Recording room acoustics

[Barth]

The acoustic problem. In the early days it where almost anechoic rooms. As dead as you can imagine. Reverb was added later. Nowadays diffusion is the magic word!
Please, is there someone out there who can help me out? We spend lots of money on equipment. We can try before we buy. But how with the treatment of the recording rooms?

I would like to start as it is, empty and no treatment and go from there. Then put some stuff on the walls and hear what happens. What should I use.? The Polycylinder things? Skewed wood panels. Resonators? I’ve read a a lot about it, and the more I read, the more confused I get!
How have you guys treated you’re rooms?
Are there usefully links somewhere?

 

[Impy]

There's a great book called 'Sound Studio Construction On A Budget' by F. Alton Everest. You'll get lots of good tips from there.
The thing is that there's no real sure bet with acoustic treatment, you'll have to do different things depending on the room you have. If you want to do it all out then decide an RT60 (reverb time) you want in the room, then calculate how much absorbent you'll need to achieve this, it's a pretty complicated process but it's do-able.
Read that book and you'll get the idea.

 

[Frank'nfurter]

I have a normal decent living room acoustic. That is for me normaly the place where I listen to music and rate a mix. And it work's fine. If the mix sounds good in my living room then the mix is O.K.

franky

 

[2dark]

every material and form like wall hanger, gobos, .. has its very own function
in acoustic treatment.
In the first place I would figure out what I want to do with the room.
Do I need a dead area and a live area at the same time, do I want to be an overall
good sound room and add mobile walls/gobos for special treatment of instruments/vocals.

Depending on the shape of the room and the size, you can calculate the corresponding
frequencies from it (some where on the SAE site there should be some info on that).

In general: diagonal walls are a no no. Right-angled corners also.
Usually there are some bass traps in some or all corners to control low frequency.
Your wall material can also be important.

check this out:
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

and this one here (good and very helpful forum):
http://www.johnlsayers.com/

 

[Barth]

Thanks you guys, i've got something to think about!
2Dark, awsome links!

 

[egan.]

http://www.ethanwiner.com/
This is the guy who owns realtraps, but he published some good DIY articles several years back that he has on his site.

 

[Barth]

Thankx Egan. Really interesting site!