Lookin to kill flutter in my dorm room.

[Ethan Winer]

Joel,

> We can get away with materials that poop out below 100 hz because normal wall and floor construction is absorptive in the low end <

Just to clarify, standard sheet rock reflects enough to cause real problems down to at least 40 Hz. You are correct that walls reflect even more at higher bass frequencies, but the notion that you don't need any absorption below 100 Hz is incorrect. I have a "test lab" within a typical sized sheet rock room - 16 by 11-1/2 by 8 feet - and the 35 Hz mode is very strong and the peaks and nulls down there are substantial.

--Ethan

[ScienceOne]

Vassar, actually. Good guess.

Haha, stealing acoustical tile isn't the worst idea.

[I'm Painting Again]

Vassar, actually. Good guess.

Haha, stealing acoustical tile isn't the worst idea.

either that or the blankets or seek to get permission to use a space that is acoustically pleasing for what your doing, i.e., if you can sacrafice the proximity of living area to your work area and get the permit..

[fremitus]

now it seems like everyone's talking about sound absorbtion here. and there were plenty of excellent suggestions, but i was thinking about standing waves when you said flutter. if i am coorrect in assuming that you are in a very rectangular box of a room, then one very big thing to note is the parallel surfaces. with whatever acoustic treatment you go for, try to use them efficiently to break up the long flat walls that face each other. it won't take a lot to do this reasonably. consider where your mic source generally is and attack the surrounding visible areas. get some angles in there. diffuse the sound instead of absorbing it. use the room to your advantage if at all possible. too many dry tracks these days anyway...

dix

[joelkriske]

ethan-

you are correct...

but if my intuition is correct...
this is about killing fluttler in the room, and basstraps aren't necessarily going to fit into the equation of a quick fix for a dorm room.
no?

[ScienceOne]

Also, this is my main mix environment when I can't get to my classical guitar teacher's basement studio off-campus. I guess pulling my mattress off and setting it behind me at an angle will help with that a bit.

You guys are great for giving me all of these suggestions. These old New England schools all seem to have really high ceilings, I was thinking I could stick some foam up there with a broom, I don't know much more to do for that. I obviously wanna keep the room from being dead since I will do SOME recording in it, plus a dry chamber just sucks to be in.

[soundguy]

science-

if you are trying to make a good listening environment, you have your work cut out for you, especially if you want to do it on a non-permanent basis. If you are just trying to make recordings in there and you dont want the room sound, you can manipulate blankets on stands around the mic, this way the mic doesnt hear the whole room, just the space between it and the blankets which you have established. This is a)non permanent and b) very easy to manipulate. No it wont be perfect, but it you can EQ a little, you should be able to dial in something really nice. I lived in new england rooms for four years and know the story and thats my best advice, see if it works for you.

dave

[AASteveo]

I live in a dorm, too and I don't have much trouble. Simple because I have tons of crazy crap on the wall. Just general decorations do a lot of good.

Posters, whiteboards, tackboards, bookshelves, neon lights, stuffed animals, etc. I personally like the textile posters the best. They cover a lot of area and the cloth helps for echo.

Anyways, all you have to do is make sure you don't have lots of hard, flat surfaces all over. Make sure that nothing is symmetrical or parallel. You will get nasty reverberations back and forth if two flat surfaces are facing each other. Try to be as random as possible when putting things on the wall.

The draping a blanket over some chairs idea is great too. You can just put them up when you record.

But the best thing to do is just take your mic and record part of a song on your boombox or something. Make sure it is a constant source. Record this once the way your room is now. Then change some things and record it the same way with the mic and stereo in the same spot. Keep changing things around and see which one you like the best. Experimentation is the best way to make anything work.

Hope this helps. I'm not a pro or anything, but I always strive for the cheapest answer possible. Gotta represent the broke college kid!

[fuckface]

i used to steal acoustic tile from various ceilings when I was in school..free and effective..

one square at a time...

[dayvel]

Foam by Mail has an eBay store-
http://stores.ebay.com/Foam-Factory-Inc ... idZ2QQtZkm
where you can get some good deals. Check out the 2.5 inch "eggcrate" foam in 80" by 72" sheets. It's $34.99 with free shipping. It has an excellent fire rating and is light enough to be held up by push-pins. Treat two adjacent walls (you don't have to cover the whole wall) to break up the flutter. One sheet ought to help a lot. A rug will help break up reflections between the floor and ceiling.

[ScienceOne]

Yeah, I'm shooting to have tons of stuff in there to help diffuse sound. I own so much shit that I don't think I'd have a choice anyway.

Dayvel, I saw those Foam By Mail folks. It's so damn cheap! Have you used any of their products? Any good (compared to other foam)?

[dayvel]

I haven't used anything I can compare it to, I just noticed that they had a fairly good rep. The price and the fire rating sold me on it. I bought two sheets of the stuff but I've barely touched the second one.

I had a little flutter and some high end ring in my room and this stuff fixed it right up, so I'm pretty happy with it.

[Ethan Winer]

Joel,

> this is about killing fluttler in the room, and basstraps aren't necessarily going to fit into the equation of a quick fix for a dorm room. no? <

Right, I was just addressing your comment about the absorption of walls below 100 Hz.

--Ethan

[MT]

I'd suggest hot glue for putting things up in your room, as an alternative to pins. My roommate and I got into the habbit of gluing up beer cans to the walls and ceiling as they were emptied when I was in school. The glue pops right off when you need it too. Maybe test an area first to make sure.

MT

[psychicoctopus]

ScienceOne:

consider chopped polyurethane foam for carpet padding... it looks psychedelic and it's only $3 per square yard at Home Despot. I just bought a 6x5 foot piece of "8 lb" carpet padding for an experiment. It's made of mostly smurf blue chunks mixed with dark blue, red, yellow, white, and sick green. I stapled one edge of the padding to a 1x2 and hung it from the ceiling about 2" away from my wall. It's hanging in sheetrock with toggle bolts. I can feel the deadness emanating from it. This is a good thing in my case.

As I understand it, leaving an air gap between the pad and the wall pushes absorption down to lower frequencies. That's why I hung it 2" from the wall. Still, it doesn't seem to be absorbing bass or low mids.

Total cost, $13.00