Acoustic Celing Tiles

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choke3d
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Acoustic Celing Tiles

Post by choke3d » Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:21 am

So the house we just bought has a bunch of unused acoustic ceiling tiles in a closet. Is it advised to put these on the walls in a small tracking room? What range are they supposed to absorb?
I was thinking about using one or two each on the walls behind my nearfields as well if it seems like something that would work.
Is there anything else to be worried about with these?

myfipie
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Re: Acoustic Celing Tiles

Post by myfipie » Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:54 am

choke3d wrote:So the house we just bought has a bunch of unused acoustic ceiling tiles in a closet. Is it advised to put these on the walls in a small tracking room? What range are they supposed to absorb?
I was thinking about using one or two each on the walls behind my nearfields as well if it seems like something that would work.
Is there anything else to be worried about with these?
Will it work? Yes and no

It will absorb sound, but only the high end and do nothing for the mids and lows. You want to absorb as much of the spectrum as possible.. One thing you could do is stack them together to make a 4" panel and put that on the wall... You will need to pull the facing off the front of each panel. I would also space the panel off the wall 4" to help with the low end and it does seem to pick up more highs due to sound coming in from the sides to the back..

Hope that helps,
Glenn
GIK Acoustics
www.gikacoustics.com

choke3d
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Post by choke3d » Mon Jan 09, 2006 10:52 am

thanks! I assumed they are "targeted" towards high end. I've got some other solutions for corners, so I'll give it a shot.

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Post by drumsound » Mon Jan 09, 2006 10:55 pm

They might be useful on the ceiling to reduce reflection in the drum mics.

myfipie
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Post by myfipie » Tue Jan 10, 2006 3:39 am

drumsound wrote:They might be useful on the ceiling to reduce reflection in the drum mics.
I have done that before and ended up dropping down the ceiling and stuffing the gap (1 foot) with fluffy fiberglass... Works pretty good if money is tight..

Glenn
GIK Acoustics
www.gikacoustics.com

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cwileyriser
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Post by cwileyriser » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:37 am

Sorry to hijack the thread, sort of, but maybe this will apply to your situation too. I was at Lowes today and walked down the acoustical ceiling tiles aisle on my way somewhere else. I took a quick look at the tiles because they looked potentially useful for making studio baffles. There were 24" x 48" mineral fiber ceiling tiles in a few varieties of surface textures, with an overall NRC of 0.55. Of course, there was no data with NRCs across the frequency spectrum. Maybe stack them together or make a 2x4 frame and put one or two on each side and fill the space in between with them as well? I have a huge room (about 1200 square feet) that sounds pretty decent, but some baffles for separation between drums, guitars, bass (hard to do, I guess) would be nice. One thing I'm going to try is setting the amps on old tires (for small amps) or on a piece of plywood (probably will try carpeted on one side and unfinished plywood on the other side) sitting on two tires. Then I was planning to put baffles around the amps.

The ceiling tiles were like $25 or $30 for 10 2x4 tiles. I've also got a bunch of them (brand and NRC unknown ,but probably pretty similar to the home-use stuff at Lowes) scavenged for free that I'd use first, but thought I'd see if anyone else has tried this before spending time and money building something.

Thsnks.

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Ethan Winer
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Post by Ethan Winer » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:04 am

CW,

> baffles for separation between drums <

"Porous" absorbers like ceiling tiles do not give much isolation. For that you need mass, like plywood or MDF. However, you could then cover the wood with tiles so they don't reflect.

--Ethan

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cwileyriser
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Post by cwileyriser » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:42 am

Cool. Thanks.

So basically, for isolation baffles, a good idea might just be to make some 2x4 frames for 4x8 sheets of (blessedly cheap...) MDF and tack on ceiling tiles (or some other material that will help with reflections)?

Maybe use velcro so that the absorbent tiles can be attached or left off?

In my situation, where I've got wood floors and plaster walls, whatever little bit of extra liveliness that might come from using reflective baffles vs. absorbent-covered baffles probably would be negligible though.

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