Finally, treating my room acoustically.

grywolf627 thats pretty kickass. So much so I decided to put it up for everyone to see.

wwwhostfilesmetropolis20ceiling.jpg


Broken81:

That looks pretty cool as well but I see a few problems with it:

4x4 isn't that cheap (I'm mean it's not terrible but man)
4x4 is heavy and that much looks like it would be an issue to hang.
It looks ugly. :lol:
Just saying.
 
check out this link for a diy difuser....

http://www.pmerecords.com/Diffusor.cfm

anyone ever build one of these and was it any good?

I was going to, but it was going to be way too heavy. So, I made my own design out of semi-rigid foam rubber (I have access to tonnnsss of it at work). I know it didn't follow scientific formulas, but it still sounded great (see my above post). I did however, build another type of wooden diffuser, and came out quite nice looking (I can't find my pictures of it though). The plans for it can be found here: http://www.mhsoft.nl/Diffusor.asp

Hmm...I haven't been to that website in a while. There used to be more information there. Now, it's just the basic theory and a calculator. Oh well...it's actually more trouble than the skyline type anyway.
 
wwwhostfilesmetropolis20ceiling.jpg


I had thought about gluing some little toy cars between the buildings and a Godzilla, just to complete the effect. LOL

Hahahahahahahahahaha, love it dude! And actually, in my reading of all the old threads on this subject I found, one of them (this one) had some mention of that foam by mail stuff being pretty inferior. Besides, the Auralex stuff isn't terribly expensive, and I'm goin' all out here! (once again, relatively speaking, not gonna get a $500 diffuser :lol:)
 
...in my reading of all the old threads on this subject I found, one of them this one) had some mention of that foam by mail stuff being pretty inferior.
That's good to know! Thanks for finding that. I couldn't find that old thread about this stuff, and I've never tried it. I've got a place here in town that sells the rigid fiberglass stuff for a decent price, so I've always gone with a combo of that (in nice wooden frames) and auralex stuff.

When we get out of this apartment and into a house (if we ever find one to suit our picky asses) I'll have to rebuild the metropolis. :) Although I think I'll be pushing my luck with my wife trying to hang a Godzilla from the ceiling. LOL
 
Broken81:

That looks pretty cool as well but I see a few problems with it:

4x4 isn't that cheap (I'm mean it's not terrible but man)
4x4 is heavy and that much looks like it would be an issue to hang.
It looks ugly. :lol:
Just saying.

Yea i guess the wood is better though. The foam or whatever they use on them only works down to like 800hz. Honestly i could care less about looks as long as it helps the sound. I'm not trying to win a fashion design award personally.
 
I would do a similar design then and use cedar or pine. Although I can't seem to remember what 4x4 was made of most of the time. Which is fucked up because I used to install fence pretty regularly.

But I do remember how heavy pressure treated 4x4 could get (especially when water logged)....

Obviously you wouldn't be using PT 4x4 but still... It's not light.
 
Yea i guess the wood is better though. The foam or whatever they use on them only works down to like 800hz. Honestly i could care less about looks as long as it helps the sound. I'm not trying to win a fashion design award personally.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you here and stating things you already know. But from your statement "only works down to 800hz"...I take it that you're wanting to deaden the sound? (again, sorry if I'm misunderstanding you) If so, building a wooden diffusor won't do it. Diffusors only randomly spread the sound reflections, so there are no direct reflections coming back to you. You maintain a "live" sound, but without the ugly direct reflections. This is why they're not usually recommmended in smaller rooms...you'll be too close to them. The ceiling diffuser I built was like a hybrid. The material was semi-rigid, and semi-aborptive. It actually worked out really nicely for my situation.

To absorb, you'll need dense foam, or even better 2 or 4 inch thick rigid fiberglass (or rockwool) panels. And to treat the low frequencies, you'll need bass traps, using the same panels placed in corners, or even better...specially constructed traps. Tube traps are a little bit of a pain to make, but they work really nicely.

My completed tube traps:
http://www.hostfil.es/file/11353/BassTrapTubes-finished-JPG.html

I can give more info on construction of these if anyone is interested.
 
yep i already build absorbers for my room with 703.

Now you would want your diffuser work on freq below 800 though correct?
 
Yea i guess the wood is better though. The foam or whatever they use on them only works down to like 800hz. Honestly i could care less about looks as long as it helps the sound. I'm not trying to win a fashion design award personally.

Ahh...ok...my bad. I re-read the site you gave...."Because of their structural complexity, they're generally made of molded plastic when you buy them off-the-shelf, because that's much easier to construct than hand-building each one out of something more substantial. Unfortunately, the fact that they're hollow tends to make them not too effective below about 800 hZ."

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Yeah, the plastic ones do have a limitation because they're hollow and thin. The sound can resonate in the hollow spaces. And because they're thin, the surfaces can vibrate. Aside from causing audible "buzzing", it's not too condusive to reflection. Stuffing them, or filling them with somethign to make them solid helps. But, the frequency response of diffusors is really set by the width and depth of the "wells". That's about the extent of my knowledge of diffusors. I just use the online calculators to figure out the dimensions and layouts for me. :)
 
yep i already build absorbers for my room with 703.

Now you would want your diffuser work on freq below 800 though correct?

Yep...you are correct sir. If diffusion is what you're aiming for, then you want it to go as low as you can. The wooden ones I built (similar to the Realtrap ones) had a range of approx. 7Khz - 500hz...if I remember correctly. That was as low as I could go and keep the size acceptable for my application. Dang, I wish I could find the picture of it. I basically made 4 smaller square diffusors of that style, together into one big square...with each diffusor array perpendicular to each other. Dang that was a lot of trouble to build though.
 
Wow thats really pretty IMO :)lol: I said pretty in a metal forum).

Anyhow, just got back from the 703 trip. Stupid dumbass that I am I didn't think how much 288 square feet of 703 2" was going to take up and only ended up being able to get 96 square feet this trip.

:lol:

Anyhow I'm going back tomarrow for the rest and picking up some framing and fabric as well. Hopefully this gets done this week but it's kind of up in the air being it's the final week of college and all.
 
The room that I record everything in has panelling on the walls that makes it look like a log cabin, so the walls aren't flat, they are made of semicircular sections like logs stacked on top of each other. This means that all the sound gets diffused like crazy anyways because there are no parallel surfaces anywhere! Wonderful!
 
The room that I record everything in has panelling on the walls that makes it look like a log cabin, so the walls aren't flat, they are made of semicircular sections like logs stacked on top of each other. This means that all the sound gets diffused like crazy anyways because there are no parallel surfaces anywhere! Wonderful!

Andy's place has kind of the same thing going on; cobblestone walls = tons of random diffusion!