When I first emptied my recording room and installed a wooden platform, my instruments sounded "like cannons." Then I began to put 705 panels in place...which toned it down quite a bit. My tracks are sounding cleaner and tighter. However, when I am playing on the platform with other musicians, I sometimes find it difficult to hear them just a few feet away...especially singers. I'm not sure if this is due to sound absorption/lack of reflection or if I am experiencing some phase cancellation! This is driving me crazy and it makes it very difficult to sing harmony parts (I'm pitchy at best, anyhow). Maybe I have everything too centered in the room. Any ideas? Thanks!

Mr. Tracy

do you have a layout of the room and treatments? maybe a photo or two?

Sorry for the roughness of this sketch. If you can't make heads or tails of it, I'll update later.




Since this pic was taken, I removed the ceiling fan and in it's place hung two more 705 panels at varying heights.

No, get rid of the platform. My room is about the same size as yours (small) for what we are hoping we can get out of it,some things just don't work out. I screwed some ply to the concrete floor to create a reflective wood sound that works very well with some things and sucks with others so I've got a rug that covers it when not in use. It's setup to play to the long of the room but the fact is even with as much treatment as you can put in there (it did help mine), it's still going to be the same size. Just experiment and try to find the best situation for you. Keep us posted!

Do you have anyway to use a monitor while playing with other musicians? I know its not as good as hearing them naturally but it might be better than what you have. How tall is the riser? That looks like a big yard BTW. Must be fun.

Nick

quote:

Do you have anyway to use a monitor while playing with other musicians?

I do have a little four channel headphone mixer. I may resort to that when we are doing something critical. In the meantime, I may try to mess around more with placement of the singers so they can at least hear each other well enough to blend. The good news is, my tracks sound better with the treatment up. But, I know I won't be happy unless we can hear each other well enough to get some mojo working.

I like my platform, but I've been thinking I might just pull up the carpet and lay down laminate flooring. I also was thinking about taking the absorption off the ceiling except for my mixing area...and then spending some dough on auralex ceiling diffusers.

I have a friend who made a small studio out of a 12x24 portable shed. It sounds freaking great to pick in. As I recall, the only absorption he has in his room are corner panels. He has fiberglass diffusers on the ceiling and a very cool poly deflector in the middle of one long wall. The surface is covered in strips of wood running from the ceiling to the floor. I don't know the construction details, but he also has a raised floor which covers the entire room, except where the door swings in.

Not being an expert but having a room of similar dimension that has undergone extensive treatment, I have a couple thoughts.

You might find that you have too much high frequency absorption. Particularly that matress and the sofa.

If I have to guess, when you're playing you're often quite close to a wall? And the other players are often close to another wall? So the HF and MF may be getting lost there since you're walls are quite absorptive.

Also, in a room that small the attempt to diffuse the sound with bookshelves is ill-advised. Diffusors need a pretty good space to adequately accomplish the job. Standing near one may muck up the ability to hear what's going on because of comb-filtering.

You could make some reflective panels of plywood to set at useful places to bring back some M/H F content. Plywood won't reflect too much LF so it's a good candidate, I believe.

Also, these questions would be good to ask at Ethan Winer's Acoustics forum at musicplayer.com.

Aric,

The suggestions in your post make sense. I may begin by peeling back a layer of absorption here and there. I am also going to look over Ethan's site and perhaps post there.

I may be right or not... but here's what I did in my room:



I also have a lot of pictures documenting the whole process on my site.

Basically, I totally covered most of the ceiling and rear wall, and then created modular hanging panels and two large rolling panels that have plywood on one side and absorption on the other so I could change the room acoustics as needed.

I have tile floors, too, so it sounded like an empty swimming pool when I started!