Improving Practice Room Acoutics

[theshadow2001]

Not live sound as such but anyway,

I was thinking about doing some small acoustic treatments for our practice room. I understand the concepts of absorption and diffusion and standing waves. But I need somewhere to start to build up a knowledge base so I can make some simple improvements. Like how to work out where best to position speakers. Where to put absorbers/diffusers how big they should be etc. and what the room needs in general.

Does anyone have any sites on where to get this kind of info. A lot of what I've seen so far deals with studio control rooms and home theatre systems (only two speakers for sound sources). Not so much practice/live rooms dealing with three amps and drums, along with four listening positions

 

[Bassplayer_479]

bump

 

[Stumbo]

So you're not referring to "sound proofing/dampening"?

We used make everything as dead as possible: Carpet/padding everywhere. Get the speakers up to ear level. Put some PA cabs as high as possible pointing back down towards the band. Fence in the drummer with sound board back in a corner. Keep the sound levels down. Mic whatever you can't hear. Add a bit of reverb to the vocals. No one ever complained.

 

[51m0n]

A really good diffuser on the cheap is floor to ceiling bookshelves.

Make sure that you have plenty of different sized books in there and the diff to a room can be excellent.

Bass traps
Really nice blow by blow walk thru:-
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BBC white paper on them:-
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1992-11.pdf

That'd be a start!

 

[theshadow2001]

No, definitely not sound proofing. Thats not an issue with the practice space. I just want improved acoustics. All I was really thinking of was making some cheap absorption panels, bass traps, some diffusion panels and sticking them up where needed. Really there's no budget as such for this. It's just something I've been mulling over. My difficulty would be in how to calculate the size of these panels, how much of them to use where exactly on the walls/roof to put them up. If I knew how much stuff I need it would be a way to determine a price and feesability of actually carrying out a project like this.

That bass trap link was very handy thanks.

 

[hbarcat]

Get this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0070213828/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

Sound Studio Construction on a Budget - F. Alton Everest


In particular, read chapter 4. It describes a step by step approach to taking an existing room and treating it to improve acoustics, optimizing for both recording of musicians and listening to playback of prerecorded music.

The book goes into much greater detail than this in later chapters including how to build a studio from scratch and a very extensive appendix, but the basic stuff on acoustic treatments and placement of diffusors, absorbers, abflectors, bass traps, etc.. is exactly the information you are looking for.