Going into the closet . . .

[Clintonnobles]

Okay, my new home has a nice closet that I can use for recording. Problem is it echos like crazy. Now I know I need to work on this, but was wondering the best way to go about it. Below I have listed the specs out If you all could what would you do to make this suitable for recording?

Specs:

50" L x 23 1/2" W x 92" H

[shenecke]

Hey clinton, I use a walkin closet for my booth. It has carpet on the floors and I hang moving blankets on the clothes rods with big clips. The blanket surround me 360 degrees when I shut the door. The ceiling is just sheetrock. Sounds pretty dead in there! It measures about 7' wide by 5'deep by 8'high.

[Mike Sommer]

That closet is to small, you'll need 8" of Owens Corning 703 (over all)to kill the echo, and then you'll still need bass traps. Steve's advice is good for his room, but I would advise him to cover his walls with OC 703 and install bass traps in the corners and bass clouds on the ceiling. You'll be amazes at how much better it will sound Steve, and I can say this without even hearing your room.

Over all you may be better off making the closet into a machine room for all your noisy equipment and treating the larger room. You'll have

When I'm talking with people and they walk into my home studio, they start looking around, as if saying to them self "What happened?" It's a wonderful sound, and everything comes to life.

[Clintonnobles]

Originally Posted by Mike Sommer

That closet is to small,

Over all you may be better off making the closet into a machine room for all your noisy equipment and treating the larger room. You'll have

Yeah, I was worried about it being to small, but the outside portion is where my office is. I would love to make it into the studio, but it is a 9' 4" x 9' 4" with a window and it is where my desk is for my job. I work from home for my other job.

I don't have a lot of extra funds to put into the sound dampining of the room since most of my money is going to be put into fixing the things that need fixing.

Would it be too much if I did the room, but had a huge desk in it that had all my work computer and such? Would that mess up my sound too much?

[chucktaylor]

Buy the plans here :::.I.Y. Recording Products:::: and build your own booth to put in your office (or have a handyman build it). This is a very cost effective method of getting the right recording conditions. Both Bobbin Beam and Lavashark have built theirs and I've bought the plans and will be starting construction on mine in the near future. You'll be able to set this in your office without having to put sound proofing material all over your office.

[shenecke]

Overall, my closet is pretty dead. I know I could improve but behind those blankets is wine storage. About 100 cases of wine and a few casks of whisky, brandy & vodka. I make all of it!

Tell me about bass clouds, I might be able to incorporate that!


Mike: "Steve's advice is good for his room, but I would advise him to cover his walls with OC 703 and install bass traps in the corners and bass clouds on the ceiling. You'll be amazes at how much better it will sound Steve, and I can say this without even hearing your room."

[Mike Sommer]

Would it be too much if I did the room, but had a huge desk in it that had all my work computer and such? Would that mess up my sound too much?

That should not be a problem I have lots of stuff in my booth, the only thing that would be a problem is having a noisy computer or machines in the room. And if you have a noisy house your just out of luck anyway.

The room being a small square, I'm sure it's an acoustic echo nightmare. You're almost going to need to kill it dead, with base traps and absorbing gobos. If you're handy you can do all this yourself. And you don't need to do it all at one time. Just adding one or two absorbers will make a huge difference. But once you start and you hear what's happening you become a junky.

Chuck:
Those portable booths are a sweat boxes, and take up a lot of room. For the money spent on a booth like that you could have treated your room for far less and faster. Most rooms only need 8 absorbers/bass traps

Steve:
I can't hear your room so you''l have to be the judge of that, and as I've mentioned before those boxes might be helping a little bit. Move around the room and clap your hands. Do you hear ringing, echo, or a excessive bass? If you do you've got problems. You clap should be crisp and present, and only the sound coming from your hand.
Bass clouds are just traps hung from the ceiling. I have two large ones 4'x4' with 4 inches of ridged glass (703). Thicker and lower for the ceiling they are the more effective they become. But bass builds up in the corners, and that's where you need traps the most.
Clouds look something like this:

[lanceblair]

Dead doesn't mean good necessarily - it can mean that it's doing all kinds of bad things to your sound at the same time.

[shenecke]

Mike no ringing or echo in my closet, just the sounds of my clapping hands. Sounds chrisp with nothing else. That's what I mean't by dead. I dont have any hard corners as the moving blankets are curved in those areas.

Originally Posted by Mike Sommer

Steve:
I can't hear your room so you''l have to be the judge of that, and as I've mentioned before those boxes might be helping a little bit. Move around the room and clap your hands. Do you hear ringing, echo, or a excessive bass? If you do you've got problems. You clap should be crisp and present, and only the sound coming from your hand.
Bass clouds are just traps hung from the ceiling. I have two large ones 4'x4' with 4 inches of ridged glass (703). Thicker and lower for the ceiling they are the more effective they become. But bass builds up in the corners, and that's where you need traps the most.
Clouds look something like this:

[Mike Sommer]

Originally Posted by lanceblair

Dead doesn't mean good necessarily - it can mean that it's doing all kinds of bad things to your sound at the same time.

That's true when you have a properly designed room, and of course a little action in a recording room is nice and often welcome. As I have mentioned (in another post) one of the best sounding rooms I was ever in, had a mixture of materials and textures on the walls (stone, cork, wood, plants etc.) which is why I'm a fan of diffusion too. But in small rooms you inevitably have more bad things going on than you do good. Especially in a room that's almost a perfect cube because they have exactly the same modes in all three directions -In this case you only have 3 options, find a bigger room, physically change the rooms dimensions, or make the room completely dead.

Kill the comb and flutter echos, early reflectance, excessive bass and the nodes. Control the room then sweeten it with diffusion.


Steve:
Sounds like you got it going on. What's happening in your room (something we discussed before) is that the blankest are not "On" the wall, but off about 16" -plus the boxes. The effect of space and mass controlling refection and bass. Plus you mentioned that your walls are drywall (gypsum) which in and of itself acts like a membrane bass trap.