Help Me Understand Room Treatment

[Jag94]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of either building or buying panels for room treatment, and I'm so lost. I spent literally years researching and building my studio to make it sound isolated (sound proof), but i haven't really done the research for acoustics. What little research I have done, has my brain in a pretzel.

When it comes to wall panels, ceiling clouds, corner bass traps, etc., I have so many questions and feel like I've seen so many conflicting "facts" on the materials to use for this that I'm just burnt out. Not to mention being burnt out from the research and building of the studio itself. But at the same time I'm broke. I used every penny I had to build this studio, and while I'd love to pay someone to just tell me what to do, I don't have that option. So I've come to you all who hopefully have some insight for me.

I'm not asking for anyone to do my work for me. However, if anyone could point me in the direction of some modern, up-to-date, real world resources that I should be looking at, that would be super helpful. Also, I have some more specific questions that if anyone can help me with, would be a major plus.

Before I get to my questions, here's what I'm dealing with. I'm a drummer. I practice (a lot), I record, and I sometimes have full band rehearsals. I'd say 80% practicing, 15% recording, 5% rehearsals. I'm hoping that as time goes on, the recording percentage goes up (because that means I'm getting paid more to do more recordings), and the practice time percentage will go down. My goal is to make the room mostly dead (although not completely. I will have absorption on 3 of the 4 walls, and on the ceiling (using clouds). The floor is hardwood, and the rear wall (to my back while sitting on the drum kit) will have skyline diffusors (mostly for the look of them, not necessarily for the acoustics).

Ok, my questions.

Panel material - Rigid fiberglass, mineral wool, eco core, earthwool, fluffy pink stuff, etc... what type of material is best for panels, ceiling clouds, bass traps? I've seen data that suggest that OC 703 isn't as good as it used to be (or that the testing has gotten better). I've seen arguments for using fluffy pink stuff, or other types of rigid fiberglass, or mineral wool. There are so many options, what should I be using? Is there a benefit to one or the other for specific spots? Is it just a matter of how much you use? How thick it is? the material I have available to me in my area is pink fluffy (have tons of it still from my build), OC thermafiber (Owen Cornings version of mineral wool), OC 703, Knauf ECOSE Black Acoustical Board, and whatever rigid fiberglass that companies like GIK uses.

Panels frames, should the frames have holes/ports? Should they not? Depends on where they go?

solid backs/no backs - should panels have a solid backing? Should it just be insulation? Combination of both? I've seen some panels that have a solid sheet of wood on the back, and then I've seen posts where people say there shouldn't be a backing at all. Some panels you can buy have a solid back, and some don't.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

[Wheresthedug]

Looks like your post has been live for nearly a month and nobody has responded which is unusual. Stuart (Soundman2020) is normally super helpful but has been silent for over a month hopefully is OK and just super busy.

I will try and help as best I can but I am not particularly knowledgeable compared to others on here.

My first question to you is; why do you want to make the room almost completely dead?

As the main uses for your room involve playing music rather than mixing recordings, you should be aiming for a room that sounds good and pleasing to play in. This is almost never a dead or almost dead room. Think of all of your favourite drum recordings and I’ll bet that al large part of what makes them sound good is the character of the room. For a control room you want a short reverb time and very even controlled frequency response but you don’t need (or even want) this for a live room.

As for materials etc. and resources for information, there is a lot of good stuff on the forum already but a good starting point for other research is Rod Gervais book Home Studio Build It Like The Pros.

How big is your room?

What shape is it ?

Things like this will obviously have an impact on the best way to treat it.

In general, smaller rooms need more treatment (especially for control rooms) to control the bass end. Corners are the best place for treatment. Places where multiple corners meet (floor/ ceiling meet wall corners etc) are even better. OC703 or Rockwool RWA45 should be good and I wouldn’t get too hung up on trying to get perfect. This is basically a live room so you just need to kill the biggest problems without killing the vibe. You should be careful not to use too many absorbers on the walls and ceilings to avoid killing all the high frequencies. When you do use absorption you might want to make sure that some of it is hidden behind reflective surfaces but make sure that these don’t reflect directly at another reflective surface which reflects straight back again as this will cause annoying flutter echos. However, reflecting sound in scattered fashion can help keep the room sounding nice and make it sound bigger than it is without causing ringing.

As I said at the beginning, I am very much a beginner so you should take anything I say as a starting point to investigate further and corroborate it with others who actually know what they are talking about. This can be done by browsing many of the threads in this forum. Pay particular attention to anything Soundman2020 says as he really knows what he is talking about. Hopefully he will chime in on this thread soon and give you some good ideas.