PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Wonder what the "egg carton" debate will bring here?

I got a couple of those foam mattress pads and they turned yellow, brown and then got hard and fell apart.
Too bad. Maybe there are better ones than what I bought at Kmart. It was 5 years ago.
They're Queen size and cheap.
Wayne,

I've seen plywood doors with egg cartons used as filling.
Sheeeeesh ( used to work in a timber yard in my young days )

See the related post "Had to start a new post to post graphic links" to see photos of what I have to work with.

The mattress pads took about 2 years before they were kind of gross. But we live in Upstate NY where the climate changes are drastic.
As cold and dry as the winters are the summers are hot and super humid.
The pads were also super thin. They must make thicker and better ones than I bought.
Wayne,

Cargo pads are built much stronger than the ordinary mattress pads, can be washed with carwash high pressure washers (yeah, I tried it) - and can often be found used at moving and storage companies and the like, sometimes free for the asking if you don't mind worn ones. Some even come with brass eyelets in them, making the hanging of them a breeze.

Having lugged Hammond organs and Leslie cabinets around for years, I've had moving pads at the ready access for use in making recording dobos, hanging on walls, etc.

The movable Dobo is something else home recordists should take a long hard look at, you can build your own on the cheap. Tip: doors made for interior doorways can make great Dobo building material, all you need do is add wooden feet suitable for holding them upright. You can cut them to make shorter dobos, or turn them on their side for a short dobo that covers a bit of floor distance.

Dobos don't give you total isolation, of course, but there have been MANY pro recordings done where all the players are in one room and the engineers placed dobos around, both for a small amount of iso as well as acoustic tuning. Use of dobos also eliminates the isolated musician problems entirely, everyone is already used to playing together in the same room, utilizing eye contact, etc.


--Mac

Here's mine:

By null at 2005-12-07

And the other side:


By null at 2005-12-07

The cool striped pattern is actually throw rugs from IKEA. On the wall, I made a frame out of 1x2" material and stapled the throw rug to that, then hung it out away from the wall about 4" - This nearly kills all of the flutter echoes that were in that room, and then I bought a 2nd one and stapled it to the back of the gobo.

I'm not using that room (moved cross-country) but I'm using both of those devices in the new recording room. With the gobo, I use that now up next to my closet in the room, where I open the door and put the gobo at a 45 degree angle to the opening; closet behind me. Makes for a great vocal recording 'booth'.

More great advice.

CORRECTION:

The word is "GOBO" with a G, not dobo as I mistyped up there earlier.

Hope this is not a sign of approaching dementia or sumthin', don't know where that came from, maybe I should buy better coffee.

Thanks to rockstar_not for the PM pointing that faux pas out.


--Mac

Flame spread rating on walls is a touchy subject.

Your castle, once it's built.

Anything that is so flammable (Like polystyrene egg cartons), that holding a match to the bottom of it results in a sudden in total ignition, is simply taking a huge risk.

So a spark lights the room up and you end up a roman candle.

Normally a building code has a minimum rating of flat plywood, in fact that works for most small places of assembly. But it's what's put up after.

I did a fire investigation in a high school. A kid lit a huge foam bag of pieces of foam on fire. (The foam was a portable indoor high jump pit.) That caused a fire and the hallway and walls burned. One whole wing of the school was damaged and had to be shut down.

There were 3 factors. The foam burned instantly when a match was applied.
The energy in the foam used up most of the 02 and the heated lighter than air gases went up the corridor, found more 02 and lit up. Then the heat caused the paint to be a factor.

The paint was latex so it's not flammable said the school board architect. In a public meeting and I was there. He was such a knob to me in the past that I smiled that grin you get when someone is going to be publicly humiliated (deserved eh).

I got up to the mic and asked him, "Randy, now why would you say the paint is not flammable..."

"Oh, really, and where does the water go when the paint drys?"

"Really, and what's left Randy?"

"I just want to tell everyone that 40 layers of latex on the wall of a high school will burn quite a bit, and it's a main reason that the fire spread so quickly."

Fun.

Most polystyrene couches have more fuel in them that a vehicle, and one couch like that will total a whole house in less that 30 seconds. Keep it away from extension cords and plugs. Shoving a couch against a plug for 10 years is just not smart.

Smart people do smart things. My nephew is a 24 year old guitar guru. Just ask him. The local A&W hosted a drive in teenburger gets a buck donation to MS, and his group was playing. We pulled in and they were in this fairly small tent, 5 people, he was playing the heavy guitar, you know, the lead one. 80's music, I dunno, but I said to the wife, 'jackasses'.

My wife rarely responds to that, but I said it a second time as my niece passed me a golf umbrella and the band ran to safety. They put the band under the tent and the sound gear on a table of some sort 6 feet away, under no tent or umbrella. I opened the back of the car, unfolded a plastic tarp, and covered the 16 or so channel powered mixer. I never did kick out. I tried explaining to them that it's more important to cover the gear than the heavy singer. She was also a lead singer. And had the weight and the voice. Too bad the others, despite ear pieces, were flat all the time.

Well, Eddie's not talking the polystyrene cartons.

He's talking those gray paper type.


--Mac

Well I said 'smart people do smart things.'

Don't spray those egg cartons with borax and water. Might work for drapes, not for those though.

The better question is 'why do Europeans keep eggs in big flats and store them on the street, and keep them on the counters?' Answer, the refrigeration industry invented little places to put them inside, so you get a bigger fridge. Honestly, in fact, european chefs just keep eggs in the open, unrefrigerated, no matter which country they are now living in, and it drives the health inspectors crazy, which is good.

I hate health inspectors, they are just total knobs. "Sir your 50 pounds of pork ribs are currently stored at .5 degrees C above the limit, so I'm dumping bleach on them."

Nice.

Forum, don't know how I did it but originally posted this to wrong thread
Eddie, just catching up on forum posts and saw this one. If your room has "pony" walls with a slant ceiling on both sides you may have an easier solution. Because of the slant ceiling it may have reduced standing waves. I had a room similiar to this and my solution was a dense carpet on the floor, then furniture, cases, etc went along one wallto break up sound, the end wall had a window so I just went extra big heavy on curtain material that I could open or close to expose the window therefore open and close as needed for sound dampening. The other end of the room had the door so all I did was leave it open. The sound was pretty good, except mom and the kids definitely knew there was a drummer and bass player upstairs. Good luck in your search for the holy grail--good sound!DennisD

Since you're not worried about miking your instruments, you might consider using a portable vocal booth (aka "microphone reflection screen"). There are a number of different options compared here. If you've got a really limited budget, you could even build your own, like this or this.

I've not tried them myself, but they're highly touted by some folk on the internet, so they must be good.

The main goal here is to deaden the room to as close to a completely anechoic state as I can achieve. Any reverb that goes into the mix I want to add electronically.

Early on in the thread I posted pictures and in those pictures you can see one wall with completely ripped up drywall. The other side is a neat cut. That "other" side is where the drummers go and THAT side can bounce all it wants. I like some natural echo on drums, though there will be some damping over there too for the same reason, that reason being I want to add reverb with the digital reverbs.

I also have a bathroom up there so singers can go in there for isolation. (And it gives me a reason to clean it.)

There is a lot to be done, like running headphone jacks into various rooms, etc.... I have a 4 outlet headphone amp and easy access behind the walls so that won't be difficult, just time and money consuming to make long cables. The drum room has an 8 channel snake coming through the wall for drum mics. I probably SHOULD just run speakers over there for monitors since I have a spare power amp and 2 Yamaha speakers from my live days. But first things first. Windows in the walls, then wiring run, then lighting, then paint, then wall treatment.

You know, with a few pictures printed on paper, and a seat in a bar with some of those coloured paint samples you could snag a woman in no time. Best lure there is, "geez I'm a guy and wtheck are these colours HELP.

Wow that's so slick it sick. She has to come over to see and then there is a magic bottle of saved champagne your cousin Dick left, maybe you'd like some of that, sorry there's almost nothing else in the fridge, I'm a starving artist...

In my case at this point my wife comes home, and most days would'nt blink. I said most days. I just can't figure out which days.

Okay so as this very informative topic comes to a close, let me ask one final question before we put this to sleep.

When putting any kind of treatment on a wall, be it carpet, foam mattress pads, egg cartons, discarded undergarments, banana peels, wide neckties..... is the goal to disrupt the sound waves or to absorb the sound waves? It would seem that the desired result is going to be the biggest determination as to what goes on the walls. Carpeting, while tactile and absorbent, is still a very smooth surface. Egg cartons have those pyramid like shapes to break up the sound waves but they are a hard paper surface.

Keeping in mind that I can't be paying $45 per 2 square feet of proper studio foam panels to be recording my little attempts at writing the next big hit, and that we are not talking about a professional studio where people pay big dollars to record after waiting on a list to buy the time......

Eddie,

The goal depends on the issue - if there is one.

Breaking up a surface helps to avoid reflections of waves all heading in the same direction - but there are limitations to this depending on wavelength. With egg cartons, the surface will only do this for wavelengths shorter than the depth of the egg carton to perhaps slightly longer.

(runs to the fridge with a ruler....now he's back) The paper carton in my fridge has a depth of about 30mm, or a full wavelength of about 114 Hz or so.

They aren't going to add a huge amount of absorption to the space.

With the pictures that you showed of your studio space - I don't believe that this is your main issue. You have some really nice unintentional 'features' in that space - the sloping ceiling (blessing and a curse), the nooks for the guitars and fridge/microwave.

If it were me, I wouldn't waste the time with the egg carton. I would do some re-thinking of where you have things in the room. The monitor speakers MUST be moved away from the wall/ceiling corners. That's a key. Putting egg cartons on that sloping ceiling won't help that much there.

Go to the http://www.foambymail.com/AW2/acoustical-2-wedge-foam.html website and you'll see that 2" foam is quite a bit more affordable than what you post above. 48 square feet of it costs $62. That will absorb WAY better than the paper eggcrate and look nicer as well. 3" wedge foam is $87 for 48 square feet. And it will work for absorption WAY WAY better than the eggcrate; all for the same amount of elbow grease as hanging the eggcrate.

I would start with that one side of the sloping ceiling and anywhere you might get direct reflections from acoustic sources back into a microphone.

It's always good to have non-parallel walls, and broken up surfaces - lot's of folks use bookshelves with staggered depth books for this kind of a thing - but your room doesn't appear to be plagued with the 4 parallel walls and parallel ceiling/floor issue.

I wouldn't bother with the eggcrate if it was me. Quite a bit of hassle for likely minimal return in your particular room; again, based on what I saw with the photos.

-Scott

Thanks Scot, very informative. I think going for a half pro visual is better than the grocery store on the wall idea anyway! I'd like more science lesson vis a vis wave length and depth, like staring at a mixer...

Basic rule of thumb is 50/50 hard and soft reflection on each surface.

Easiest way to handle the above and still get reasonable acoustic results is to put the measured and calculated swuare footage of absorption in the CENTER of the surface with the hard part making an equal sized border around the soft.

There are 6 surfaces in the average room, not four. Don't neglect the floor and ceiling. Floor can be handled with a throw rug, again centered with the hard floor border around the edges, although I wouldn't sweat that in a wall-t0-wall carpeted room as there will still be plenty of hard reflection on the other 5 surfaces.

Ceiling can sometimes be problematic if hard throughout and painted. There are acoustic absorbing paints readily available that can help with the ceiling, as well as ceiling tiles if the ping or pong is still evident.

In the home studio environment, lots can be done without resorting to attempts to make the room look like a modern recording studio. For example, a wall covered with bookshelves and having different size and amount of books on all shelves can work very well as a standin for Helmholtz filters. A large upholstered couch can absorb quite a bit of acoustic energy that might otherwise be reflected. Pulling that same couch out from the wall a foor or so can create a crude Bass Trap situation if you find that to be a problem in your home studio.

I know of one enterprising young fellow who produced his entire first CD in his bedroom. He used the mattress from the bed in the upright to form his ersatz vocal booth, the same SM-58 mic he had to do live performance with - and his vocals sounded very good indeed. When it came time to record his electric guitar, he decided he preferred his familiar amp'd sound to any simulation plugins, so he laid the bed mattress on its side in front of the guitar amp which was placed facing outwards in a corner of the room. Yep, same mic, SM-58.

When tracking like this, it is important to do a lot of test takes, listening carefully to the result and then governing any changes accordingly, such as mic placement (can be extremely important, sometimes moving the mic a bit closer or further away changes things a lot), amp settings (too much low end feels good to the average guitarist, but muddies up a track at playback), gain staging (loudest is not always "bestest"), and, for most guitarists who have not had a lot of studio experience, BACK OFF ON THE DISTORTION SETTINGS as a little bit goes a long long way when the track is played back with the others.


--Mac