Weirdest shaped room! Where to even start?

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charmingtedious
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Weirdest shaped room! Where to even start?

Post by charmingtedious » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:39 am

We had no idea how weirdly shaped our room is until we drew it in Google sketchup! It's the basement of our house, meant as a basement apartment.
(Control room is down that hallway.)

We're thinking about layout and treatments, and any ideas/feedback are welcome.
Where the hell are we going to put the rhodes and the pump organ?!? (We record quiet and loud music.)

We were thinking about turning that narrow back corner into a vocal/iso booth, or else getting rid of the washing machine and covering that nook in treatments but...would it be better just to use some mobile panels/curtains?
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Where would you start with treatment? My partner's already gotten some drum sounds he's happy with, mostly using panoramic mics from the front instead of typical overhead placements, but I always like more traditional kinds of placement, so I was thinking the ceiling would be a good place to start to combat comb filtering and overbearing cymbals?

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:17 pm

If that were my room, I'd do the following:

First, figure out where to place the bass traps. I'd get some music (or a test tone in the following link) playing in that room and figure out where the bass buildup spots are in the room. Any spot with a bass buildup should get a bass trap. For more on this technique (and a free test tone you can use), see: http://realtraps.com/lf-noise.htm

Next, I'd create some "sweet spots" for recording with absorption on the ceiling above the sweet spots. This is important for things like drum overheads, acoustic guitars, vocals, etc. and less important for amps. If there are any nearby walls (less then 3-4' away) I'd also put absorption on those walls.

Lastly, I'd have a number of movable panels so you can adjust stuff on the fly, depending on what you are doing that day.

If there is budget for it you can also use diffusion, particularly on large open walls further away than 3-4'.

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Post by charmingtedious » Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:49 am

I found a good deal on some Ready Bags and a local supplier of OC 703, so i will have 10 4" panels split between the live room and the control room. Hopefully that's enough!

Next question is going to be the control room! I have my desk centered between the walls and chair 38% back, but the room has some quirks; It's a rectangle, but with a closet in the back left corner, a sump pump housed in a wood/drywall enclosure in the front right corner, about 28" high and extendng 2 feet out from the walls, and a drywall enclosed HVAC duct running along the corner connecting left wall and the ceiling, which knocks the ceiling height down about a foot for the leftmost 2 feet of the room.


I'll get you a picture so you don't have to imagine it, but should the approach just be to start with measurement and add some traps as symmetrically as possible beginning with the corners, then points of first reflection then ceiling and see how the response changes? Or should I try to hunt down where bass is building up?

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Tue Feb 14, 2012 8:03 am

10 panels between 2 rooms should be enough to begin to hear a difference.... but most likely you will need more (2-3x as many) to really get both rooms under control.

Will look for more info.

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Post by willhouk » Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:31 am

JWL I have a question for you. When you play the bass frequency, how do you figure out where the bass buildup is taking place? Do you walk around the room and listen? Is there a more "scientific" way of doing this like a db meter?
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Post by JWL » Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:17 am

Yes, walk around the room and listen. Or better yet use an SPL meter for more accurate results. The test tone should be filtered pink noise, playing from like 400Hz and down.

For details and the test tone in mp3 format, see this page:
http://realtraps.com/lf-noise.htm

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Post by charmingtedious » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:30 am

A few sketchup images of the control room. Mix desk not to scale, just a placeholder to indicate orientation of the room. White box in corner is the sump pump that can't be moved.
Image
Image
Image

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Post by charmingtedious » Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:38 pm

Update: Here's what we did so far.
Image

Those red panels are 6". I have 2"panels at the first reflections. Haven't installed anything on the ceiling yet, but I have some 1" or 2" big sheets ready to go up.

The room is 7'6" tall and 12'9" by 12'9". If you plug these values into a mode calculator you can see what we'd be up against in an untreated room, but I assume that closet messes it all up.

I've been using RoomEQwizard to try to figure out how the installation of these panels is helping.
Image

But now that I look at it, I am realizing that the biggest issue isn't uneven bass response but terrible comb filtering!

How do i fix this?

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GIK Acoustics
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Post by GIK Acoustics » Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:11 pm

charmingtedious wrote: I've been using RoomEQwizard to try to figure out how the installation of these panels is helping.

But now that I look at it, I am realizing that the biggest issue isn't uneven bass response but terrible comb filtering!

How do i fix this?
Actually, that is likely due to your test set up. When you do your tests, you want to only use one speaker at a time for them.

Your treatment hasn't seemed to change the frequency response too much - but I bet if you looked at the waterfall graphs you'd see a lot more improvement (I'm sure you can hear a big difference, right?). Oh, and ceiling reflection could be giving you a comb filtered like response as well.

You may want to also trap the rear corners as well. The back wall can be a huge offender in bass response. I would try (just to see) perhaps stacking your two red ones on the front wall in the rear corners. If you can hear a large improvement, go for more traps in the rear corners.

Check out our video we did on REW here, it explains how to properly test and view your results: http://www.gikacoustics.com/video_rew_r ... orial.html
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charmingtedious
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Post by charmingtedious » Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:11 am

Thank you for the video! I will generate some waterfall graphs and see if it reveals more of the improvement. I certainly can hear a marked difference.

I added a 4" trap to each of the rear corners, and swapped the 4" traps on the front wall with 6" traps. Comb filtering seems to have vanished. I would really like to figure out what's going between 105 and 130

Image

I tried running a sine wave of each of those frequencies and found a lot of buildup along the window on the top of the front wall. I really dont want to cover that window up! :(

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Post by GIK Acoustics » Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:54 am

If you can hear a lot of buildup towards the top of the wall, perhaps your clouds can do some damage to them. If its possible you can have a friend hold them up while you're in the sweet spot to check if it will help. I would recommend at least 2" thick with a 2" air gap as a minimum for the cloud.
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Post by charmingtedious » Mon Apr 15, 2013 3:39 pm

I found a good deal on some Primacoustic panels for the live room. But they're only 2" deep. Should I save up and get some 4" panels, or will the 2" treatments be helpful?

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Post by GIK Acoustics » Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:17 pm

charmingtedious wrote:I found a good deal on some Primacoustic panels for the live room. But they're only 2" deep. Should I save up and get some 4" panels, or will the 2" treatments be helpful?
In most situations, thicker is ideal. The 2" should be fine for the first few steps of treatment for the live room though.
BTW - I would not recommend recording anything in those nooks like you suggested ages ago. Recording in the open area with separators would probably be best. You could use gobos or Screen Panels (something like this: http://gikacoustics.com/product/gik-aco ... een-panel/) to separate musicians if recording multiple people at once.
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charmingtedious
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Post by charmingtedious » Tue Apr 23, 2013 3:55 pm

Alas the 2" panels are long gone. But thanks for that advice, it confirms what i found from experimenting with different setups, which is always a good feeling. We're using those nooks for shelving now.

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Post by charmingtedious » Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:54 am

Because I wasn't happy with low end that cut off around 60hz, I upgraded my monitors this week to some Mackie HR824s, with a passive radiator. And: Oh no. I can tell that the high end is already more detailed and mids are spacious, but....the room response issues are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than what I was dealing with before. Comb filtering up the wazzu. Big notch at 90hz for some reason.

Should I just pull all the panels out and start from scratch?

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