A Beginner's Guide To Acoustic Treatment

An account of an acoustic newbie&39;s journey from bare walls to a well?balanced, sonically pleasant space.

The physics of the propagation of sound is immensely complicated, and when the assortment of materials that make up the

walls, floors and ceiling (plus any windows, doors and furniture) are added to the equation, it&39;s very difficult to

predict what will happen to sound waves once they&39;ve left their source. What&39;s more, every room is different, and

it&39;s not just the dimensions that will dictate how the room will sound... Imagine two rooms of the same shape and size.

One has two?metre-thick concrete walls, and the other a single?layer plasterboard stud-wall. Even with those brief,

albeit extreme descriptions, you probably know already that the two rooms will sound very different. Add in the multitude of

room shapes, sizes, wall?construction methods and surfaces found in home studios, and it becomes impossible to provide

a one-size-fits-all guide to acoustic panel treatment.

The subject of acoustics is regularly discussed in SOS, but plenty of readers

still ask for the subject to be covered from a much more basic starting point. What follows is a look at installing

acoustic treatment from a complete beginner&39;s perspective: some basic, essential information, along with a bit

of advice from acoustics professionals that should give you the confidence to get started. I&39;ll follow this up by taking

you step by step through my own recent experience of treating a room.

Why Bother With Acoustic Treatment?

Untreated rooms have an uneven frequency response, which means that any mixing decisions you make are being based on

a sound that is &39;coloured&39;, because you can&39;t accurately hear what&39;s being played. In short, you

can&39;t possibly tell how your mix will sound when played back anywhere else. It isn&39;t just an issue for mixing,

though, because any recordings you make of acoustic instruments will bear all the hallmarks of the space in which you record

them. That may be a good thing if the space in question is Ocean Way or SARM West, but probably preposterously bad if

it&39;s your living room or bedroom. So, if you want your mixes to transfer well, and your recordings to be free of room

&39;honk&39;, you need to pay attention to the acoustic properties of your environment — no matter how good the gear

you&39;re using.

First Things First

The first thing to grasp is the outcome you want to achieve. It&39;s a common misconception that acoustic treatment

with acoustic ceilings or

acoustic baffles should kill all reverberation,

and that you want a room covered floor?to?ceiling with foam tiles: this isn&39;t what you&39;re aiming for. You also

need to bear in mind the limitations imposed by space and budget: most home studios are small in comparison with the Abbey

Roads and AIR Lyndhursts of this world, and many home?studio owners simply don&39;t have the funds for bespoke treatment

solutions.

So what is the aim? Andy Munro, acoustic design specialist, remarks, "acoustic design is the science that restores

a neutral sound balance”. Applying that science means interfering with the path of sound to control the sound energy.

Jorge Castro, chief acoustician at Vicoustic, says that "in the case of affordable treatment, we need to control the

energy of the sound first. Then we can take care of the sound quality. With small spaces, bass frequencies are always

a problem, and we should control the low frequencies as much as we can.” In fact, he continues, "In small rooms,

I&39;ve never heard people saying they have too much absorption of low frequencies.”

Absorption & Diffusion: What, Where, Why?

To achieve the right balance, there are two main approaches: absorption and diffusion. Products that have absorptive

properties include foam and rigid mineral-wool (see the &39;DIY & Rockwool&39; box), and they &39;soak up&39; the sound

energy, turning it into heat, through friction. Most effective on high?frequencies, absorption is essential for reducing

flutter echoes and for taming bright?sounding or &39;ringy&39; rooms. Bass trapping is also a type of absorption, but

is specifically designed to absorb low?frequency energy. A clever combination of soft, hard, thick and thin materials,

including air, is used to make the most efficient bass trap, and an empty gap between the wall and the back of the trap helps

to make it even more effective.

Diffusion is the scattering of sound energy using multi?faceted surfaces. Diffusers are commonly made of wood, plastic, or

even polystyrene. Jorge Castro explains: "diffusion helps in energy control and improves the sound quality in

frequencies throughout the middle and high range of the spectrum, and also improves sweet?spot image.” The &39;sweet

spot&39; is the place between the speakers where you should be sitting to get the best stereo image (imagine that your head

and the two speakers form an equilateral triangle). That pretty much concludes the theory: now for the practice!

Getting Started

Before undertaking this project, I&39;d read plenty about acoustics, but had never attempted to properly treat a room

myself: the nearest I&39;d come was propping foam panels against the walls to tame flutter in the spare?room?cum?studio of

my rented house. I hadn&39;t been able to glue or screw anything to the walls, for fear of incurring my landlord&39;s

wrath, and the thought of retouching the paintwork after tearing strips of self?adhesive velcro pained me too! So this was

very much a learning experience.

The space in question included an area that would provide a reasonable?sized live room, and another that would serve as

a small control room, and although both were important, I really wanted to get the performance space right.

I decided that I&39;d buy commercially available panels, because I simply didn&39;t have the time, space or

inclination for the DIY option. Most manufacturers of acoustic products also offer a consultation service, and they

often have free on?line calculators to help you decide on a suitable treatment option, too, so even if you choose the

DIY route this can be a sensible place to start, and [url=https://ift.tt/3xwNID0

acoustic-panels/]fabric acoustic panels[/url] are also available.

I chose to get my treatment from Vicoustic, a company relatively new to the UK acoustic?treatment market who make

a range of products for studios and home theatres. I told them that, as this was the only live room for

a small project studio, it needed to be quite versatile, with both a &39;dead&39; corner for dry recordings and

a more ambient space to liven up acoustic recordings where needed. I&39;d expected a solution with almost complete

wall coverage, foam panels and diffusers covering every square inch, but Vicoustic came back with a plan that surprised

me, which suggested that total coverage wasn&39;t necessary.

In fact, Jorge says that the typical home studio needs only between 30 and 40 percent coverage to adequately treat it. So

don&39;t go over the top: remember that we&39;re trying to control the energy, or "restore the natural sound balance,

” and not to kill the sound completely.

As for the proportion of diffusion to absorption, Jorge says, "some believe it should be 50 percent absorption and 50

percent diffusion. In the home studio, because of budget and space constraints, the actual proportion can vary considerably.

”

Planning

So, you&39;ve decided on your acoustic foam treatment, you&39;ve

had it delivered, and it&39;s piled in the middle of the room. The next step is sticking it up on the walls, right? Well

yes... but you also want to make sure that it goes in the right place, partly to optimise its acoustic performance, and

partly because you don&39;t want it to look like it&39;s been put up by a two?year old! As a first?timer, I found

it useful to have the 3D drawings Vicoustic had supplied, as they enabled me to plan precisely where each panel would go. You

can create a computer?generated version of your room yourself using a freeware 3D drawing programme such as Google

Sketchup (http://sketchup.google.com). This may seem a bit over the top (sketches on the back of an envelope would do the

job), but it can provide a useful guide to print out and use like a map during installation. What&39;s more, you

can plan the look of a room, moving tiles and panels around on the computer instead of having to rip them off the wall

if they look silly.

Measure Twice, Stick Once

With my &39;map&39; in hand, it was time to mark up the walls. The Vicoustic plans showed the panels equally spaced along

the walls, but without any dimensions or measurements to indicate how to space the tiles, so I measured the whole room

and planned the position of all the panels supplied. A quick and easy formula for plotting the position of a row of

equally spaced panels soon emerged. To calculate the distance between each panel, and between the end panels and the walls,

you just measure the length of the wall, subtract the total width of all the panels to be fixed to it, then divide that

figure by the number of gaps between panels (or by the number of panels plus one). Marking up is then a cinch, but to

get things looking good, you&39;ll need to mark the corner points and will require a spirit level and a spare pair

of hands. Once plotted and marked, it&39;s also a good idea to double?check that you have the same number of actual

panels as you have on your plan!

Stick &39;Em Up!

With the planning done, it&39;s time to stick the panels to the walls and ceiling. The way you do this depends on the type

of treatment you&39;re applying. Large, framed panels will come with brackets and (hopefully) sturdy fixings, whereas foam?

based tiles will need to be glued, using an aerosol?based product or a tube of paste?like glue that needs

a skeleton gun. Spray?mounting can often give less than satisfactory results, so I was glad to discover that the

Vicoustic delivery included the tube variety. With just two tubes supplied, though, I soon had to resort to

alternatives, and found that the sticky gunk used to fix mirrors to walls worked exceptionally well.

To prevent the glue squidging out from the sides of the panels, I piped the glue on no less than an inch from the guide line

on the wall and on the back of the panel itself, in different patterns, to increase the adhesion. With this kind of glue, I

found that it would begin to set in about a minute, allowing just enough time to pull the panel off and turn it if it

was the wrong way up. When sticking panels to the ceiling, I took the same approach. It was a textured ceiling,

which called for lots of glue and a firm hand to seat the panels: again, it&39;s useful if you can get a friend to

lend a hand.

Hearing The Result

Once in place, the Vicoustic treatment worked very well. The main part of the room is now nicely controlled, if a bit

on the &39;live&39; side, and the diffusers ensure excellent intelligibility of speech: a sure?fire sign of good

acoustic control. I had a few spare corner traps, which were put into the dry corner, to make it even more

&39;dead&39;, and it will be easy to add a few smaller foam tiles to dampen the sound further if it&39;s found to be

too &39;roomy&39; further down the line.

Having tried some recordings in the room, I&39;m happy to say that excellent [url=https://ift.tt/2VrXoSl

barrier/]sound barrier[/url] can be achieved between acoustic instruments and vocals by using the different areas of the

room. Because the sound inside the room is controlled, the ambience can be used to good effect if a roomy sound is

desired on the recording.

Ultimate Control

So far, I&39;ve only addressed the dedicated live/recording space, and most home studios are single rooms, with both

the monitoring and performance areas in the same space, so I asked Andy Munro to explain how to approach treating such a

space. "The best approach,” he said, "is to sketch the room out, then divide each dimension into thirds. If the

mixing position is on a third ratio, and so are the speakers, they will not stand on any of the half or quarter

&39;standing&39; wavelengths that cause a peak or trough in the bass [see the &39;Standing Waves&39; box for more

information]. The result will be a smoother sound, with fewer problems when the acoustic absorption and

sound barrier is added. Ironically, most professional rooms are set

up about the centre line, which tends to result in a &39;hole&39; at certain frequencies.”

Also important in monitoring rooms is the control of early reflections. When a speaker cone is driven, it disperses

acoustic energy to the listener&39;s ears directly, and also to the walls and ceiling of the room, and the best example may

be acoustic diffuser. Uncontrolled, these early reflections

bounce back into the room and reach the listener a few milliseconds later than the direct sounds, because of the

additional distance they&39;ve had to travel. Unless in a large room, this delay is not perceivable as a different

sound; instead it disturbs the phase, and therefore the clarity, of the sound. To keep early reflections on a tight leash,

the &39;mirror points&39; of the room should be identified and treated. To do this, sit in the listening position and

&39;guesstimate&39; where a mirror would have to be placed to enable you to see each monitor cone from the sweet spot.

Then apply absorption to these points. A &39;ceiling cloud&39; can be positioned in a similar way, to control

vertical reflections.

Conclusion

No matter how much you spend on instruments, amps, speakers and recording gear, you still need to pay attention to the space

in which you use them. The treatment of home studios is tricky, because of their size and the construction materials used,

not to mention the budget of the average home?studio owner. It&39;s impossible to get a &39;pro-studio sound&39; from

a space that&39;s built as a spare bedroom, mainly due to the laws of physics, but also because &39;proper&39;

studios might have big bucks spent on acoustic design with

soundproof materials. But if you can get your head around what you&39;re trying to achieve, you can still make such a

space perfectly usable, with only a small amount of money, some forward planning and a little bit of knowledge.

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