fluted soundproofing panel?
Does anyone has any experience in installing this for your home studio? how will it affect the sound of your playing? Generally we want to have the echo-ey sound of playing in a church or a large hall way. Will installing those soundproof panel mute the sound?
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I use sound absorbing panels in my very small home studio. They don't tend to mute the direct sound to much, only the first reflections from the bare walls. I then add suitable hall/church reverb as a post recording effect.
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Most of the cheap and thin panels won't help for a better sound and would probably make it worst. It also depends of your room configuration and dimensions, for a small room under 30'x30' I fear the only interesting solution is absorption to make it almost dead. If the material is not enough thick and dense it won't absorb what you need and if they instead reflect or diffuse then the frequencies will rebound to another wall, and the problem persist. In a bad sounding room you'll never be able to have a church-like sound naturally, and if you apply a reverb plugin from a take of this non-treated room you'll only amplify the worst sound. Like you I tried multiple solutions until I figured out I had to really treat my studio room to upgrade my sound.
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Also I personally prefer adding only subtle reverb because church-like and large hall reverbs tend to produce the reverse effect of what I'm looking for... I prefer detail, precision and accuracy of sound and playing, as less-permissive as possible to the player.
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Hi Don - You don't mention the size or shape of your room or what specific panels you're planning to use, but as a sound engineer I can share my thoughts. The "mistake" I see many making is putting thin (1"-2") foam panels or carpet or even mattresses up on their walls. This ends up just cutting down the higher frequencies and can lead to a dead-sounding room that's not much fun to work in. In most rooms not built for sound, like most square or rectangular home studios, a combination of high frequency and broadband absorption, bass trapping (usually in the room corners), and controlled diffusion to help scatter reflections is needed. It gets to be a pretty involved and complicated subject. And unless you have a large room to start with, you won't achieve a church or hall sound naturally anyway.
I've had good luck in the past controlling my home studios with ASC Tube Traps. https://www.acousticsciences.com/
But they're fairly pricey and you have to experiment to find the best placement for them. I even had some of them suspended from the ceiling to help control floor-to-ceiling reflections. One nice thing is they're not built in so you can take them with you if you move.
There are quite a few other companies offering solutions these days, and I believe some of them make suggestions based on dimensions/drawings you send them.
You may not achieve the large room sound with these treatments, but at least you can have a room that's enjoyable to work in and can provide you an acceptable recording space.
Then just add a nice reverb!
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Phill Tadman Blaise Laflamme Greg Droman Thanks for sharing your experiences.
My room is actually quite small, around 69 ft x 95 ft. I do the occasional recording for my homework but that's about it. I don't really need to include any effects or rather I don't think I know how to add any effects.
I want to sound proof or rather treat my room because I want to enjoy playing music in it while not causing too much of a nuisance to others when I'm practising. I can repeat 1 bar of music for hours and it would drive my wife crazy.
I'm afraid if I installed those fluted soundproofing panel it might just 'kill' the sound too much that you won't enjoy playing in it which defeats the purpose. Thanks!
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don Given your aim (i.e. to preserve your wife's sanity) have you considered using a 'silent' guitar? For routine practice (i.e. repeating a phrase a thousand times) it should work fine. (I'm not convinced repetition of that kind is a useful exercise, but that's a different matter ...)
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don I fear your sound will be worst if you install this kind of panels in your current room, you won't find any enhancement and your pleasure to play will be diminished instead. Before I did the proper treatment with a professional, the mix of different kind of panels made the sound very bad to the point I had to go in another room to enjoy my guitar sound.
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David Krupka thanks! I actually did considered it but it is not something I think I will enjoy playing on even if it is repetition. I do agree repeating phrases is not that helpful. In fact, I only recently injured myself doing that. There was a slur portion that my muscle hasn’t fully developed to play and by repeating ad nauseam that I actually pulled a muscled and had to be out for a while. Need to adopt smarter practice habits.
Blaise Laflamme Thanks! I kinda suspected this as much. The worse is when it affects your enjoyment of playing. Guess there is no good solution.
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don I ended up with a setup with 4 panels on each side walls, 2 bass traps in the corners and 2 panels on the ceiling where I play. I can say that I can now hear my natural guitar sound and also the exact sound I produce with no natural room or artifact enhancements, which is a good thing.
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Blaise Laflamme thanks! Is the panel on the ceiling a rigid fibreglass like what David suggested? Thanks!
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don no, they are the same as on the walls but suspended, they are made of wood, absorbent materials and fabrics. Look at the attached picture, it'll give you an idea.
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks Blaise!
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I'm guessing there are some missing decimal points, otherwise your room is a not-so-small 6555 square feet! If it's more like ~70sf, then yeah that's a small room that will never sound like a church or a hall. You may find some treatments that will at least make it enjoyable for you to play in. But treating it so the sound doesn't "escape" that room and bother others is a whole different problem, and probably harder to solve.
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Greg Droman lol. Yes it is missing 1 decimal point. 6.9 x 9.5 ft. It is really small room. May be not a church or hall but like a large bathroom. But it would be hard to sound proof it.
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don While you probably can't "sound proof" it, ie stop sound from coming in or going out, there may be some simple, inexpensive things you can do to at least enjoy the sound you hear when playing in there. One fairly easy fix that won't take up your space is a "cloud" suspended from the ceiling to help with the floor-to-ceiling reflections. I did that in my studio, hanging a 4" thick piece of rigid fiberglass (covered with cloth and a frame) about a foot down from the ceiling. The distance helps the panel control a somewhat wider frequency range than if it were flush to the ceiling.
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Greg Droman Thanks! I will definitely try that.
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