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Skol303
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Well done Rikki! May's challenge is now on...
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May's Composition Challenge is now underway! Here’s the image for your inspiration, chosen by last month's winner, Rikki1984… Rules: Avoid any content that other forum users may find offensive. Make sure you have permission to use any 3rd party sounds and samples in your track. Entries should be no more than five minutes long and written/produced during the month of the competition. The deadline for entries is midnight on Thursday 24th May.
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Obviously, as we all know, the 'measure of success' for any band is their grasp of compression Other than that, I imagine it's all hugely subjective (I mean, what's the metric for measuring 'influence'?), but there'll always be things like the Top 40 Chart and now Spotify to give us a measure based on sales/listens, which is I imagine how most professional bands and especially their managers measure succe$$. For instance, here's the Spotify most played 'rock bands' list from last year: 1. Coldplay 2. Twenty One Pilots 3. The Beatles 4. Linkin Park 5. Red Hot Chili Peppers 6. Panic! A The Disco 7. Metallica 8. Arctic Monkeys 9. Queen 10. Fall Out Boy 11. Green Day 12. AC/DC 13. Pink Floyd 14. Blink-182 15. Paramore 16. Guns N’ Roses 17. Nirvana 18. The Rolling Stones 19. The 1975 20. Kings of Leon ...no mention of Rush (or Yes, or Led Zepp or...). EDIT to say that Rodriguez was most certainly a best selling artist, it just happened to be in South Africa rather than his native US. And he's doing quite well for himself there now too
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Not leaping to the defense of sound engineers here: some are certainly better than others. But here’s a fun little test you can try at home... Play a song you know well over your hi-fi, if you have one. And what the heck, play it loud. Now walk around the room, pause and listen to how the sound changes: boomy bass in some places; weak bass in others. Now imagine trying to control that on a grand scale, in a room where no investment has been made on acoustic treatment. It’s just not possible; and there will always be parts of the room/venue where the sound will suck. And it’s always sucked. We just hear the ‘suck’ more as we get older, because we’re less drunk/ more experienced/ discerning/ fussy/ whatever. I remember seeing Motörhead when I was 18 years old. It was an indiscernable wall of noise and I loved it; but I wouldn’t tolerate more than 10 minutes of it now. Yes, some live enginneers need a good talking to. But there’s only so much you can do with bad acoustics. And even purpose-built music venues often have major flaws in their design. If you want great acoustics, go take a seat at a grand old theatre or opera house and give your ears a treat. If you want to swing your pants, be prepared to compromise on the sound... most of the time. Thus it has always been,
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Yep, great resource that mate! Can always trust Aunty with her acoustics; sterling stuff
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Yep, I share your pain! I've spent literally hours trawling online trying to find data on the density, flow resistivity, etc, of certain products to no avail. Best resource I've found is the page on Bob Golds' website here: https://www.bobgolds.com/AbsorptionCoefficients.htm With some 'artistic licence' you can find equivalent products and extrapolate approximate data. Worth a look.
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VOTING THREAD IS UP
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Voting has now started on this month's Composition Challenge. Please vote for your top THREE favourites: Bilbo 'Bish Bash Bosch' lurksalot 'Sanctorum Ovum' Leonard Smalls 'F.U.N.E.X?' adi77 'Hiho' Rikki1984 'Round And Round' Dad3353 'Eggstracting Cacophony From Chaos ...' Mornats 'Carmen Tibiarum et Citharae' Voting ends at midnight on Monday April 30th.
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I think that's the first acoustic-treatment-related euphemism I've ever heard! Yes, membrane traps certainly can require tuning, because the thickness of the membrane will determine the target frequency (the peak of the 'bell curve', if you think of it like an EQ). I've never built a membrane trap myself, but have read up on them whilst nerding around on the subject. I've double-checked in replying to your question, and contrary to my advice above (which I'll edit to correct), the membrane should be between 4-6mm thick for what you're aiming to achieve (not <2mm as I'd originally suggested). For example: 6mm plywood will target ~90Hz. The membrane needs to be either: Installed fairly loosely on the front of the panel (behind the fabric), so that it can move back and forth like a piston. I'd recommend a minimum number of panels pins, trying to avoid hammering them all the way in. Perforated - e.g. peg board - whereby the perforations help the membrane to flex. That said, the BBC used to use hardboard without holes as a damped membrane on their Modular LF Absorbers, so there appears to be several ways to approach it. My own choice would be to use a sheet of peg board, fitted to the front of the trap (behind the fabric). I'm fairly sure that peg board comes in either 3.5mm or 6mm thickness, either of which would be suitable. Thicker panels on the rear wall is definitely a good idea, if space allows. You otherwise won't suffer any over-damping with the coverage of 2" panels that you mention. The window is essentially a 'free' bass trap. RW3 would be a good choice for the 2" and 4" panels. RW45 would also be ok, but you don't want to go any less dense than 45kg/m3 at those thicknesses.
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^ “Every little helps” when it comes to acoustic treatment, for sure. And in a shared/multipurpose space there will always be compromises... which by the sound of things you’re making the most of. Good approach. A few ideas and pointers: 1) You could try inserting a thin sheet of ply board into your bass traps - ideally 4-6mm thick, fixed loosely in the front face of the panel so that it can vibrate. This ‘membrane’ will help to further dampen the lowest frequencies and will also reflect some of the mids/highs back into the room. Peg board (with holes) has traditionally been used in studios for this purpose. 2) Don’t over-do it with the 2” panels. If you disproportionally over-dampen the mids/highs you will, in effect, ‘boost’ the bass, making the room sound boomy. 3) Use a more dense material for the 2” panels: Knauf RS60 (48kg/m3) as a minimum; possibly even up to 100kg/m3 density to be effective at that thickness. The fluffy Knauf DriTherm 37 is only really suitable for panels with a minimum thickness of 4” and ideally 8” or more. Let us know how you get on! And rest assured that anyone who lets you install acoustic treatment in your shared living space is a good catch
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Yeah sorry for the dalliance into subwoofers! (I may yet move that to a thread of its own). To answer your question, yes, a superchunk covering the lower section of wall will certainly be of some benefit... but it will be a lot more effective if you build it to the full height of the room. That would not only provide a greater surface area/ amount of treatment, but also help to deal with that upper corner, where bass frequencies tend generate the most pressure (low frequency energy). So a full height superchunk would be my recommendation - after all, it’s otherwise dead space so you might as we do something useful with it. But if you want to restrict the height for aesthetic reasons, that’s your call to make, of course. Any acoustic treatment is nearly always better than none PS: i assume you’re planning on adding other treatment elsewhere in the room?
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Searchable library of 16,000 sound effects in WAV format. BBC copyright but available for personal, educational or research purposes http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/
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Haha! Caught me out
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I think it's from the 1930s... but can't remember where I got that date from! I'll inspect it next chance I get.
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Nothing to add, other than I have that exact same metronome! And it's still surprisingly accurate, as far as I can tell. Don't ever use it when recording bass (perhaps I should?), but find it useful when practicing piano. Badly.
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I know...!
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You're no doubt right Si, but a combination of rampant GAS and curiosity (but mostly GAS) has got the better of me on this one As it happens the sub I'm demo-ing arrived yesterday afternoon. Haven't had chance to properly set it up yet, but as an initial test I've placed it between my main monitors (up against the front wall) and just to one side, to avoid the centre room mode. So far I've only set the gain by ear, but I took a quick frequency measurement and to be honest it looks surprisingly promising... observations: It's helped to fill in much of the gnarly dip I had around 70Hz (by +5-6 dB, possibly more) It’s showing a very useful response down to 30Hz, where it then tails off (but still giving me around +10-15 dB at 20Hz compared to what I had previously... not that I can actually hear it!) Above 70Hz the frequency response is pretty much identical to that produced by my main monitors alone (I currently have the crossover set at 60Hz). There's a noticeable boost in the low end, as you'd expect, but I could level that out with DSP software. No signs of comb filtering that I could spot from the frequency graph; but I need to take some proper measurements and also check decay times, etc. So hmmm...definitely not helping my GAS! But the initial signs are that a sub may actually be of benefit in my room. Especially because I don't have capacity to install main monitors any larger than those I currently have. I'm hoping to do some proper tests at the weekend and will report back, in case the info is useful to anyone here who might also suffer from sub GAS at some point.
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Forgot to mention... totally agree with this, but if you have a suitable mic and a copy of REW (free) or FuzzMeasure (what I use) then you can use measurements to supplement your ears when setting up a sub, thus removing some of the guesswork and uncertainty. You probably know this, but for everyone else what I mean is: Take measurements to find the optimum location, by placing the sub at the listening spot and then moving the mic around the room whilst measuring frequency sweeps. Best mic position = best sub position. A kind of high-tech version of the "subwoofer crawl". Take measurements to help set the volume/level of the sub, by tweaking the gain until the low end frequency response and decay time are as flat as possible. And of course using your ears! I have a sub arriving sometime this week for demo'ing, so I'll test it out and report back here... (PS: I might move these posts to a separate thread on subwoofers).
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Not always... but sometimes certainly yes. And when there is, you REALLY want to know about it. For context bear in mind that: 1. I produce/remix a lot of electronic dance music and hip hop (aka “bass music”); and so every ounce of low end insight is useful to me, whether the notes are felt or heard. Especially when producing music to be played over large sound systems in nightclubs, some of which are very capable of reproducing bass down to 20-30Hz (sufficient to rattle the optics behind the bar, as I once witnessed during an LFO gig in Sheffield!). Headphones can only go so far in terms of referencing sub 40Hz; to get a true picture you need to move some air. 2. Subwoofers aren’t just about benefiting the lowest of the low frequencies. Using a sub in a 2.1 set up means that your regular monitors don’t need to work so hard; and evidence shows that can add clarity. Depending on where you set the crossover, a sub also has the potential to help even out the low end up to 100-150hz: filling in some of the nulls (whilst creating peaks that can be corrected by EQ). 3. My room is well treated - pretty much as far as possible for a domestic room. So although the space is small, it’s relatively ‘sub-friendly’. 4. I’m a perfectionist and unabashed Gearslut ...all that said, subs are notoriously tricky to set up and can cause more problems than they solve (as rightly mentioned by Si above). Hence I’m going to demo one before committing to a purchase - noting point 4 above often requires a willpower of steel!
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In which case your wife may enjoy reading this: Numerical study of the movement of fine particle in sound wave field And after you suggest that she reads it, you're welcome to sleep on my couch until things calm down, no problem I'm still tempted to get a sub... my monitors are great down to about 40Hz (exceptionally flat), but I don't have much going on below that. However, it's a small room so I'll need to be careful not to add loads of new mode problems. I'm going to audition one and check; hopefully this week in fact!
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They sound awesome! No need for a sub when you have monitors like that
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Honestly mate, in the world of acoustics, no permutation is left unturned ...and so on another forum we have this thread: Does the colour of the room effect the sound (reflextions)? PS: the answer is no! FFS, no!
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Mein Gott! What speakers are you using, they sound immense!? Definitely. I've experienced this in my own room. I use a large wooden desk (I like to have lots of stuff within arms reach) and found that it was causing some nasty comb filtering. So I made some wooden wedges to sit under the desk and angle it forwards by about 5 degrees (apparently 6 degrees is ideal). Made a big difference. A smaller desk would of course be ideal, but then you risk suffering a low end dip due the floor reflection. Everything with acoustics always seems to involve a compromise
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Better still, push your speakers right up against the front wall - literally within a few millimetres if possible - and forego any panels behind the speakers altogether (they'll need to be very thick here anyway to have any useful effect). This will help to avoid the classic SBIR dip of -20/30db (or more) between 60-150Hz. The trade off is that you'll get a big boost in the low end due to wall proximity - which might not actually be a bad thing if your speakers are small - but this can at least be dealt with by room correction software (EQ), whereas the SBIR dip caused by having your speakers further away from the wall can't. This thinking runs counter-intuitive to what many speaker manufacturers recommend in terms of optimum distance from nearby walls, but some companies like Genelec are starting to lead the way on this - some great advice from them on page 2 of this PDF file. EDIT to say that the minimum rear distance they recommend of 5cm is for rear-ported speaker cabinets. Even so, you can still push closer than that. I reduced the SBIR null in my own room by nearly +12db using this method alone!
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While we're on the subject, here are to links to online acoustic calculators that I fine very useful. I posted one of these earlier in the thread, but here they all are for convenience: Room Mode Calculator #1: this is by far my favourite; a really well-presented room mode calculator that clearly shows the likely problems based on room dimensions. Includes some well-written notes about room modes here. Room Mode cCalculator #2: this one is hosted by Bob Golds, who's something of a legend in the world of acoustics. Again, shows the likely problems in a room based on its dimensions Both of these calculators also include some useful (though somewhat technical) numbers such as: Absorption needed to achieve RT60 (the time taken for the sound to decay by 60 dB when the source is removed), based on industry standard recommendations for professional control rooms. Gives an approximation the volume and surface area of acoustic treatment needed to achieve this - prepare to have your jaw drop and your room shrink considerably! Shroeder frequency: in simple terms, the frequency below which you should focus on absorbing bass energy, and above which you should focus on tackling mid-high frequency reflections. Porous absorption calculator: for approximating how effective your DIY panels might be. Flow resistivity numbers can be hard to come by, but there's a handy thread on Gearslutz that has lists of some common materials to help you get started. As a very rough guide (take with a pinch of salt as I could be wrong!) you can try using the following Flow Resistivity figures for the Knauf fibre I've mentioned in this thread: Knauf Dritherm 37 (low density 15kg/m3): 5000 Pa.s/m2 Knauf RS60 Slab (density 48kg/m3): 12000 Pa.s/m2
