Studio Sound Proofing.

[MARKEG]

cheers dave the incredibly miserable plummer.

i will take note of what you say. perhaps it'll be better getting studio space i can go to every day. hmm... good idea.... mind you, keep on coming with the tips cause they're making great reading!

[MARKEG]

oh for gods sake patrick. how do you always manage to go one better???????? hahahaha

[MARKEG]

wow this link is by far the most useful thing i've ever read on this topic:

http://www.uhfmag.com/Issue63/soundproofing.html

[Patrick DSP]

hahaha

in short you need to build a floating room within a room. double doors and angled windows if you got any windows. 2 panes of glass/plastic both 5 degrees off of eachother at lease.

it's pointless and cheaper to have a studio in the woods.

now proper acusics is a differant story

[Patrick DSP]

now if i could only spell!

****ing edit button

[MARKEG]

obviously you cant spell f u c k i n either!!!

[Patrick DSP]

yeah but i can spell C U N T!!!

[djTequila]

Huber and Runstein's book 'Modern Recording Techniques' has a chapter on sound theory, sudio design, reflection, isolation, etc. There's some amazing information in there, on how to build a room within a room, materials to use, properties of a variety of materials - reflectivity and absorption coefficients, room shapes to use (Mmmm... Parabolic reflection...) and how to do it the expensive or cheap way.

As well as exact specs of a load of real mics, including frequency response, polar patterns and best uses, general info on recording technology, miking techniques for different instruments, really interesting info on miking up vocalists to avoid high frequency phasing effects from floor reflections, and a bunch of other useful stuff. A lot of it's very 'analogue studio' based, but it covers a big chunk of the digital world, and getting your head around analogue techniques can help you make sense of what digital technology is trying to emulate...

I would say:

If you're building a studio for professional use - out of your house, to be used for yourself and paying customers - go for it... But read it up properly! Absolutely DO NO go in half cocked.

If not, use near-fields and cans, and balance your h/f absorption and h/f scattering. And strike a deal with the neighbours.

All the advice below is not about sound proofing, but I think it'll be more handy for the people who use this board.

You're not going to get rid of bass, as has been stated. What you need to do is remove standing waves, and get a good balance of bass and high-frequency reflections in your room. If you put h/f absorbing foam everywhere, you'll lose all your detail, and your sound will be thick and muddy.

You need to place alternating thicknesses of foam blocks exactly behind, in front of and above your monitors. This will help avoid the sound colouration standing waves produce. (If your room isn't square, you won't need as much of this...)

Your furniture and and other hard/soft surfaces in the room will act as reflectors, absorbers and scatterers. Moving things around will help. Also, putting a few more foam blocks up will help deal with h/f nodes. (These are points in the room where the sound gets louder or softer as waves from reflections cancel out or reinforce eachother). In severe cases, they can seem to drag the music out of tune, or make it sound like you're in a pipe... Or sound like a muddled mess - depending on the room shape, dimensions and materials).

Never sit in a corner, or put speakers in a corner! Corners collect bass... Try it! It's nutty stuff. You want to be sitting in the middle of one wall, with your near-fields at least a foot away from it. Plot any reflective paths of sound from the cones, and make sure that either there are no reflections between you and the near-fields, or any reflections are the same on both sides. (Not ideal, but better than losing your stereo image in a certain frequency band). If you can't avoid reflective, hard surfaces getting in the way, cover them in foam block. Again, not ideal...

A friend of mine has his KRKs on a glass table. When they're pushed back to make a good listening position, you get your head in the right place, and the kick drum suddenly sounds like it's on a pogo sitck! Putting a pillow in the way had no effect, but bringing them forward to remove the reflections from the glass completely cleaned up the sound.

Isolate your near-fields from any hard surfaces they're in contact with. So:

Use speaker stands instead of a table, and couple them to the floor with spikes rather than feet or a base.

If you must use a table, get spikes or ceramic eggs or something similar to minimise the contact.

If you can't do that, use blu-tack. Little balls, rolled up.

If you're not renting, or have permission, you can build bass traps to get rid of particularly troublesome bass nodes. One type is a semi-flexible board, like wood, firmly attached to the wall by four long spacers... The gap between the wood and the wall allows the wood to vibrate in sympathy with the bass and convert the sound into heat.

Other types include wave traps that remove reflections of a particular frequency and its harmonics by clever shaping, creating a hole that reflects that frequency exactly out of phase with itself.

Finally, putting your monitors at the 'base' of a sideways-on, 3D parabola will cause all reflections to avoid the listener. (Then it's a matter of engineering the back wall!) I've heard of people pouring concrete over a weather balloon to create a wall for their studio...

None of this is sound isolation! Doing that properly requires lots of money and a few feet of space around all the walls, the ceiling, and maybe the floor. Depending on whether you're going for the 'room in room' approach, or the 'big load of baffles, dead-air and sound absorbers' method. (This requires lots of false walls, layers of air, cloth, rock-wool, and brick).

;)

Tequila

[daviec]

All this talk of soundproofed rooms reminds of my last hearing test at work. The company doctor had a portable sound proof cupboard.

Once I was in and she shut the door it was ****ing eerie :?

You can't imagine what silence sounds like till you've (not :?: ) heard it. Fuc.k I'm confusing myself. You know what I mean though. :lol:

It was quieter than night, and gives you a weird feeling.