mikey5string - Posted - 03/30/2011:  16:50:17

I just had a new office/music room made in my house.

Right now there is hardwood floor and nothing but paint on the walls. It is very echoey.

I cant really plaster foam all over the walls, the wife wont have it. But I can put a square or two
of that egg crate foam stuff i see at guitar center here and there.

Would that help? here should i put it?

also, is there an alternate source for that stuff? or something else i could use. id imagine its expensive for
a piece of molded foam.

any other ideas?

the room is 7 X 12 with a door into the office and one outside if that matters.

desert rose - Posted - 03/30/2011:  17:00:42

Hanging nice decorative rugs will do the trick usually as well. Like Persian or American Indian theme designs will look good and kill the structure of the sound echoing

Scott

JoeDownes - Posted - 03/30/2011:  17:18:33

Anything that's soft and not straight will help. Curtains, carpet, foam stuff. They all diffuse the sound waves and make the room less echoey.

steev - Posted - 03/30/2011:  18:30:46

if you're recording plan to record into microphones, and doing each instrument at a time it is recommended to create a isolation spot to cut reflex off the walls and floor- this can be a simple set of hooks you put up in a corner and hang heavy soft fabrics like blankets from ceiling to floor and covering the stand to hard floor with something - the set up is as needed so no worries about the looks of the room-
if you''re planning on putting monitors in there to mix down then you need to think about more less the room lay out (door on a side ) with solid walls behind your sweet spot to monitor and deaden the reflex from behind the speakers and the upper wall behind you (again a curtain etc) several more or less.

eagleisland - Posted - 03/30/2011:  18:44:54

You don't need to drench the room in egg-crate foam or carpets. Among other things, many sound waves have longer wavelengths than the thickness of the deadener. The only way to make a room flat is to create an anechoic chamber, and that's a very big deal:





What IS necessary is to disrupt the ability of sound waves to bounce back and forth and - worst of all - to create standing waves. The best way to do it is to eliminate parallel hard surfaces, but that can be hard to do. If you have parallel surfaces, the fix can be surprisingly simple, by simply putting random pieces of foam at various thicknesses and carpet tiles on the walls in more or less random locations and testing by clapping all over the place and listening carefully. It's disruption that counts, not deadening.

I learned this because I was once responsible for a very aggressive schedule of radio ads and hired a brilliantly talented sound engineer to produce them. I'd blanketed the room in foam. He laughed at me (but was always complaining about the floor and the fact that his chair squeaked).

Let's remember that a significant component of the Beatles' sound was the natural ambience of Studio Two at EMI on Abbey Road. Echo is not the enemy. Bad echo is!

Edited by - eagleisland on 03/30/2011 18:47:15

Banjophobic - Posted - 03/30/2011:  19:01:19

Try moving to another room..... Yeah, try the 'hang a blanket' trick-works well.

JC12string - Posted - 03/30/2011:  19:52:47

I too have a music room of about the same side. It has a "popcorn" ceiling, which helps a little. We put a rug down on the floor, added some plants, put up some curtains, and I have a nice comfy reading chair in there too. I get just the right amount of reverb. Might have to throw a towel behind the head if it's still too bad.

Good luck.

mikey5string - Posted - 03/31/2011:  07:03:18

thanks everyone!

its not really a recording room although I do record in there. Mostly just stuff to send to my students or to evaluate my own playing.

i dont even have curtains on the windows so im sure that will help.

i think squares randomly placed would be a good option. i dont want to make it look like a studio per se, and i think the squares could double as some sort of modern sculpture art.

sundance kid - Posted - 03/31/2011:  08:06:00

Start here:
decware.com/paper39.htm

This article looks pretty good too:
ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Then you can go here:
marktaw.com/recording/Acoustic...lato.html

You can buy acoustic materials here:
markertek.com/Acoustic-Materials.xhtml

Edited by - sundance kid on 03/31/2011 08:12:04