How To Set Up Sound Panels

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Learn why you need acoustic handling?
What problems practise most people run into when using acoustic treatment?
Learn one simple trick to improve your room acoustics without spending more money.

Proper acoustic treatment is essential for any environment where critical listening is desired. Home theaters, recording studios, music rooms, and fifty-fifty general living spaces can do good from audio-visual treatment albeit to unlike extents.

Unfortunately, treatment is usually misunderstood and therefore, misused due to its complexity and a lack of articulate guidelines.

For example, I accept seen plenty of beginner sound engineers comprehend every wall of their creative space with cream mattress toppers to emulate what is seen in professional person recording spaces.

Treating a room in this fashion is fortunately unnecessary and tin result in worse sound quality. This begs the question− does acoustic foam actually work?

In order to properly answer this question, nosotros must start understand the physical properties of sound.

Starting time Off, A Epitomize Of What Sound Is…

Sound is simply our perception of vibrations in the air.

When a guitarist plucks a string, the dorsum-and-forth move of the string creates micro-vibrations in air that spread out just like ripples in a swimming. Nosotros are graced with the sound of music when those dorsum-and-along ripples reach our ears.

Sound becomes very complex in rooms because it bounces and reflects off walls, floors, ceilings, and any other surface (including you).

In that location are also strong resonances that form in all rooms based on their length, width, and pinnacle. These reflections and resonances create the sound of your room.

As an example, consider how your vox sounds in a washroom versus your bedroom.

It is of import to understand that these room colorations can be benign or very detrimental to our piece of work as sound engineers. In the case of home studios, a single sleeping accommodation oft functions as both a mixing and a recording environment. Therefore, less than stellar room colorations will likely negatively affect the following:

Musical instrument choice, tuning, and preparation
Microphone option
Microphone placement
Balance levels
Digital signal processing within a digital sound workstation

Absorption And Acoustic Foam

Then, what can nosotros practise about bad room colorations? Cue audio-visual treatment. Audio-visual treatment, such equally foam, is a great fashion to fight undesirable room colorations and restore accuracy to our listening infinite. Here are some examples of acoustic treatments and methods of effecting a rooms' audio.

Absorption
Diffusion
Reconstruction of room size or walls
Placement of equipment within the room
Placement of listeners within the room
Computer programs

Acoustic foam, i.e. absorption, is a very pop method of acoustic treatment because information technology is both readily available and relatively cheap. This is dandy news!

Acoustic foam works past reducing the amount of sound energy within a room. The sound energy does non disappear, rather, it is converted into other forms of energy. Recall that sound is micro-vibrations within air. Every bit those vibrations pass through cream, the material membranes vibrate as well. The result of these vibrations is friction and heat. Viola… sound energy is dissipated equally heat.

With this understanding of acoustic cream, it should be clear that any porous or fabric-like cloth absorbs sound. This means that blankets, couches, pillows, window curtains, laundry, and the dress y'all are wearing correct now office as sound absorbers. So to finally answer the question, yes acoustic foam does work.

Consider The Blazon Of Audio-visual Foam

Professional acoustics companies, such as Auralex and GIK Acoustics, use specific materials for their absorptive backdrop. This means that at that place is a divergence betwixt the membrane cell structure of mattress foam and that used for acoustic treatment. Further, many professional companies will only use materials that stand the test of time and hold-upwards to building fire codes. It is of import to consider whether your handling is acoustic foam or just foam.

Another cardinal gene with assimilation is the thickness of each panel. Equally a rule of pollex, thin pieces of acoustic treatment target higher frequencies. Much thicker material is needed to efficiently absorb lower frequencies. Therefore, using merely sparse acoustic foam will unduly absorb high frequencies without providing benefit in lower frequency regions. The result is an unnatural sounding room that is no longer musical. This leads us to our one simple trick to improve your audio-visual treatment without spending more than money.

As a dominion of thumb, thin pieces of acoustic treatment target higher frequencies. Much thicker material is needed to efficiently absorb lower frequencies.

Fix Your Mounting

Let's presume you already accept some acoustic foam on manus. Most people tend to mount their foam directly on the wall. This significantly limits its efficiency as thinner absorbers mainly address higher frequencies (this is a result of particle velocity and audio boundary interactions with surfaces).

Thicker foam, all the same, is more than efficient at absorbing a broader range of frequencies. Therefore, mounting your thin audio-visual foam even a few inches off the wall tin drastically ameliorate its benefits. The effect is twofold in that:

You volition improve the lower frequency ranges afflicted by your treatment
You will further amend how well it absorbs loftier frequencies.

To mount your foam off the wall, simple household items such as cardboard strips will be plenty. Personally, I like to use forest furring strips like these, nonetheless, the material doesn't matter equally much as the altitude from the wall and location within the room.

Audio-visual Foam Placement & Positioning Tips

Care for The Get-go Reflection Points

Beginning by treating the first reflection points on the horizontal axis. If you lot are non sure where this is, sit in your listening position and imagine where sound from your speakers hits your side walls and bounces back to you. It is very of import to place acoustic handling here as information technology will better your stereo width and analyze your imaging.

Pay Attending To The Weak Areas

You should consider placing some acoustic treatment between the speakers and your front wall. Applying acoustic handling here helps reduce reflections emanating from the back of your speaker. This is a tricky area every bit boundary interactions tin can crusade a significant dip in your low-mid frequencies; withal, for most home studios it is likely best to identify your speakers every bit close to the wall as recommended by the manufacturer. If there is any space left between the wall and your speakers, place acoustic foam there.

Don't Forget The Corners

If possible, mount some of your acoustic foam across corners of your room. This tin can be done between two horizontal walls or even the ceiling and side-wall. This volition inherently create a large air gap behind the foam. This tin be your outset to absorbing those low-frequency resonances mentioned above. As your studio grows, y'all will need to add larger and thicker absorbers in your corners to further treat bass resonances.

If possible, mount some of your acoustic cream beyond corners of your room.

Build An Audio-visual Cloud

This next recommendation is easiest if you have a drop-downward hanging ceiling. Your goal is to create an audio-visual "cloud" that hangs a few inches from your ceiling over your listening position or musical instruments. This is similar the first recommendation in that yous are applying audio-visual treatment to the first reflection betoken above you.

Utilise Furniture

Acoustic handling can also be placed directly backside y'all on the back wall of your room. It can likewise be extremely helpful to place a couch at this location−recall that any soft porous material will absorb sound.

Making these pocket-sized adjustments to your audio-visual treatment can help reduce the pitfalls discussed to a higher place. Furthermore, you may not demand every bit much acoustic foam as y'all accept improved the efficiency of what y'all already have. This is actually a win-win situation.

Create an acoustic "deject" that hangs a few inches from your ceiling over your listening position or musical instruments.

Don't Overdo It

Acoustic foam can be a fantastic first footstep in improving a rooms' acoustics; however, if used in excess it can brand a room sound lifeless, unbalanced, and unnatural. In that location is a very common trap that I myself fell prey to when first starting out. Firstly, people learn cheap packing or bedding foam and arbitrarily utilise it to their walls.

Right away at that place is an audible deviation, and it is causeless that an improvement has been made. It is then taken to the extreme, whereby nearly all surfaces are covered with foam. Unfortunately, this is all too common and it does not issue in the all-time sounding room for music recording or production.

Warning signs that you may have "likewise much" acoustic treatment:

Your room has an uncomfortable feel.
The musical quality seems lifeless and unnatural.
Your recordings always audio boomy and or muddy.

Acoustic Cream Recommendations

While it may be tempting to purchase off-make items due to price, you are non doing yourself any favors. Many of these products are not tested and therefore have poor performance. Furthermore, I have personally seen some of these cheaper alternatives begin deteriorating over fourth dimension.

There are numerous big and offset-upward acoustic handling companies. Therefore, I highly recommend you do your own research and come across what fits your needs. Many of these groups, fortunately, offer acoustic consultations at no cost. Here is a shortlist of some first-class manufacturers.

Auralex Acoustics
GIK Acoustics
ATS Acoustics
Prepare Acoustics
RealTraps
John Hunter Acoustics

Terminal Thoughts

It tin easily price thousands of dollars to properly treat a room. This is largely due to lower frequency resonances which tend to require more advanced and tuned forms of treatment. Yet, that is not to say that a room'south sound cannot be drastically improved with fifty-fifty minimal treatment practical properly. Hopefully, these tips will become you in the correct frame of mind that you do non need to spend ridiculous amounts of coin to go the chore done.

Proceed in mind that acoustically treating a room tends to be a fluid process. Room acoustics is complicated so give yourself credit for starting that journey.

Remember — there are plenty of musicians and producers releasing professional work in very pocket-size dwelling house studios – Billie Eilish comes to mind. Don't exist dissuaded past the glimmer of commercial setups.

Begin experimenting with what sounds all-time in your space and always remember to stay positive, push button your musical boundaries, and take fun!

Source: https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/acoustic-foam-panel-placement-positioning/