#1880451 - 01/28/08 02:53 AM
Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
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alexgrignon
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Registered: 01/27/08
Posts: 4
Loc: Silicon Valley, CA
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Hey all,
First off, just wanted to give Ethan a HUGE thanks for the information and education on room acoustics. It's lead me to buy a couple of books and spend hours surfing the forums reading about the subject (people's build diaries being my favorites).
Anyways...here's my situation. I'm in a rental home, my wife and I just had our first child and my second bedroom studio has become a "find space in the garage" studio. We have an unfinished 2 car garage....dimensions are 21' 4" L x 19' 5" W x 9' 8" H where the peak in the roof starts....roof is pointed with the peak running from the front of the garage towards the back and goes up about 4' from where the walls meet the roof. I can't build a room within a room or build iso booths and the garage door still needs to be able to open. I've looked around for people simply treating their 2 car garages but don't see much out there....anyone have any links?
I have a custom built studio desk that is roughly 8 feet long that my monitors rest on. I have my amps to my right and my keyboard to my left. Total footprint is about 12' by 10' area....the rest of the garage is used for my woodworking and poker table but could be rearranged as needed. Hmm, a picture might be more useful....here's the way it's set up now:
It seems to sound "ok"....but I would like to optimize the listening area and set up an area to cut down on ambient noise for vocals. It seems the most common advice I read is to put bass traps in the corners....does this apply to a room this size as well? It doesn't seem like they would do much good except in the corner closest to the one i'm setup near...but what do I know?
I bought twelve 2" 2x4 sheets of rigid Roxul with the intent to create some panels that would hang on the wall or be freestanding to help control the area a little bit. I was thinking I could hang 3 above the area, put 3 behind the desk on the wall (which should have a nice gap with the studs)....and that would leave me with (6) 2x4x2" panels left. I could have some freestanding ones which I could place around the area like gobos to reduce the size of the mixing area or to create a vocal area when needed. Despite reading a bunch about acoustics....i'm still not really sure if this is a boneheaded way to do this or not.
Any suggestions for where in the room would be the best place to position this setup? Any suggestions for the best use of the panels I bought? I could make (4) 2x4x4" thick bass traps and (4) 2x4x2" panels....would that be a better use of these materials?
I guess the short of this is....any advice for treating an unfinished garage like this?
thanks in advance!
- alex
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#1880549 - 01/28/08 07:20 AM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: alexgrignon]
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Ethan Winer
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 06/12/00
Posts: 5467
Loc: New Milford, CT, USA
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Alex,
Yes, all of the advice in my Acoustic FAQ applies to a room like yours. That, plus having the speakers fire the longer way down the room, and sitting about 38 percent back from the front wall you face. Your room is almost square so the "long orientation" is not so critical. But peaked ceilings tend to focus sound, so you want absorption under the peak as in the photo below.
--Ethan
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#1883633 - 02/02/08 12:35 AM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: Ethan Winer]
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alexgrignon
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Registered: 01/27/08
Posts: 4
Loc: Silicon Valley, CA
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Excellent, thanks for the response Ethan. I hadn't considered the peaks...but that's really good to know. It's a decent sized room to treat and I use the majority of it for other purposes....is it possible to reduce the size of the room without building a smaller room? This is why I was considering the gobo approach, but if that's a bad idea....then I certainly don't want to waste the time and money trying that out.
Thanks for the advice....I tried putting tape down at 38% and sitting in that mix spot and noticed an improvement doing that alone, so i'm looking forward to seeing how putting some treatment up goes.
cheers,
- alex
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#1884934 - 02/04/08 07:24 AM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: alexgrignon]
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Ethan Winer
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Registered: 06/12/00
Posts: 5467
Loc: New Milford, CT, USA
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Gobos could be useful, but it makes more sense to just treat the room as usual.
--Ethan
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#1886780 - 02/06/08 11:40 PM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: Ethan Winer]
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alexgrignon
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Registered: 01/27/08
Posts: 4
Loc: Silicon Valley, CA
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Ok....so i'm attempting to measure the room before doing any treatment to see where i'm at and to try to measure the results of various treatments. Call me shocked. I downloaded the test tones from realtraps and tried running through a few frequencies to see how things looked (I only got up to 180hz on my first pass). I don't know why but I was really surprised to see the dips and peaks at certain frequencies! Here's the data paths I plotted and put into excel....pink noise signal was set for 70db.
http://homepage.mac.com/alexgrignon/SPL2.png
and here is the output of FuzzMeasure:
http://homepage.mac.com/alexgrignon/SPL.png
I don't really know what i'm looking at with the FuzzMeasure results....but i'm guessing it means I need bass traps.  I used a condensor mic into a duet to measure....but I couldn't help but feel like my speakers into an SPL meter was an uncolored result.
I think i'm going to start with bass traps and see how that goes.
Thanks for the wonderful resource!
- alex
Edited by alexgrignon (02/06/08 11:41 PM)
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#1886940 - 02/07/08 08:55 AM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: alexgrignon]
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Ethan Winer
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 06/12/00
Posts: 5467
Loc: New Milford, CT, USA
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Alex,
If you read my Acoustics FAQ you'll see that all small rooms look like that. And yes, this means you need bass traps. 
--Ethan
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#1887337 - 02/07/08 07:14 PM
Re: Treating an unfinished 2 car garage...
[Re: Ethan Winer]
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alexgrignon
Member
Registered: 01/27/08
Posts: 4
Loc: Silicon Valley, CA
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Hehe....yeah, despite reading it I still had the feeling of "my room can't be THAT bad". I can't wait to hear what music sounds like in a flatter room.
Cheers,
- alex
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