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Author Topic: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!  (Read 8101 times)

Arran Black

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Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« on: March 06, 2009, 05:46:06 PM »

Hey guys. Im a 1st year  at Bath Spa Uni studying music production and performance and am in the planning stages of what I hope will be a very interesting AND successful project.

One of my modules requires me to analyze the acoustic attributes of a performance space and I have thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone. A partner Collage of the Uni “City Of Bath Collage” which I have some involvement with has a fully functioning but completely un-treated studio room. My plan is to analyze the room for my project, then go on to create a report in the hope of securing the funding to implement some acoustic treatment.

Unfortunately my knowledge on how to treat a room is limited and recent, so I would love any impute anyone can offer. I can also use any recommendations in my final report.

I have attached some pictures of the space and as you can see it is seriously lacking in anything that could absorb and sound. The room diameters are (H=2.2m W=4.7m L=5.9M) the walls are made of a dens plasterboard, the floor is wood laminate and the  roof is sum sort of plaster (it is a false roof, there is a good foot of space above the tiles that could be filled with something)

? I feel analyzing the space with some sort of software would be a good idea. Any recommendations (Mac only pleas. Windows scares me)

? Any suggestions on any measurement’s or tests I should/ could do would be appreciated also.

Manny thanks.
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Sigert

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2009, 07:58:36 AM »

Arran Black wrote on Fri, 06 March 2009 23:46

Any recommendations (Mac only pleas. Windows scares me)

 http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/fuzzmeasurepro.h tml

I'm a pc user myself, but this here little program makes me wish I were Mac. Very similar to the PC-based free tool RoomEQwizard, but IIRC unlimited length of measurement.
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Arran Black

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2009, 10:47:29 AM »

That’s a fantastic little app. And only $90 for students if I want to upgrade. Thanks for the suggestion. I will take some measurements on Monday and post them up.
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Sigert

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2009, 03:48:04 PM »

Excellent. We love data. Smile
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compasspnt

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #4 on: March 08, 2009, 05:56:48 PM »

Looking forward to the measurements.

And hopefully some input here from people to help!

Good luck.
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Arran Black

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2009, 03:44:19 PM »

I took some measurements of the room and have attached them. My knowledge is not so good on this, so I am struggling to decipher them. Any help would be much appreciated.

Attached is the Frequency Response
index.php/fa/11586/0/
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Arran Black

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #6 on: March 09, 2009, 03:45:38 PM »

Attached is the reverberation timeindex.php/fa/11587/0/
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Thomas Jouanjean

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #7 on: March 09, 2009, 04:18:17 PM »

Are those "office" ceiling tiles we see in the picture?

It's really fun how you can see their print on the RT measurement, and the RTA.

Could you export a 0-250Hz graph "zoom" of your RTA measurement?
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Thomas Jouanjean
Northward Acoustics - Engineering and Designs
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Sigert

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2009, 04:21:42 PM »

Aaaahhh, now this is something we can talk about. Data. Smile

Just to make sure we're reading your data correctly: could you tell us a bit more about the setup you use for taking measurements? The type of speakers you use. How you set up the speakers and mic.
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Arran Black

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #9 on: March 09, 2009, 07:31:11 PM »

The data was recorded using a Studiospare 5 inch powered speaker into a Neuman TLM 103. The Mic was positioned at the centre of the room. The speaker facing the centre about 3 feet from the central wall (facing into the longest point of the room)

The below graph is a little more detailed than the previous ones if that helps.
index.php/fa/11600/0/
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Arran Black

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #10 on: March 09, 2009, 07:33:12 PM »

Here is a closer look at the 10-250 range. Yes the roof is false with office style panelling. Can you see that in the data? Where? Im not so good with reading the graphs. RT60 is the next thing I need to get my head around. Thank god for libraries.

Also I have data for T20 and T30 if this is of any use. I don’t know what they are, but the app suggested previously has graphs for them.

index.php/fa/11601/0/
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Sigert

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #11 on: March 09, 2009, 07:53:56 PM »

Hey Arran,

A few concerns cross my mind.
1) The TLM has a cardioid response pattern. If I'm not mistaken, this means you'll miss out on a partial of the acoustic activity.
2) The TLM has a frequency response which emphasizes frequencies 3000 Hz and up.
3) I'm not finding any specifics on the 'Studiospares' speaker you refer to. Is it a custom build?

What is it exactly the graph named "COBC Studio 1 Energy" plots on the horizontal axis? The one with the horizontal scale from 0 to 11.

On the subject of RT60, RT30 and RT20. Reverberation Time (RT) is a measurement of the time lapse between the moment the source is cut off and the moment the reverberation drops by a set amount. This can be any quantity of dB's one deems appropriate, but the ones mentioned above (60dB, 30dB and 20dB) are the ones used most frequently. You can then have your computer analyse and plot the RT for seperate frequency bands, as you've done already in your graph.

Ps. Why have two separate guitars when you can have all in one?  Rolling Eyes
http://mccrappy.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/12neckguitar.jpg
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Thomas Jouanjean

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #12 on: March 10, 2009, 03:42:26 AM »

You need an omni mic, can't measure properly with a TLM 103. They're cheap... A decent one is the Beyerdynamic MM1.

I was semi-joking about the ceiling tiles. It's just that my first jobs (feels like a century ago) included treating open office spaces. We always saw a dip at 500hz on the RTA as those tiles are "tuned" and centered @ 500Hz and would create those kind of shapes in the graphs.

But you need to remeasure with an omni...
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Thomas Jouanjean
Northward Acoustics - Engineering and Designs
http://www.northwardacoustics.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northward-Acoustics/1062876633 71

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Ethan Winer

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #13 on: March 10, 2009, 04:48:40 PM »

Thomas Jouanjean wrote on Tue, 10 March 2009 03:42

you need to remeasure with an omni...


Yes, and when you print the graph, set the vertical range to something more reasonable than 100 dB total span. Better to have a 30 or 40 dB total span - as needed to keep it all on-screen - so the detail can be better seen. This looks like the graphs you see from microphone and speaker companies, with the vertical resolution so coarse the response looks flat even though it clearly is not. Laughing

--Ethan

Sigert

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Re: Treating a studio on a budget. Help!
« Reply #14 on: March 10, 2009, 06:37:30 PM »

I own the Beyerdynamic measurement mic. very happy with it.
What's the expression again? Something with good, bangs and bucks, I cant remember.  Razz
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