help on acoustic treatments needed

[anne]

Hi All - well, the building is up , sheetrock and insulated, powered, heated, and the flooring is down. Paint is on the walls and some treatment is applied to the peak of the ceiling. My question is this - is it better to treat with acoustic materials before arranging furniture etc (i.e. going by room calculations) or is it better to put all of my gear in there first then treat it a little at a time? My preference is for the latter - I just wanted to check before buying any more materials. Thanks in advance - I'm anxious to get recording again soon!

[mazz]

I'm no expert but I'd say get the gear and furniture in there and then start treating. You may need to tweak the locations of things before you settle on the final setup anyway.Just my $0.02Congrats on getting the studio to this point, pretty exciting news!!!Mazz

[ragani]

Hi Anne,I'm no expert either, but I'm in agreement with Mazz. I haven't built a studio like the one you're talking about, but I do have a friend who built his own mastering studio (with floating floors and all). Makes sense to get all the equipment in place that you'll be using, as that will also have an effect on the sound, and then adding acoustic treatment bit by bit as needed. Sound after all, is the reason for the studio, so listening as you go and moving things about to their best position might take a little doing, but will surely land the best result. Good luck to you! Do post pictures so we can see your new studio when you're done! Congratulations on your new building! Raags

[milfus]

yeah, providing thats the permanent place for the equiptment it would be better to do your sound treatment last, other wise youd get reflections and bass traps from the furniture and equiptment that you didnt calculate for, you might try putting in the more permanent stuff and then treating it and then putting in the rest, or just doing it all after, I was just thinking along the lines of a cabinet or something pretty large being moved after you specifically treated an area for it, might effect the empty area now that the cabinet was gone, cause too much reduction is as bad as not enough sometimes

[justinatrecording]

Hey Anne,Congrats on building a studio. Very cool. I don't know anything about your room size, layout, design, or purpose. However, the thing that is really important in any studio is speaker placement. There are many guidelines and ideas about speaker placement, and planning placement is a critical part of your layout. If, for example, your speakers are sitting in the middle of a node in the room, all of the acoustic treatment in the world will just be a band-aid to the larger problem.Aside from that, planning for low frequency absorption is really important. The majority of your bass traps need to be in corners, if not all of the corners. Bass traps are bulky and need volume to work. I would always suggest planning as much out ahead of time as possible. When I've done consulting for some smaller studios, the addition of bass traps (because we're usually trying to fix some low frequency problems) is often a problem because suddenly a couch or table doesn't fit into a corner now that the bass trap is taking up space. Annoying little things like that. Furniture will always affect the sound of a room, but it's often not that problematic. Things like couches actually help quite often. Something like a big rack of gear might cause a high frequency reflection and imaging problems, but this is something that is solved with placement rather than acoustic treatment.Hope this helps.Cheers,Justin

[mazz]

Anne,I bought some DIY stuff from Ready Acoustics: http://www.readyacoustics.com/If you have a line drawing of your room you can send it to them and they can recommend some treatment options. I've found them to be the least expensive, from my research, anyway. They may want to know where things are placed in your room but, in any case, contacting them might be a good place to begin. They don't charge for consultation as far as I can remember.Have fun,mazz