Jerk Moans's Drum/Guitar/Noise Studio Baffles Quest

JerkMoans

Moans Jr. is a keen drummer.  Those things are NOISY.  So when we had builders in a few years ago we ended up constructing an oubliette down the bottom fo the garden, that mutated into an all purposes teenagers' party venue.

Fast forward a few years and his band are using it for rehearsals and jams, and experimenting with recording, but the acoustics are apparently 'a bit shit'.

The solution?  A crap ton of sound absorbing baffles, cunningly fashioned from sheets of MDF and carpet offcuts from the warehouse place down the road.

octatonic

They won't have enough mass to work.

You want acoustic density Rockwool wrapped in acoustic fabric.
Don't just throw them up everywhere, try to target areas like corners and behind any listening position, but each room is different so it sometimes pays to ring the room out with a (flat) microphone and some test tones.

JerkMoans

octatonic said:

They won't have enough mass to work.

You want acoustic density Rockwool wrapped in acoustic fabric.
Don't just throw them up everywhere, try to target areas like corners and behind any listening position, but each room is different so it sometimes pays to ring the room out with a (flat) microphone and some test tones.

Really?  After all that effort?

Minor says he thinks it sounds better so will hang in there but file away your good advice for the next monster revamp project in a month or two.  Wiz duly awarded

At least it looks like less of a disaster zone in there now.  And it keeps him and his crew out of the house, so well worth the labour

DrBob

Comes round here with his fancy talk of “oubliettes” !

octatonic

JerkMoans said:

octatonic said:

They won't have enough mass to work.

You want acoustic density Rockwool wrapped in acoustic fabric.
Don't just throw them up everywhere, try to target areas like corners and behind any listening position, but each room is different so it sometimes pays to ring the room out with a (flat) microphone and some test tones.

Really?  After all that effort?

Minor says he thinks it sounds better so will hang in there but file away your good advice for the next monster revamp project in a month or two.  Wiz duly awarded

At least it looks like less of a disaster zone in there now.  And it keeps him and his crew out of the house, so well worth the labour

Sorry, but I've built several studios now and it is very much a case of been there, done that.
My second studio in Brixton I decided to cover with acoustic foam, which was wonderful for taking all the top end off the room.

Rockwool is the way to do it.
if you don't want to build the bass traps yourself then look at someone like GIK, they are in Europe and not too expensive.
Otherwise it is a fairly simple job to do, but Rockwool is very itchy to work with.

Guitar_Slinger

The teenager* across the road from me had a similar set up years ago - a brick outhouse at the bottom of the back garden. Although it was so noisy, he may as well have been playing drums outside the front of his house. Probably why studios are on industrial estates, away from terraced houses like mine.

*he's now 31

octatonic

One thing to remember is acoustic treatment and sound isolation are two different and sometimes opposing goals.
My UK studio sounds wonderful but it is acoustically treated, but it is not isolated so you can be standing outside the mix room and hear what is coming out of the room.

Sound isolation takes mass, a lot of it, and ideally to decouple the inner room from the outer room.
It is much more expensive than acoustically treating a room.

Winny_Pooh

If you want to improve on what you have done already with minimal hassle then take some corner sheets off, build side walls min 4-6 inch thick and stuff with the right rockwool (google it) then staple material across the top. 

Then place against the wall but with a 2 inch gap betwwen the mdf and the wall. This will help with the low end.