What to do with a small and cube-like room?

[AD Chaos]

Hey there dudes

Since last year I've been renting a room in a rehearsal/studio place set on a large, one-story old house. Now that it's been some months I'm confident enough as to move my shit there (the more expensive things I have collecting dust in the house).

But since I renewed the contract, I moved from the previous, larger and rectangular room I was in, into a smaller, cubic room :Smug: Bass freqs resonate like crazy there and even though is not treated yet, I'm fearing investing on acoustic treatment might not be enough to make it usable (for mix and mic'ing cabs). Especially since the other room naturally sounded much better, but unfortunately the dude dealing with the business there seems unwilling -for the moment, at least- to rent me back the bigger room.

What should I do? Do you guys have some general tip as to how to go about the treatment part? I'm also gonna have to isolate with fiber glass and other materials -at least to avoid incoming noise from the rehearsal rooms- but I'm afraid that might make the acoustics worse because of the limited size of the room (3.1 meters on each side, and a false ceiling at 2.5 mts).


Any help or advice is much appreciated - been wondering how to go about with this for quite some time.


Thanks much

 

[C-Martin]

If your just going to be tracking guitars and mixing, you can get it to work for you if you treat it thoroughly. That's similar same room size as mine (Mine is 8.5' x 14') and acoustic treatment has made a huge difference in it. I track with the cab in another room though, but you should be able to get some decent recordings in there, i just prefer not having a cranked amp right next to me when i'm tracking/reamping.

I would start by bass trapping the crap out of all 8 tri-corners by making super chunk traps. You'll benefit from that no matter what that room will be used for and will help control that low freq resonance. After that, if the room is going to be used mainly for mixing, find the best location for your workstation by moving around, avoiding the center of the room but still having equal wall to monitor distance on each side. Find the spot that sounds best (or has the least amount of issues) and set up some 2" or 4" absorption panels at reflection points. If the low freq are still an issue, and you still have funds to go further, place some bass traps on either the ceiling to wall or floor to wall corners. If you've covered all corners and there's still major issues i would look for another room.. but you could try adding some thick 6" or 8" bass traps on the rear wall of your work station to see if that helps but in a small room you'll never have enough acoustic treatment to get it perfect.

If you make the traps yourself, make them so that there's about an inch of air gap between the wall and the panel, this will make them more effective, otherwise i would recommend checking out GIK Acoustics. They've got some good stuff at a very affordable price, the room packages are good and save you a bit of cash.

 

[C-Martin]

I just realized you mention having some noise issue with adjacent rooms. I would strongly recommend you find another room in that case. It'll be less hassle and less expensive for you than trying to isolate that room from outside noise on top of treating it acoustically. It's just not worth it IMO.

 

[AD Chaos]

Huge thanks Martin! I've already read much of what you're mentioning, but it's great to hear from someone with a similar room and actual experience on the matter.

About the noise, actually one of the few advantages of this smaller room is that it is located well inside the house so it's somewhat naturally isolated (street/ambient noise is minimal) and also away from the rehearsal rooms (which are ridiculously isolated in any case, and used mostly at night) but I still think at least some thin isolation could be beneficial, both for cleaner takes, but really mostly to be able to up the levels at least a little bit more without start pissing people off. My concern with isolation is mostly about making reflections bounce inside even more (if that makes sense).

As for tracking in the same room, I'm thinking earplugs or closed headphones (and my attenuator) can help the situation, but in any case I wouldn't crank things up so much as for it to become annoying for me.