Nothing wrong with Burlap if you get quality material it should be odourless, I use dyed burlap which I treat with a fire retardant. The open weave breathability and neutrality of its fibers make it ideal for use in studios.
$300 is rather modest for treatment costs IMO but if you just need a few absorber panels and will DIY, not unthinkable (I have a few thousand invested in sound treatment - but a purpose built Project studio is not everyones goal )
Apart from the burlap comment your advice is sage, and on the money so to say
The breathability is it’s chief benefit, true. The ATS place I use sells better quality burlap that doesn’t smell; the fabric shop I bought mine from only had one choice and boy did it STINK!
You got me thinking about one thing, BriHar: maybe the low-ball $300 suggestion is bad advice. I found that once I started down the road of effective room treatment, I really needed to follow it to the end, to where I had achieved consistent and even results. In may case, I spent quite a bit more than $500, and I still have some work to do. However, some think it’s superfluous altogether, so what do I know
It’s important to buy the burlap BEFORE the potatoes have been shipped in it. I’ve have a bolt of the stuff here in an off white, it looks and smell great, priced right too.
As far as sound containment is concerned i am very, very, very interested in recording a treatable lead vocal…very, very interested in recording a treatable acoustic guitar…and very interested in “everything else” but maybe not so much…My room is my living space: a small cubicle bachelor pad…with a door to the bathroom and a hallway leading to the exit door—it’s claustrophobic down there, tight…i will burlap that
space to hell to get my dry vocal sound—( i can’t let ambiance dictate the vocal art—vocals being number one in
any " song "…and the treatment of the vocal is part of the vocalist’s signature) …and to get a dry acoustic guitar sound—number one also, eh ?..what else is there for me?..nothing, it’s all into the interface or
controller from here…
Oh! will it be so bad to mix down with Monitors in a mostly untreated room?..Maybe i’m wrong—one has to be a failure in some way…besides, i’ll use a variety of sources for playback, each one of the valid in the world of people listening to music…
So yeah, people who walk into my room will instantly find themselves in a vocal booth…and a potato festival.
“Oh! will it be so bad to mix down with Monitors in a mostly untreated room?..”
Well, yes. Although like everything else it’s a matter of degree - mixing down with monitors in a MOSTLY untreated room will be slightly better than mixing down with monitors in a COMPLETELY untreated room, and so on. It’s all a matter of how much money and time (eg, learning about it) you want to put into it.
It is however true that if you spend $1000 on fancy monitors and set them up in an space that is completely or largely untreated, you are wasting money. You would probably get the same result with $400 monitors and then be able to buy yourself a fancy soft synth. This is just the way it works. There is nothing WRONG with not being able to completely treat your recording/mixing space the way a professional setup would be. That’s where most people are at - it is just financially or physically impossible. It is important however to understand the tradeoffs involved and plan appropriately - eg, spending $1000 is not likely going to “make up” for having a largely imperfect space. You might better spend some of the money elsewhere in that case (eg, mics, instruments, software, etc).
Just so nobody gets the wrong idea, Burlap is not a treatment but rather just a covering over the treatment. Typically this will consist of a rigid fiberglass panel 80 - 100 mm thick usually afixed to a wooden frame and then covered in a breatheable fabric - typically burlap.
See the panels and “clouds” in Twighlights Studio photos. http://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=209&t=47223#p291003
In my case the walls themselves are filled with fiberglass and rockwool and covered in dyed burlap (yes the walls are soft).
My DIY panels are frames filled with rockwood/OC703 , wrapped with black weed barrier cloth (very cheap, porous for sound, yet holds all the dust associated with the rockwool/OC703, this may be overkill, but gives piece of mind), then cosmetically fronted with frames of stretched Burlap…the burlap could be replaced with lots of different fabric. The burlap gave me a neutral look at an agreeable cost.
OMG this is serious—thanks to posters…by peer pressure alone i’m forced to rethink this…
I have a high ceiling…i notice a lot of hard wall in between how high it is and how high i can
reach—that is, how high i can post chord charts and lyrics and drawings…it’s like a square hat going 'round the room: 3 feet of free cement wall, then the ceiling…so i’ll put horizontal bass traps everywhere up there !!!
…the entire ceiling will be bordered by BIG bass traps !!!..that should cut into the ambiance—dry
like a martini…But seriously, i think this is a good opportunity for sound control in my room…good idea?
As for the walls…do sheets upon sheets of paper make a difference ? I reason that the space in between the
wall and all the papers posted on it might do some absorbing of sound, catch some reflections—true?..the walls are everywhere covered in paper.
I am no expert on accoustic treatment, but I doubt wallpaper does much for your sound. If it absorbs anything it’ll be high frequencies only and not by much.
Does your space happen to be carpeted? Beacuse if it’s not I can guarantee you are going to get some echo echo echo…so think about that too too too too too lol.
Yeaaaaaah Man, lol…hey?..are we at the Grand canyon? Hello?..yes, and a very hard carpet at that
—but lots of litter on it.
The craftsman who did the ceiling, however, did those curlicues with the plaster—it nothing, but
what can you do about the ceiling?..i’m willing to attack that huge surface—but what would stick ?
…seriously, isn’t the ceiling the worst reflector ?
High ceilings are good! Carpets generally are not!
First you have to set out your goals. Soundproofing (preferably referred to as isolation) is extremely expensive and requires great deals of Mass and airtight sealing, and is thus usually out of the question for most except professionals with large budgets.
Most require only room treatment, as for many, the room in question is simply being adapted and very often is also a bedroom, rather than being built for purpose.
Decide too what your purpose is, the requirements for a recording studio are much different than a control room or mixing studio. For many of us we need to do all of the above in a single room - a so called Project Studio - in which case you may run accross the term “live end dead end” among others.
The answer to your question regarding paper is no - similarly forget any notions you may have heard regarding egg cartons!
There are numerous types of treatment from absorbers through traps and resonaters to diffusors. The absorber treatment is usually the most common. Being the cheapest and easiest to build, they are ideal for those on a restricted budget. Absorber panels when hung horizontally from the coeling are called clouds. The diffusor category should only be considered if you have a large space at your disposal.
First thing to do is make a ground plan of the room with accurate measurements, and then use one of the many room mode calculators to give you an idea of the frequencies that are going to be problematic and where. The plan may also help in working out reflection vectors.
Next decide upon orientation. Usually you’ll want the audio firing down the length of the room as opposed to across the width. Decide upon your Listening position and test this position with your ears or using a room profiling software (I recommend REW as it’s very effective, and FREE Optoma | Home Theater Forum and Systems)
and then consider the best position for your treatments.
Thanks for more good news—are we saying not to treat the ceiling ? Yes, this ceiling is high–it would please
me to look up and say " You’re doing your job "…without clouds
You got me: I was going to mention egg cartons next !!!
Room sound is a topic i hadn’t considered…but, thanks to a poster early in this thread, the topic is now: What
can i do with the small cubicle i live in ?..a good challenge
Your post had a funny aspect:
"…Most require only room treatment, as for many, the room in question is simply being adapted and very often is also a bedroom, rather than being built for purpose. Decide too what your purpose is, the requirements for a recording studio are much different than a control room or mixing studio. For many of us we need to do all of the above in a single room - a so called Project Studio - in which case you may run across the term “live end dead end” among others. "
Is a bedroom not built for a purpose ??? Mine is a home, eh ??? My indoor life is all in here…I do everything
in it…It’s small—Maybe that is a bonus…i can’t say there is any inherent echo at all…but then, when
i sing, i must admit, i know ( eyes closed ) where i am…one just has to be sonically observant—no doubt an
acquired skill i’ll be acquiring more of…yeah, all purpose bedroom, eh ?
Thanks again for the wisdom BriHar—the high ceiling is ok right ?
Yes of course a bedroom is built for the purpose of being a bedroom. My point was that most nonprofessional musicians, engineers, producers etc. do not or cannot afford the luxury of having a room specifically designed and treated for acoustics, therefore have to make do with what they have.
A high ceiling as I mentioned is usually good, and if you have a carpeted floor, then a reflective i.e. untreated ceiling may be ok - at least for a recording point of view - a mixing area may still want clouds. Typically a (recording) studio will have a treated ceiling and a reflective floor simply because the distance between your ears and the floor is a reference constant for your brain, whereas ceilings can vary in height. Check out some of the resources I mentioned if you want to get deeper into this.
Only by acoustically testing the room can you be sure of it’s qualities.
Try this simple experiment. Generate (Cubase signal generator is ok) a single sine frequency (say something between 150Hz - 500 Hz) and send it preferably to a single loudspeaker in the room. Now walk around the room slowly and you will notice there are certain places where the tone sounds louder, and others where it sounds very faint (maybe even seeming to disappear altogether). These are nodes and antinodes resulting from standing waves. Obviously you don’t want these to occur at the place where you choose to listen otherwise you won’t be hearing it correctly and will tend to falsely EQ or otherwise compensate. To flatten the frequency response for at least a given position in the room is the goal of acoustic room design and the reason we apply different treatments. Absorbers help in that - they “absorb” sound energy, Too much however and the room will sound too dead. They also help cut down on relections, so need to be placed strategically.
You say:
Unfortunately a microphone is not possessed of this “skill”. It will be your job to ensure that the recordings, when played back in entirely different environments convey the necessary acoustic (psychoacoustic) information - something called translation. This will be exceedingly difficult if you overcompensate for deficiencies in the recording environment.
This subject is vast, and we’re only touching it lightly here. Again, the resources referred to previously should make this much clearer.
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I’ve have a bolt of the stuff here in an off white, it looks and smell great, priced right too.