One option I've considered is these guys, who I'm sure a lot of you have seen on eBay:

Foam Factory

anyone have any experience with them?

and how about mounting foam on concrete walls? planned on using the adhesive spray...but will I be able to take the foam back off after a couple of months without leaving sticky foam patches all over the walls?

and any suggestions on the (also concrete) ceiling?

Sorry this is so OT....not really sure where to ask a question like this. If anyone knows of other more traditional recording oriented forums, tell me where to go and I'll shut up.

I just bough some foam and adhesive from these guys and they have quality stuff and service. I did as Ohley stated and glued them to 2 2'x7' and 1 4'x7' pieces of plywood. Looks and works great. I put removable hinges on the wood so I can breakdown and move as needed.

I worked in a similar environment for a while and we tried the whole foam and blanket thing. It definitely helped a little, but it still needed much, much more treatment.

I'd do what Chrisma said and mount the foam to some plywood. Make some baffles out of them and place them around the room to offset some of the parallel surfaces.

Make sure you're putting some in the corners as bass traps.

You could also mount/hang some fabric wrapped 4" rigid insulation panels around the room on the walls/ceiling. You can pick them up at your local home cheapot or hardware store.

check out www.johnlsayers.com He's got some great plans on there for some relatively inexpensive panels and absorbers. Im in the process of building these myself. It's a bit of construction, but as others can attest, they work well.

-r

There've been a lot of threads about this, you should do some searches. I copied the info below from a post I made a while back and edited it some...


....
Regular packing type foam (like in a road crate) is acoustically transparent - won't do you any good. Likewise with foam mattress pads, etc.

The proper treatments are expensive, but well worth it, you obviously know this...

I have 3M Thinsulate Acoustic Insulation on my ceiling. This stuff is awesome but very hard to get (and expensive). Contact www.lesteracoustics.com for pricing, etc. (their web site seems to be dead now - I guess you could call 3M and find out if there's another distributor. It’s really good stuff.

I have a very small room that I record in, on my walls I took a unique approach that I think works very well and would also work well in your big empty space. I used a very dense, thick foam product that seems to have good sound absorption qualities but does not absorb everything. Its primary purpose is thermal foam. If you can spend a few bucks, contact www.armacell.com to see if they have a distributor in your area for their Armaflex products, specifically the 1.5" thick 3'x4' sheets of Armaflex. Around here I can buy a box of 4 sheets for around $135US. This is great stuff. It comes either finished on one or both sides - you want only one side finished so that you have a rough side to face out into the room. If you end up with the product that has both sides finished, you can use an orbital sander with 40 grit paper to remove the smooth finish and expose the roughness of the foam (slow going, takes about 30 minutes per sheet). This is a very dense foam product that you can find a lot of uses for around a recording studio. I hung the sheets around the walls spaced several inches apart (with the rough side facing into the room). Although at first I didn’t think I’d need anything else, I have found that I need to put some Auralex 1 foot squares wedgies on the 3x4 sheets, 2, 3, or 4 wedgies on each one. These sheets could also be mounted on plywood and positioned around as needed.

I also ordered some 1 ½” eggcrate foam from The Foam Factory, directly from them, not from eBay. It’s OK, but not great. The 2 ½” would probably be much better. It’s not as good as the Auralex wedgies, but it covers a lot of space fast.

You can see the results here

Notice the 3M TAI on the ceiling, the 3x4 Armaflex sheets on the walls and the Auralex wedgies on the Armaflex... you can also see the cheaper Foam Factory foam on the on the Armaflex over the door and on the top of the Armaflex over my head (I'm sitting down). I also have a sheet of the Armaflex that hangs with velcro from the sheet over the door and a section on a wood frame that sits against the lower half of the door - don't know why it's not in place in the photo, guess we were warming up!

Fred

Back in the 70's, my band needed a practice place and we ended up with a basement with concrete everywhere except the ceiling. As there wasn't as much nice acoustics mod material around as now and we couldn't afford much of what was, we ended up using 16" X 16" cardboard egg flats with a rough, not "finished", surface on them. We tacked them up with rubber cement, layed a carpet on the floor and draped burlap across the ceiling. Worked out pretty well. If you played a note on a guitar, it almost fell out of the amp onto the floor. Pretty flat for very cheap.

Wow! Ethan say it ain't so! Well it may not be the Auralex but I really can tell a MAJOR diffence in my room. Just having the panels the whole is much quieter. I just record vocal and wanted less of the room in my mic. Seems to have helped a lot. So what kind of foam is it? Would it be as good as blanklets or better?

ORIGINAL: fwblack

Chrisma,
Like I said in my post, I have both Auralex and some foam from the Foam Factory folks. There is a difference in the way it looks and feels. Before I got real acoustic foam, I used egg crate packing foam and it's useless... the Foam Factory foam seems to be better than packing foam, but not nearly as good as Auralex foam.

Fred

Thanks Fred and Ethan. It would be pretty easy to upgrade. The adhesive does a great job of holding the panels on the wood but also removes pretty easily. I'm happy with what I got for now. But that I'll definately be looking at the Auralex in the future.

thanks for all the continued input, guys.

and especially thank you to Ethan....your website is EXACTLY what I needed to read. And I will take your advice and avoid the Foam Factory guys....I had a feeling it seemed a little sketchy (price they were asking vs. specs they were presenting), and as someone who knows a lot more than I do about acoustic treatments, I'll take your word on it and stick with better known brands...probably just stick with Auralex, since I've had such good results with their panels in my current studio.