Rimskidog

[quote name='GM10' post='767368' date='Mar 7 2010, 09:47 PM']I read too much can affect the higher frequencies? By the way pretty much everything I've learnt has come from your postings, links etc. I've made some mistakes but I've got quite a few things right thanks to you, cheers.[/quote] If all your walls and ceilings are completely covered then yeah that would suck the high frequencies but even then that would be fairly easily remedied by adding some reflective material to some of the traps - though not at any mirror points! (cardboard or paper over the bass trap but under the material is one old trick for ensuring highs arenmt sucked out). You could be mroe creative than that though by adding a couple of homemade polydiffusors or even simply pinning some old cd-r's to some of the trapping (makes for quite a cool effect and gives provides for some reflective surface for those highs to bounce around.) Seriously though, I doubt you are close to that point yet. I'll dig out some of the photos from my old control room so you can see how much of that stuff you can put in a room before it becomes a problem. Glad you've found it useful Trev

[quote name='51m0n' post='773156' date='Mar 12 2010, 08:53 PM']Oi, you have no reason for envy, I've seen that studio build thread! Swap you the thrill of checking file format specs any day of the week. These guys don't know they're born [/quote] :blush: Yeah fair enough. :brow: You win

man. Five hours a day of bass playing. Sweet memories. I might manage 5 hours a week if I'm lucky nowadays...

Room sounded amazing, helped greatly by the quality of the musicians: they are all in the CBSO (Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) and headed straight from the session off to something Simon Rattle was doing in the evening!

Here's a quick pick of a horn section I had in for a session today: EV RE20 > Pacifica on Baritone sax, Shure SM7 > Pacifica on tenor sax, cascade fathead > chandler Germ on trumpet, a pair of AEA R84s > Chandler TG2 8-10 feet out and a Telefunken AK47 in omni > Great River about 12-14 feet back. Here's a shot of an R84 (crappy camera, failed attempt at arty shot): and another of a fathead:

[quote name='GM10' post='765410' date='Mar 5 2010, 05:16 PM']Update - I've fitted 7 4x2 (absorbsion) rockwool panels and 2 5x2. The 5x2s are diagnal across the corners, sitting on the desk. 2 of the 4x2s are on the ceiling. I've fitted the others where I thought was the best spots, reflection points etc. I've got two more to fit. one of those diagonally floor to ceiling in one of the remaining corners. For a small room it now sounds tons better, and I mean tons. I did use some acoustic foam (corner bass traps) between the ceiling and the walls (above the absorbsion panels) but not on the corners where I've taken the absorbsion panels to the ceiling. I've got a quilt in front of the door but it's messy and p*****g me off. I'm going to put a nice heavy curtain there. If there's any interest I'll take pictures Question is: have I overdone it for a small room. From my recordings I'd say not but I sometimes question my ability to hear the little naunces.[/quote] It's really almost impossible to [i]overdo[/i] it. If it sounds better, it is better.

The astute amongst you will have realised by now that at this point I'm simply having jobs done between sessions. Today saw isobooth one get glass. The glass in questions is acoustic laminated safety class from St Gobain known as 'Stadip Silence'. The outside panes are 27mm (being something like 2x 12mm sheets bonded together with an acoustic sheet/resin not unlike green glue (except it isn't green, it's clear) between them. The inside panes are 21mm (something like 2x9mm I guess). You can see here that, after a careful polishing, strips of neoprene foam (20mm x 5mm) were added to the inner dimensions of each pane being careful not to leave any gaps between the joins: The windows were then inserted into the frames and caulked with an acoustic sealant before pressure was applied to them and they were fixed into place: And here's a close up: If you look closely enough you'll see a tiny ledge in front of the window frame. As the front of the booth is essentially a poly-diffusor and is cylindrical this was, of course, unavoidable. The amazing this is how different the room sounds with the glass in! I had previously cut 4 inch thick rectangles of rockwool and placed them into the apertures. This of course essentially turned the booth into a big bass trap. With the glass in the room sounds, if anything, even bigger than it previously did. kfhkh

[quote name='thedonutman' post='757657' date='Feb 25 2010, 10:13 PM']Thanks for the advice! I'm not sure how I'd get bass traps in the the end of the room with the door as traps in one corner would block the door and the other corner would get in the way of my bed. Can I get away with smaller ones in that corner? Would having two bass traps at the front, in the corners either side of the window, help by themselves?[/quote] Every little helps and the more you can do the better so do what you can and don't worry about what you cant do. Remember bass traps in any corner will work so you could put them along wall/ceiling corners or floor seiling corners and they will work well.

Take a look at the room models on the GIK acoustics websites (sorry, having a heavy week and too lazy to sketchup your room for you): [url="http://www.gikacoustics.com/gik_room_kits.html"]http://www.gikacoustics.com/gik_room_kits.html[/url]. You can see the stages you could go through as you improve your room. Essentially bass builds in corners (especially where three corners meet) so that's where to start. Floor to ceiling panels of RS45 rockwool (rocksilk if your are buying from Travis Perkins - they are cheapest). In stage 1 make the panels 6 inches thick and have them run from floor to ceiling in the 4 corners of your room (presuming that you don't hae time/money/energy to make superchuink traps which are more effective but more work/expense). Stage 2 would be 2inch panels at your mirror points. Once you've done that see how it sounds. Deal with problem issues from there. Also in terms of setting up your room, you want the monitors shooting down the longest length, preferably with a foot of space behind them before the wall to reduce proximity effect bass - if you dont have enough space for this you'll want a couple of chunky bass traps behind them). Does this all make sense?

@jakesbass - a good place to start would be to download sketchup (free from google) and do a rough draft of your proposed room including placement of everything from walls to furniture. We can then make suggestions to the initial design and help you move forward at each stage. (Might be an enlightening thread for some poeple here too) Another good place to look is the studio acoustics and build section on Gearslutz: [url="http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-construction-acoustics/"]http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-cons...tion-acoustics/[/url] . They arent all big commercial spaces and a number include people converting similar spaces to your own. The key point to note is that wherever you see eggboxes, carpet or foam covered walls, move on to the next one.

That was all good until this point: [quote name='mep' post='755523' date='Feb 23 2010, 09:22 PM']Cheap options are areas of carpet or egg boxes. Don't forget about the roof, do the same as the walls.[/quote] Carpet sucks the high frequencies out of a room and makes it sound even more dull and boxlike than it already is. Carpet is bad. As for eggboxes, well, their great... for holding eggs. As acoustic treatment they are hopeless (if not worse). Am happy to provide advice on acoustic treatment on down the line as required. Much of the requirement for acoustic treeatment will be reduced if you get the design right from the outset.

Am not at the studio and only on a macbook. The BSS is a pretty clean little box. To be frank the between cheaper clean gear and better clean gear is often not in the sound but in the focus of the box, ie it wont smear as much across your stereo field and therefore you'll be able to fit more in your mix before you need to start hacking at it with an EQ. You should also be aware that if you are going from the BSS into your interface then often with pro-sumer gear the line in is just a padded mic pre (so you lose the focus of the BSS by going through the IA anyway. Hope this makes sense.

[quote name='51m0n' post='754171' date='Feb 22 2010, 06:25 PM']Rule 1 Its all about mass - 2 or 3 layers of plasterboard on the inner wall each layer at rightangles to the last Rule 2 No Gaps. Absolutely none, sound will get out of any gaps you have, so each layer of plasterboard needs to be fully caulked and glued (green goop stuff is good) Rule 3 HEAVY doors, two of them, sealed Rule 4 Things like airflow, power etc require proper thought so buy the book above! Rule 5 You know its right when people are asphyxiated inside.... Rule 6 Talk to Rimskidog on here he knows a thing or two about building [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=49754&hl="]live rooms[/url]. [url="http://www.avforums.com/"]AV forums[/url] are an absolute gold mine of great info and clever people.[/quote] 51mon has it about right. Am happy to add some texture to his post with some build techniques, suggestions about how to add cheap mass and the like but the key question really is what your budget is and how soundproof does it need to be. You can spend a lot of money for the last 20% in this game. EDIT: as an aside I have a range of books on soundproofing and acoustics. pm me if you are interested. EDIT 2: oh yeah, and putting your desk in the corner is a very bad idea indeed.

Nice. Haven't been to Lyndhurst Hall in about 5 years!

[quote name='escholl' post='752913' date='Feb 21 2010, 04:08 PM']Rockwool will only trap bass frequencies if installed in certain ways, and simply wrapping it and sticking it on the wall is not going to work -- in fact, over use of it in this manner can actually make the problems worse by excessively damping higher frequencies. It is a great solution for a general treatment of acoustics however, in taming things such as early reflections and flutter echo. In certain applications, the correct installation of rockwool can control lower frequencies. However other, commercial, bass corner traps do work very well, provided they are installed correctly and of an appropriate size.[/quote] Agree entirely. Bass accumulates in corners. 6inch panels straddling corners (floor to ceiling is a good place to start) will operate as broadband trapping. (I'm presuming he's unlikely to go as far as tuned traps/modex panels etc.) 2 inch panels are fine for reflection points (especially if an inch gap can be left behind them). Once the OP gets the stuff I'd be happy to provide placement suggestions for his particular room.

foam does nothing for low frequencies at all. Even the foam corner traps you see advertised only just about stretch to the lower mids. Best approach is to wrap rockwool in muslin. Once it's done you'll have no problem with it.

[quote name='thedonutman' post='752269' date='Feb 20 2010, 09:53 PM']The A7s are almost double my budget. How do the A5s compare?[/quote] I havent heard the A5 I'm afraid (though a guy I used to work with and who has good ears told me they were 'useable'). Street price on the Adams is only about £550ish. Also, both Adam A7s and Dynaudio BM5a come up reasonably frequently second hand. You could also keep an eye on DV's B stock list. I've seen decent monitors appear on there pretty often. Here's a link: [url="http://www.dv247.com/b-stock/"]http://www.dv247.com/b-stock/[/url]

[quote name='Rosh' post='752109' date='Feb 20 2010, 07:40 PM']Yamaha HS80M -- As far as I know, these are the monitors (all I remember is black and white yamaha monitors) that I was taught: If you can make the mix sound good on these, it'll sound good anywhere! They are in a lot of studios too, so can't be that bad! [/quote] And that, my friends, is one of the most often quoted but misunderstood quotes around. The point with NS10s is that they sound bloody awful but were characteristic of most cheap hifi speakers of the 70's. They are actually pretty poor as a studio monitor (though to be fair do improve somewhat with a Bryston amp behind them). Really guys, if you are serious about your music, save your pennies and, at the least, but something like a pair of Adam A7s/dynaudio BM5a's. Anything less than that and some DIY traps and you will continue to have translation issues.

sod the artists. the pies are for me! [quote name='discreet' post='749190' date='Feb 18 2010, 12:45 AM']I agree. Artists[i] must[/i] have access to hot pies.[/quote]

The tannoys are probably the best of the bunch you mention. But for just a little more you could get Adam A7s or Dynaudio BM5a which are a BIG step up from the ones you mention. As mentioned above dont leave room treatment out of the equation. You can buy a big bag of rockwool from Wickes and make some DIY panels for about £50. (believe me, it'll be the best 50 you ever spend.)

This is a commercial working studio. The artists who work here have a right to expect decent amenities. And, to be frank, it's no big deal. It only cost about £500 to buy, all the cupboards etc are re-useable and I could hardly go 18months without somewhere to make a cup of tea or heat up a pie! [quote name='cheddatom' post='745567' date='Feb 15 2010, 09:33 AM']I might be confused, but you fitted out a mini-kitchen even though you're going to rip it out when the other kitchen's ready!??! It probably makes sense, but I hate doing work that I know will be un-done![/quote]

I realised I never provided any shots of the rest of the place. We had to rip down a chunk of the kitchen when we started the live room build. Here's what was left of it: Now ultimately, when the new control room is done, the new kitchen will be where the current control room is and, in turn, this will no longer be a kitchen (who needs two kitchens anyway... keep up) so will be turned into a full height booth (about 18 feet tall with tie-lines) with a spiral staircase which will lead to the lounge upstairs. As that's gonna be a little while away I decided to tart this kitchen up a bit in the meantime. Here's the units going in: and here's how the current kitchen looks: The fridge is built into one of the lower cupboards and the microwave into one of the higher ones. I've still got some tiling to do and lights to fit under the high cupboards but, as you can see, at this point while it's compact it's pretty slick all the same.

There are a load of budget places in newcastle. Maybe speak to Cluny studios or somewhere like that.

and... we will return to regularly scheduled programming right after this short break...!

As stated above firewire is better than usb2 for this. I'm no techie but understand that is because usb2 transfers data in packets, firewire streams continuously. In addition you are less likely to get problems if you use the local drive for system and the firewire drive for the audio. If you get to anything like a decent track count the bus wont cope with both the system and the streamed audio. This means you should not transfer audio onto the system drive as suggested. As a slight aside, if you are using protools you must be very careful what firewire drive you buy. Check on the DUC for chipset compatibility.