Garage Acoustic treatment

[Tony Ramone]

Hey guys, I've decided to repost this in it's own thread since I realised it was rude to try and hijack someone else's thread for my own benefit (sorry bluesboy). So, here goes again:I'm looking for some tips on how to treat my garage. It's a fairly big rom - 16' x 11.5' x 8' (edit: not exactly sure of these dimensions - I measured it this morning in meters: 5m L x 3.5m W x 2.5m H). Soundproofing isn't really an issue because we live way up in the Cork & Kerry mountains (the Cork side of course), so I just want to know how to get the best sound. I have noticed some reverb and ringing when I hit a short blast on the guitar. The main issue (apart from the concrete floor that is) is that this will have to be a hybrid live room and control room (although I suppose I could do some of my mixing on headphones in bed ).
I've got some pics that I took last night - excuse the mess: we just had our house****ing last weekend so a lot of shit got thrown into the garage to get it out of the way.

This is the view into the garage from outside (it has outward opening double doors)


This is the outer wall of the house - we were originally gonna fill the gaps in those bards with insulation and cover it with a flat wall, but after reading that flat parallel walls are an acoustical no-no, I'm reconsidering.


This is the inside wall - the kitchen is on the other side of it, though my wife has said that my playing isn't too loud. I haven't woken our son up yet anyway.


This is in the corner by the inside door, I'm showing this because all of that stuff there can't be moved - it's the batteries and inverter for our solar panels and wind turbine.


Well, what d'ye think? Is this gonna cost me an arm and a leg? Bear in mind we've just bought this house, so this is probably a project that I'll have to work on over time, whenever extra money becomes available. Just wondering how and where to get started. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Tony

p.s. ha ha just previewed the post and noticed house****ing is censored

p.p.s. just found this online: UltraTouch Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation offers superior sound and thermal insulation in a Class-A fire rated product resistant to mold and mildew.
That picture looks like it's my house they're treating

[brandondrury]

Soundproofing isn't really an issue because we live way up in the Cork & Kerry mountains

Great! This will save you a ton of cash and headaches.

I'd HIGHLY recommend BASS TRAPS, BASS TRAPS, AND BASS TRAPS!

You will definitely want to knock down some of the upper midrange / high end reflections. Generally speaking, hardwood flooring is usually preferred (some say for looks, some say for easy of rolling equipment on wheels). Concrete can work though, but you may want to look into painting it. I've heard incredible drums on painted concrete floors.

After you bass trap the hell out of this place, a few broadband absorbers should have you set in terms of room acoustics.

Brandon

[Tony Ramone]

Cheers dude. To the hardware store!

[brandondrury]

Oh, I should have mentioned that with the bass traps you'll either need to build your own (only do this if you are good with wood working) or buy a ready made product like Ethan Winer's Real Traps.

Brandon

[String7th]

I'm discovering that flat ceilings are horrible for drums. I recently switched rooms to track drums in a room with a vaulted ceiling and noticed a lot better overhead sound immediately. To fix a flat ceiling and get some broadband absorption at the same time, cover the wall-to-ceiling corners with a 1' wide mineral board or OC fiberglass, hanging from a chain or mounted. If you have trouble finding the boards, invest in Auralex LENRD's or Ethan's bass traps. I'm going to soon install Metrofussors in addition to my tracking room and really see what the hype about diffusion is.

If you plan on using this for mixing only, ignore this, concentrate on bass traps and a cloud over your desk

[studio139]

Hey Tony,

Certainly bass traps will help in a small room, but firstly from looking at your room dimensions and the layout of your garage you could build an interior wall to hide your batteries behind, you will then be eliminating the the mathematical relationship between the ceiling dimension and the length dimension, which will cause strong modal interference around 137HZ.
The wall could be angled slightly to help with the standing waves, flutter and slapback effects. You could then soffit/flush mount your speakers in the new wall to save space and eliminate speaker phase problems.
Also the new wall could be built with plywood which is excellent as a bass frequency absorber (you just need to carefully select the thickness of panel), if you fill the cavity with fibre glass wool you will create a broader band absorber.

Cheers, Mike

[brandondrury]

You could then soffit/flush mount your speakers in the new wall to save space and eliminate speaker phase problems.

Make sure your monitors were designed for this. Some monitors weren't designed to be soffit mounted and sound terrible whe done so. There are some nice benefits to soffit mounting, though.

Brandon

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by String7th

I'm going to soon install Metrofussors in addition to my tracking room and really see what the hype about diffusion is.

Those are too thin to quality as diffusors IMO. You need at least 3 inches thick to diffuse to a usably low frequency, and six inches thick is more like it. For reference, RPG's fancy (and expensive) QRD diffusors are 9 inches thick. If you'd like to hear what real diffusion sounds like, I made a "slide-show" video that you may find revealing. It's near the bottom of the page here:

RealTraps Videos

--Ethan

[Tony Ramone]

Hey guys, thanks for all the tips. While I'd love to build a wall to hide the batteries (it'd stop my son trying to play with them too), unfortunately there's a control panel there and a few other things that I need constant access to (needs to be re-started quite a bit when the power gets too low). What I could do though is maybe make some sort of wall, but put it on hinges, or make it easily removable in some way.
Incidentally, I was up in the attic last night and I noticed there are quite a few rolls of insulation left up there. Some of it is yellow glass wool, but some is Owens Corning, couldn't find any density figures or anything on it - the only number I could see was 150, which is the thickness (in mm, I think it's almost 6"). Anyone know if this would be any good for bass trapping?

[brandondrury]

If you'd like to hear what real diffusion sounds like, I made a "slide-show" video that you may find revealing. It's near the bottom of the page here:

Damn! The Diffusor sounds AWESOME! That's about 15x greater difference than any preamp I've ever heard! Impressive!

Brandon