You don’t have to break your bank account in order to get a good studio in which to create your music. As a matter of fact, many musicians and mixers turn their spare rooms into great-sounding music machines with just some simple fine-tuning of their acoustics.
When it comes to room acoustics, many things are to be considered; starting from the size of the room, its shape, the kind of furniture it has in it, and even the kind of materials used in making the walls of the room. When you know the right things to put together, you will find it surprising how much the sound would have improved both for the audio recording and mixing process.
Here are a few practical steps you can follow to drastically improve the soundproof treatment of your room:
Take care of reflections and reverberation time
We are able to hear sounds by the help of reflections; when a sound is made from a source, it travels and hits a nearby surface or wall, which in turn is reflected back to our hear drum and thus causes us to hear the sound. When different frequencies are reflecting, they can often clash and cause a misrepresentation of the sound you are hearing
A great way to test if your room is producing reflections is by simply clapping your hands at different points in the room. If you hear a fluttery echo, then you know you have to make some adjustments into the acoustic insulation and treatment of the room.
This has so much to do with the room size. Reverberation refers to when sound waves of specific frequencies start cancelling each other out which results in you not being able to accurately hear and work on your music.
Your primary aim when is to significantly reduce reflections in the room by removing hard surfaces made of wood, concrete, glass, or leather because these kinds of materials do not efficiently absorb sound waves as well as softer elements.
Adding furniture to the room
When adding furniture pieces to your room, the advice is to go for larger objects. They will naturally add more sound insulation thus adequately reducing unwanted frequency reflections in the room.
Furniture pieces like bookshelves and couches work well for this. The same thing goes for your décor too; choose decorations like heavy rugs and thick curtains that have a better chance of absorbing the sound waves and soundproofing your walls.
Acoustic foam panels
Acoustic foam panels are great for absorbing and insulating sound waves and yet they are at the same time, very light and affordable. You should consider installing them on the walls and the ceiling of your room to give a superior acoustic treatment.
It is crucial for acoustic foam panels to be placed in the space behind your studio monitors. This is where a lot of unwanted frequencies bounce around and interfere with what you are hearing in the music you are producing. First, ensure your studio monitors are positioned correctly.
Bass traps, resonators and absorbers
Concentrating your acoustic treatment to the corners of the room with the use of resonators and absorbers will help reduce the reflections of low frequencies specifically, which tend to be amplified in those parts of a room. Thus the treatment of said frequencies being known as a bass trap.
Resonators help reduce reverberation by trapping specific bass frequencies and exclude other mid-high frequencies. Absorbers and diffusers have a more broad frequency range in which they can operate.
A combination of the two will ensure you have your frequency range in check and will greatly improve your studio acoustics leading you to work more accurately and therefore result in better music production.
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