ceiling treatment???

[strat_cat21]

Hi there

i hope thats the right place for my question...

i have a basement which i use for recording guitars (mostly steel string acoustic) practicing guitar singing sometimes rehearsing with a full band (not super loud but...) as far as i learned from various sites on the internet the room is build the worst possible way for music as its concrete walls and ceiling three windows and a tiled floor. i attached two pics of it so u can get all the measurements of it...

im willing to spend money on it to make it sound better but i dont wanna waste money on stuff that wont help.... (now thats some big news right there
a friend who is an audio engineer and has a studio himself (his was professionally planned and built though) turned me on to a company close to me that produces acoustic ceilings - http://www.heradesign.com - and im thinking of buying the product: 'plano' which is 25mm thick itself and id use a 4cm rock wool construction underneath it. just comparing the values i get out of the acoustics calculator theyre offering on their site it would help me a lot with the bass reverb response (is that right???)

as my room height is low already (approx 245cm) id loose another 7cm and id rather not if u guys think the ideas crap....

thanks!!!

[Soundman2020]

Hi there "strat_cat21", and welcome to the forum!

turned me on to a company close to me that produces acoustic ceilings - http://www.heradesign.com - and im thinking of buying the product: 'plano' which is 25mm thick itself and id use a 4cm rock wool construction underneath it. just comparing the values i get out of the acoustics calculator theyre offering on their site it would help me a lot with the bass reverb response (is that right???)

Actually, it won't do much for you, since that isn't the problem with your room: the ceiling is only a part of the problem. Also, according to the web site, that product has an overall absorption coefficient of just 0.35, which is very low, for what you need.

The basic issue is that you have a very reflective room, with hard, solid, massive and rigid surfaces on all size sides, which means that it is highly reverberant. I would expect that your room sounds very "hollow", and "echoey", so you need to get that under control. An acoustic ceiling won't do that, since the ceiling is only one of the six sides of the room, and leaving the other five sides untreated means that they will still do the exact same thing they are doing now. What you need to do, is to first analyze the room acoustically, to find out exactly how it is responding, then based on that to put in the correct treatment for each problem.

There's an easy way of doing that, using acoustic analysis software called REW, which you can download for free from the Home Theater Shack web site. Set up a mic and some speakers in your room, run REW, and post the data file here, so we can analyze it. The information in that file will reveal what the problems are with the room, and based on that we can help you decide how to treat it.

as my room height is low already (approx 245cm) id loose another 7cm and id rather not if u guys think the ideas crap....

The product probably does work as advertised, so I wouldn't call it crap. But it just isn't suitable for your room. You will need products that have much more aggressive absorption in order to tame that room. You will need something on the ceiling for sure, but that product you linked to is not what you need.

- Stuart -

[strat_cat21]

Hi Stuart,

thanks for your answer - i was afraid somebody would say that its more complicated than just working the ceiling.
ill get that programm right away and set it up tomorrow in the room - is a sure sm57 good enough or should i get something different?

thanks for your help!
kurt

ps thats what the room looks like during our last big rehearsal actually the first time we did a full band rehearsal in there

[strat_cat21]

please forget the part about the sm57.... i get a proper mic!

[Soundman2020]

please forget the part about the sm57.... i get a proper mic!

Yup. It has to be omnidirectional, for acoustic measurement. There are quite a few good decent ones available for around US$ 100. Not expensive.

- Stuart -

[strat_cat21]

sorry it took so long but i been away, couldn't get REW to work properly so i used audionets carma instead.
ive attached jpgs of the measurements and i hope this information is useful. im sorry if thats anoying but i have no idea what im doing with these softwares so i cant tell if im doing it right.... please let me know if u think something is wrong or not possible!
i used the behringer ecm 8000 on my sitting positon
thanks for your patience!
kurt

[Soundman2020]

couldn't get REW to work properly so

Are you using a Mac? There are issues with Java not being correctly implemented on some versions of the Mac OS, so you need to do some additional stuff to get around those issues.

- Stuart -

[strat_cat21]

i had to use a couple of little helpers (linein i think ones called sound flower) and still couldnt get a proper result. are the graphs of carma i posted of any help?

[Soundman2020]

are the graphs of carma i posted of any help?

Not really, since I have no way of manipulating the settings to take a close look at what is happening.

Maybe you can borrow a PC from someone? REW works great on PCs.


- Stuart -

[Jukka]

are the graphs of carma i posted of any help?

Impulse response graph shows that you have some serious first reflection issues at your listening point.