Author Topic: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering  (Read 12363 times)

charzrd

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Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« on: February 10, 2016, 05:49:08 am »
Hey guys,

I was wondering the right technique to properly sound treat a room. I have two JBL Studio monitors and a dorm room, whats the best i can do?

Ferio

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2016, 10:23:05 am »
Hey guys,

I was wondering the right technique to properly sound treat a room. I have two JBL Studio monitors and a dorm room, whats the best i can do?

The biggest improvement you'll see is when you add basstraps to the corners of your room. The second step would be to treat the reflection points and last the ceiling and all between (diffusers etc). 

Now there's several ways to measure your room and some would probably say, download a program which can do room measurement and place according to the results, but those programs are not that good and don't give you the optimal result.

It would be much better if you let someone with the proper equipment measure you room.

Anyway, if you are on a tight budget, just place basstraps in the corners & panel on the reflection points. This will help already a lot.

Edit: Don't fall for the egg foam stuff and put your walls full with them as they really don't do anything.. go for panels. ;-)

GIKacoustics is pretty good and if you want to have good results on a tight budget, make them yourself. It's pretty easy with very good results.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2016, 10:28:16 am by Ferio »

Heatcliff

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2016, 03:12:48 pm »
+1 on GIK Acoustics and co. Forget the foam thins, they don't do anything serious against bass control...

Gabe D

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2016, 05:03:40 pm »
Hey guys,

I was wondering the right technique to properly sound treat a room. I have two JBL Studio monitors and a dorm room, whats the best i can do?

Anyway, if you are on a tight budget, just place basstraps in the corners & panel on the reflection points. This will help already a lot.

Edit: Don't fall for the egg foam stuff and put your walls full with them as they really don't do anything.. go for panels. ;-)


What about the Diamond 12x12 panels? Are they useless like the egg foam?
I've seen 12 packs of the 3" for like $25. Fairly cheap but if they are useless then I might hold off.
Ableton Live 9, Tascam US4x4 Audio Interface, Akai APC Key 25, JBL LSR305s, & Pioneer HRM-07s

charzrd

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2016, 10:10:16 pm »
Hey guys,

I was wondering the right technique to properly sound treat a room. I have two JBL Studio monitors and a dorm room, whats the best i can do?

The biggest improvement you'll see is when you add basstraps to the corners of your room. The second step would be to treat the reflection points and last the ceiling and all between (diffusers etc). 

Now there's several ways to measure your room and some would probably say, download a program which can do room measurement and place according to the results, but those programs are not that good and don't give you the optimal result.

It would be much better if you let someone with the proper equipment measure you room.

Anyway, if you are on a tight budget, just place basstraps in the corners & panel on the reflection points. This will help already a lot.

Edit: Don't fall for the egg foam stuff and put your walls full with them as they really don't do anything.. go for panels. ;-)

GIKacoustics is pretty good and if you want to have good results on a tight budget, make them yourself. It's pretty easy with very good results.

Anything cheaper then these? Serious college budget here lol.

Ferio

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2016, 02:39:15 pm »
What about the Diamond 12x12 panels? Are they useless like the egg foam?
I've seen 12 packs of the 3" for like $25. Fairly cheap but if they are useless then I might hold off.

They fall in the same class. They barely do anything.




Anything cheaper then these? Serious college budget here lol.

Probably, but maybe slightly.

What you can also do is to buy mineral wool yourself and make them.

In my project I used knauf RS-45 100mm for the wall & ceiling panels with a 100mm space between the wall/ceiling and the panel and rockwool deltaplaat 212, 180mm for the corners (superchunks).

Each panel costed me about 25 to 30 euro. I've build 8 for on the walls and 4 on the ceiling.

Check the gearslutz forum, there's plenty of DIY topics there.

This is my build -> http://www.radford.edu/~shelm/acoustics/bass-traps.html

Except I improved the hang method. I didn't do it by wire.

Gabe D

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2016, 05:32:11 pm »
Thanks Ferio. Appreciate the advice.
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Ferio

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2016, 07:23:04 pm »
Thanks Ferio. Appreciate the advice.

Not a problem. I'm not an expert but I've done my research and have read so many topics and watched a ton of videos. The most important things that you need to do first are the bass frequencies, cause that's really killing in your room.

Treating your room really makes a huge improvement, it's better than a ton of plugins or the most expensive stuff.


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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #8 on: February 12, 2016, 09:35:33 pm »
Thinking about this in terms of acoustics might be helpful:

Longer wavelengths of sound can travel through denser material than shorter wavelengths.

When you're acoustically treating a room to make it quiet (so you hear the minimum amount of sound other than what's coming out of your speakers), you're doing two things: absorbing sound, and breaking up sound. Any rough surface breaks up sound better than any flat shiny surface of the same density, which is why it isn't correct to say egg foam won't do anything. Egg foam definitely breaks up sound waves better than a flat, hard wall, so by definition it does something. But egg foam isn't very dense, so the waves it breaks up are only in the very high frequencies. Absorption is much more noticeable, since a sound wave that gets broken up will still bounce around until it reaches your ears while an absorbed sound wave gets absorbed before it hits your ears.

The big heavy panels, being dense, will absorb a lot more of the audio spectrum's waves, in particular its middle and lower ranges that you're used to hearing in dance music. That's why the effect is so much more noticeable.

Your dorm walls might be brick, or they might be drywall over studs. (If they're something else besides those two, let me know.) If you can't tell which they are just by looking at them, knock on them in a few different places. If they're brick, a lot of your work is already done for you and just breaking up the sound hitting the walls will take you farther. If they're drywall, then you'll need something dense to absorb the sound.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2016, 09:38:11 pm by Nadav »

charzrd

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #9 on: February 17, 2016, 07:04:49 pm »
Thinking about this in terms of acoustics might be helpful:

Longer wavelengths of sound can travel through denser material than shorter wavelengths.

When you're acoustically treating a room to make it quiet (so you hear the minimum amount of sound other than what's coming out of your speakers), you're doing two things: absorbing sound, and breaking up sound. Any rough surface breaks up sound better than any flat shiny surface of the same density, which is why it isn't correct to say egg foam won't do anything. Egg foam definitely breaks up sound waves better than a flat, hard wall, so by definition it does something. But egg foam isn't very dense, so the waves it breaks up are only in the very high frequencies. Absorption is much more noticeable, since a sound wave that gets broken up will still bounce around until it reaches your ears while an absorbed sound wave gets absorbed before it hits your ears.

The big heavy panels, being dense, will absorb a lot more of the audio spectrum's waves, in particular its middle and lower ranges that you're used to hearing in dance music. That's why the effect is so much more noticeable.

Your dorm walls might be brick, or they might be drywall over studs. (If they're something else besides those two, let me know.) If you can't tell which they are just by looking at them, knock on them in a few different places. If they're brick, a lot of your work is already done for you and just breaking up the sound hitting the walls will take you farther. If they're drywall, then you'll need something dense to absorb the sound.

My room has sheetrock over the cieling and around the window wall. Then its drywall for the other sides around and wooden floors. Any tips? 

Nadav

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #10 on: February 19, 2016, 02:07:52 am »
Drywall is thin and light. To deaden the sound you need something heavy and dense coated in something fuzzy and uneven, covering as much of the walls as possible. You can't cover the whole wall, but you can be strategic and hang whatever you use in a place where it will catch most of the sound waves that are coming from your monitors and bouncing off the wall toward your ears when you sit at your workstation. You might need help from a friend to figure that out. If you hang up heavy panels, make sure you're on the studs.

Joseph

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Re: Proper way to sound treat a room for mixing and mastering
« Reply #11 on: February 19, 2016, 08:55:44 am »
I remember there's a place where you can buy the things you need online, and you can send them a layout of your room to get the best results.
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