Muzique Fann, lowendgod, and UnsungZeros, check your emails.
Another thanks to Joe P for making it available.
Another thanks to Joe P for making it available.
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building a home studio...
- Thread starter sloppysubs
- Start date
Thanks, Man.Petebass said:
Sooooo... Has anyone tried theirs out yet?? I'm kind of dying to know, because I originally just wrote it for myself - I hope its operation and interpreting the graphic and numeric output is OK for everyone! Just ask me any questions here on the thread, and I'll get right on answering them. I love the idea of this thing getting some use, and benefitting others.
Joe
Joe P said:
TB'ers, this thing is slick!!!
I was playing with the numbers and the program was able to adjust for various data changes (room deminsions, changes in wall coverings, etc). This'll make our band's studio project better from the get when we start building this summer.
Good lookin' out, Joe!
zongeek said:
Studio for recording? Or live performance? If the former, cash is definitely helpful.
In that case, I'd recommend focusing on the tracking chain, in other words, the "front end" for what you want to record. In my studio, I've targeted some "vintage" gear that sounds absolutely amazing (relative to other gear - maybe more "modern' gear perhaps), like Neve and API preamps and so on. But don't get stuck with one brand or sound. Build yourself an "arsenal" of capability. The basic components can be had pretty cheap (like on eBay and the like). You'll probably have to invest some further effort, like maybe wiring up some pigtails and some power supplies, but the effort is well worth it. The sound you'll achieve will speak for itself.The other critical node is the recording mechanism. Currently I'm using a computer, with an outboard 8-track recording mechanism (basically very similar to a full-on ProTools setup). You want "unlimited tracks", and you also want the capability of manipulating those tracks in a useful manner (like real-time per-track EQ and so on). I'm only using 8 tracks because I need to record live drums. For many applications, only two tracks (or maybe four) are necessary, from a tracking standpoint. On the other hand, "storage" and "playback" usually require many more tracks. I've done plenty of songs where 128 tracks is not unusual. Usually you can get away with 8, or 16, or 32.
But the point is, that a good computer (or recording system) can easily provide this capability. The marginal cost per track decreases with the number of tracks. My take is, "unlimited" is a good thing. I would love a copy of that Excel file. I am building a basement tracking room right now as well.
Thanks
Thanks
Need an email address for the file attachment - if you don't want to post it publicly here, then Petebass - or Moderator - has volunteered to personally send out copies to anyone who wants to send him their address.Gallient Knight said:
I'm glad to see a few responses! I put much work into this thing. I tought myself room acoustics before I tought myself computer (Excel as a specialty), so a first I would design with a system I worked-out using a large set of hand-drawn clear plastic sheets that bar-graphed out each possible mode for a normallized 'standard room' in small incrememts. I'd select these from file folders, precisely stack them up on top of each other, and hold up the stack to a light. When I thought I'd found a nice modal series I'd scale the dimentions from the normalized ones to see if I'd work in a given structural situation.
It took me months to put the whole system together. It was very cumbersome compared to this application that's now freely available to anyone, but ya-gotta-do-what-ya-gotta-do! To me, just shooting from the hip, and going through the motions is not an option to something that's important - I don't play games with my own mind, or other's.
You don't have to know acoustics to build a studio, but to not make some reasonable effort to somehow turn to someone who does is just going through the motions - it's rediculous, if you ask me. Fools think like that.
Please write back with any questions about room design. I won't steer you wrong - partially to do with the fact that besides all that I know about the subject (which is not all THAT much, really!), I know when I DON'T know something too, and will tell you when that's the case!
Joe
Hey Joe, my interest has been piqued enough that I should ask for a copy of this application... [email protected]
I've had to do axial node calculations for my schooling, I'd be interested in seeing what you've put together.
I've had to do axial node calculations for my schooling, I'd be interested in seeing what you've put together.
OK!
I just sent three more...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't forget, now: There's no help for you with absorbtion coefficients of different absorber materials at different frequencies. You can't just go willy-nilly plugging square-footages of carpet or drapes or Sonex, and think the resulting RT60 value (time it takes reverb to diminish 60dB down from the original sound) is what your reverb time will be across the spectrum!
What I really should have done is included one more sheet that contained a table of absorbtion coefficients by frequency for common materials. ..Yup - that's what I should have done. I also could have looked up some respected or established or famous ratios (like great old small concert hall ratios) as examples for you to plug-in and see what they look like! Dang-it! Well - if there ended up to be a lot of interest in this thing, I s'pose I'd obcess like I do, and put out an upgrade.
The modal calcs are simple-as-can-be though - no hidden complexities for rectangular rooms. You just want to spread those mode lines out as evenly as you can.
Remember this: Modes aren't bad! The reason that the graph stops at a low frequency is because the higher in frequency you go, the MORE modes there are! Modes are only a problem at lower freqs because there aren't enough of them. This means that the problem with modes is when they're too sparse, with big empty holes between - now this can't be avoided at low frequencies (although if a room is big enough, they can be reasonably ignored at all but the very lowest, or even sub-audible freqs), but what makes it especially bad is when two modes correspond down there. You diddle the numbers in the app to try to avoid PILE-UPS. It can be surprising how difficult that can be -- you just have to find a reasonable set that's within your design possibilities, print it out, find another, print it out, etc, and then go over the printouts to narrow it down - that's what I did anyway!
The cutoff-line is only approximate, AND only works if you also have the reverb stuff filled out properly.
..But not to scare y'all off, you can perfectly-well ignore anything but the three room dimentions and the chart. This is computationally completely independant of the rest, and is very fundimental to reasonable hope of having a room sound good. -and as was intimated a couple paragraphs ago: the smaller the room, the MORE important proper dimentions are!
Joe
I just sent three more...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't forget, now: There's no help for you with absorbtion coefficients of different absorber materials at different frequencies. You can't just go willy-nilly plugging square-footages of carpet or drapes or Sonex, and think the resulting RT60 value (time it takes reverb to diminish 60dB down from the original sound) is what your reverb time will be across the spectrum!
What I really should have done is included one more sheet that contained a table of absorbtion coefficients by frequency for common materials. ..Yup - that's what I should have done. I also could have looked up some respected or established or famous ratios (like great old small concert hall ratios) as examples for you to plug-in and see what they look like! Dang-it! Well - if there ended up to be a lot of interest in this thing, I s'pose I'd obcess like I do, and put out an upgrade.
The modal calcs are simple-as-can-be though - no hidden complexities for rectangular rooms. You just want to spread those mode lines out as evenly as you can.
Remember this: Modes aren't bad! The reason that the graph stops at a low frequency is because the higher in frequency you go, the MORE modes there are! Modes are only a problem at lower freqs because there aren't enough of them. This means that the problem with modes is when they're too sparse, with big empty holes between - now this can't be avoided at low frequencies (although if a room is big enough, they can be reasonably ignored at all but the very lowest, or even sub-audible freqs), but what makes it especially bad is when two modes correspond down there. You diddle the numbers in the app to try to avoid PILE-UPS. It can be surprising how difficult that can be -- you just have to find a reasonable set that's within your design possibilities, print it out, find another, print it out, etc, and then go over the printouts to narrow it down - that's what I did anyway!
The cutoff-line is only approximate, AND only works if you also have the reverb stuff filled out properly.
..But not to scare y'all off, you can perfectly-well ignore anything but the three room dimentions and the chart. This is computationally completely independant of the rest, and is very fundimental to reasonable hope of having a room sound good. -and as was intimated a couple paragraphs ago: the smaller the room, the MORE important proper dimentions are!
Joe
Joe I've been so busy emailing to everyone else that I haven't had a chance to have a play with it till now.
OK I get that you enter in the room dimensions. But I'm not sure what the graph is telling me. What exactly is the cuttoff point? Pardon my ignorance.
OK I get that you enter in the room dimensions. But I'm not sure what the graph is telling me. What exactly is the cuttoff point? Pardon my ignorance.
.Hello!Petebass said:
OK: The graph is showing you at what frequencies the room has natural resonances. These only cover the three sets of normal modes that that are created by opposing parallel surfaces. There are other modes that involve three and four surfaces - caused by sound that reflects at angles - but those oblique-type modes are considerably less of a factor in the character of the room than these more weighty normals. Not only do the more complex modes have to bounce more times before they can build up, but on top of that, waves that try to bounce at an angle don't bounce as efficiently!
This app only covers the most absolute basic attributes in a very generic, normalized sense, but it's well known that these generalized first approximations really do reliably, repeatably predict acoustic qualites of a room - I mean if a big three-mode pileup is predicted at 67HZ, you'll have a problem right around 67Hz; if you shoot for a reverb time of 0.4sec, you're going to get a pretty dead room - but not anechoic (it's very difficult to actually measure reverb time anyway).
Decent disribution of the normal modes along with fairly even distribution of absorbtive material that all averages-out to kill a reasonably flat, full spectrum of audio freqencies is all it takes to have a recording room that's pretty trouble-free for miking stuff that's very close, out to several feet distant. A reason to factor-in some of the hairy stuff is like if you want to mic a large group from a distance or something; I'm saying you get like exponentially-diminishing returns considering the way-extra work and expense of getting all crazy with it. On the other hand, it's really crazy to not do a little bit of acoustic planning - You've probably heard a similar acoustic situation when someone builds their own speaker cab, but just shoots from the hip with it - yeah, sometimes they luck-out...
Anyway... The graph represents frequency - that's all; there's no Y-axis; the height of the mode-lines is just to see them as a group better. You diddle the dimension numbers, looking for distributions that are even - with no pile-ups.
The cutoff is for if you fill-in the absorbtion stuff. It's just a general approximation of the frequency above which you don't have to worry about modes anymore. Above that frequency either the modes are packed close enough that they're effectively continuous (no real 'holes' or hot-spots), and/or they've been attenuated by the damping enough to disregard. The function goes like: a shorter reverb time or a bigger room will lower the cutoff - a shorter reverb time damps'em out, and a larger room packs'em closer together.
Even if you have fixed dimentions for a room - it's not bad to know where to expect problems. Even if you're stuck with a big'ol pileup, you could still build resonator panels that squash just a small frequency range that includes the problem freq, and you have to know about what frequency to design them for (you can design very high-Q resonators that have to be tuned just-right, and react to JUST that freq, but it's way more trouble for barely any practical gain - why be a nut about it?).
Back to the Mode chart: if you want to see an example of THE worst-case pileup, just enter a cube-shaped room - all three dimentions the same - that will result in every mode being a complete triple-pileup. You'll get worse-case, 'perfect' pileups any time one room dimension is a multiple of another.
So there -
Joe
You know, Man?.. I think I might have one of the two 4-track masters around here.. What did we record that with? Was it a Yamaha? What kind of NR did that thing have - was it DBX? I don't even remember if it was double-speed or not.The Golden Boy said:
I should look for that thing.
"Going to the Country Club
You're so rich
You look so cute
Just you and your..."
Lah-dee-dee-daah...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, we are.
Joe
I'd like to check out that program too, please. I should be moving into a new place soon and hope to be building at the very least a jam room and want to make it easily adaptable to a studio in the future with little problems. I appreciate it.
[email protected]
You should really contact a place like download.com and have this put into their listings. I'm sure a lot of people out there besides bass players would find this info extremely useful.
Thanks,
Jake
[email protected]
You should really contact a place like download.com and have this put into their listings. I'm sure a lot of people out there besides bass players would find this info extremely useful.
Thanks,
Jake
OK, Man - another copy shoots down that wire!Puarija said:
Write back here with any questions or problems - I'll get right on'em -
Joe
