Accoustic treatment, or "no egg boxes"

[madox]

This thread follows on from here.

...If you are in a crappy building, do watch the floor loading, though.

Yeah, I had considered the loading issue. My plan was to fill with a foam, rather than sand. I think sand would probably be acocustically very dead, but the weight would quite likely be an issue for me. I was thinking maybe some medium density foam, and some lightweight quilting, or maybe just the quilting. I think the pedestal itself would probably have sufficient mass, but I wouldn't want to create any resonance in the column of air within the interior cavity.

I will probably have to do some room treatment as well, but at this stage I really don't have a solution for that. Have to wait and see what kind of room I can get into, and how much work I will be able to do on it.

Cheers

[/tilted/]

There was a series of articles about room treatment in Audio Technology magazine (an Aussie mag, which is really, really good IMO).

Alas, they don't seem to be available online.

There were a lot of interesting points layed out, often more as a discussion point, rather than the traditional "This is the only way to do it right. If you don't do it this way it will be terrible" approach. I'll try to summarise as best I can.

If you have more than one room available, you'll want to figure out what sort of spaces you want to end up with. For example, even if most of your music is electronic based, you might occasionally want to do some live drums or vocals.

Depending on how often you do live recording, it might make more sense to do these recordings off site, rather than dedicate a portion of your space to something you rarely use.

If you have one room to do everything, it might make sense to make some moveable isolation panels, if you're likely to record an acoustic instrument or two.

Also, depending on where you live and how nice your neighbours are, you might want to do some acoustic isolation. There is a vital distinction between acoustic isolation and acoustic treatment.

Damn, all the stuff I've just typed is fairly useless really, I wish I could lay hands on those articles.

[madox]

Damn, all the stuff I've just typed is fairly useless really, I wish I could lay hands on those articles.

Well, not quite useless. The movable panels idea is what I was thinking of for my case. It makes it easier to take my treatment elsewhere if I have to move house in future. Making the panels well, would take a bit of effort though. I think they would have to be pretty robust and stable, so as not to introduce problems.

Apart from the panels, I am not too sure what I will do. I think I may need to do some refurbishment of the room first. This would involve securing the panels and floors, etc. I may install floor carpets as well. I suspect I will have rattling window fittings to deal with, too.

I know Audio Technology. I will keep an eye out for a public library which has the mag, with back issues. By the way, do you remember when the articles were published?

Cheers,

madox