John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

first time on the board - thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

i have a small studio at home mostly for dialog editing, sound design, rough mixing, simple foley recording, etc. i rarely finish things here but like to be able to get them very close to finished...

i used to be setup in our basement, which was large but low ceiling-ed, and sounded fine to me. just moved up to our office which i share with my wife. a much more pleasant space, but the room is 11' x 9'9" x 8'. not a great set of dimensions. i'm of course getting very uneven low end (mostly tons of cancellation leading to almost nothing below a few hundred Hz.)

so i need to do something to improve the room, but can't do a full job (all corners trapped, lots of absorbtion and deflection) since my wife would kill me for ruining our funky paint job (frankly i'd hate to cover it all up, too) and her office space. will a few 1' squares of foam on the parallel walls help with reflections enough to make it worth the effort? what about bass trapping - what creative solutions are there that will do enough to make it worth the effort but still look good? i know the corners are where you usually bass trap, but if i have a spare shelf in a random place in the room, is it worth stuffing it with something to catch a little bit of bass here and there?

any advice much appreciated.

-adam-

Adam, corners (and junctions between ceilings and walls) are the most efficient places for bass traps - in fact, if you put them in some locations, they won't do anything at all. The wideband type need to be at 1/4 wavelength away from the wall to work best- the panel type need to be against the wall, but also need to be placed in highest pressure areas to work best. In some cases, placing the panel type along the wall can work if you're treating a second or fourth harmonic; in that case, placing panel traps dead center along the wall whose length is causing the mode works well.

As to sharing a space with anyone, especially your significant other, I will go on record as saying this is normally a very BAD idea - your goal needs to be what SOUNDS good, while your wife's goal is likely to be what LOOKS good, or works better for her ergonomically. The chances of these two sets of needs coinciding are somewhere between slim and NONE - having tried this myself a few times, I would NEVER purposely do it again... Steve