Sound isolation in a small 17x12 room...
Home > Home Recording Forum > Recording Techniques > Sound isolation in a small 17x12 room...
Posted on Jan 18, 2007 11:19 pm
[ins]anarchist
Master of the Obvious?
Member Since: Jun 29, 2004
I live in an apartment and practice with my band in a single-room practice space, so obviously, my options for recording loud things like drums are kind of limited! That said, I would assume the second best thing to a great big awesome room is a nearly to completely dead room, so at least you have some control over the sound. If so, I'd obviously be going for the latter in my practice space.
My question is, would purchasing some sort of movable sound-deadening walls be an intelligent solution to my problem, along with the obvious carpet/foam/etc. on the walls? Or is there a better way to isolate the monitoring section from the recording section of the practice space? OR, should I be shopping around for a decent free recording space (do they exist?)
[ Back to Top ]
Jan 19, 2007 12:43 am In a 17 X 12 room, I think it would depend on how much equipment you're going to try to cram into the space at one time. If you're going to try to fit a large drum kit, a few guitar amps, keyboards, and your DAW to boot, you may run out of room for movable walls! It comes down to your organizational skills at this point.
On free recording space: I must chuckle at that.
Jan 19, 2007 07:52 am Haha, yeah I really didn't think there was any way they give that sort of thing away, but I figured I'd ask! I meant more along the lines of my grandma's farm's machine shed/barn or something I might already have and just haven't thought of it yet.
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jan 19, 2007 10:00 am My live room is close to that size, and I've already felt the 'room pinch'. I wish I could have doubled the size, but my basement is only so big, and I'm not the only one living here . . . =).
Carpet won't do much more than deaden the highs, and those usually won't be the problem. Dense foam is your friend, and maybe the rockwool or rigid fiberglass (mind the fibers).
If you treat the room well, and get good tracking, you won't need to worry about getting a good mix environment, because the tracks will already be in pretty good shape. Conversely, if you don't treat the room, and get crappy tracks, you won't be able to fix them no matter how you treat your mix environment.
Garbage in, garbage out, they say.
Jan 19, 2007 11:29 am I didn't know that about carpet, but it makes sense since most carpet-"treated" rooms don't block much bass from getting to the outside world!
I know there are dozens of places to get foam: are there any, shall we say, "innovative" ways to get/make acoustic foam? Say, find a factory that makes foam for some other reason and get the scraps or something haha, or would that dense foam under carpeting work?
p.s. Woo Hoo, I'm a pro member now! :D
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jan 19, 2007 04:22 pm if you're in with a funiture repair guy, or shop, they usually have seat cushion foam, but I don't know if that would stop much low end. I'm thinking not, but it's worth a try.
Dragonorchid was using carpet padding, as that's usually much more dense than normal type foam (non-acoustical). She said it works well.
HuePinnipedal Czar (: 3= Member
Since: Apr 11, 2004
Jan 19, 2007 06:06 pm It is important for me to mention that working with other than ideal conditions, it's about all comprimising in the 'right places', and getting the best sound with what you have to work with .
That said, baffles do come in real handy when recording a live situation... to keep mic-bleed minimized . Office-cubical sections are great for this... we use them with acoustic-foam attached to the surface of it to calm down drum reflections, but rarely for live-recording . One thing I'd keep in mind though, is that you wont want to close-off the mixing enviornment too much, as mixing will mostly be done when peeps aren't performing, and mixing in an area as open as possible would give a bit of room for your KRKs to project, lending to more accurate mixes . You can record with headphones, but y'as got'ta mix with monitors .
Acoustic foam has properties to it that make it more desireable for it's application... density, and shape being paramount . You can build bass-traps for the corners, and hang tapestries, and bookshelves with good effects, but the most noticeable bennefits come with quality materials, placed in the right spots . You don't want a dead room, but you don't want any reflections/reverberation to be louder(more noticeable) than what you're recording .
Also, consider sectioning off a corner of the barn for a vocal booth, which can double as an amp-micing area... another thing we did that has made quite a diffference .
.02
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Jan 19, 2007 08:20 pm You don't really want a completely dead room. You simply want to control the amount of absorption and reflected sound. That can be done with anything from blankets and pillows, furniture, shelves and what not. And the best used if money allows is the studio type foam. Many different types are available to either absorb, reflect or simply tame the sound of the room.
