Foam for at-home?
Quick question, ya'll... found a great deal on some studio foam panels locally on Craigslist. ($60 for a boatload of panels.)
For simple fingerstyle guitar tracking, is this a worthwhile investment? I'm setup in a bedroom with a queen bed (dampens some sound, I think) and a desk. My follow up question would be, how would you utilize these panels? Thanks, AGF! |
It's difficult to know without knowing exactly what it is, but in general, "foam" just absorbs high frequencies. The issue in most rooms is low frequencies. Foam can look nice, but it usually does either nothing, or can even make the problem worse. For effective room treatment, you need broadband absorption, and most foam products won't do that. There are tons of sites with info about this on the web, just do a search and prepare for hours of reading. Here's a reasonable high level introduction:
https://ehomerecordingstudio.com/aco...treatment-101/ and another: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniq...stic-treatment These are just basic starting points. |
It's mostly a waste of money. As Doug said, in most rooms the issue is going to be controlling the low end. Foam does nothing for that. Corner bass traps would more likely be a better investment if you want to improve the sound you get when recording in a bed room.
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The bass traps can be made easily enough too. Some simple cheap framing, breathable fabric, and owens corning 703. I made all what you see in this picture myself.
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Foam is useless for sound control. Egg crates too (although there could be a tiny amount of diffusion due to bumpy surfaces).
The absorbers like those in the preceding picture are made with insulation like rockwool or fiberglass which can actually attenuate sound. I've made my own absorbers from Roxul, plywood and fabric. These days I just purchase products from GIK Acoustics and they look and work great without being ridiculously expensive. |
What they all said ^^^. also check out ATS: https://www.atsacoustics.com/
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Yes, ideally you need corner treatment and bass trapping and broadband absorption. But if you have, say, parallel walls roughly 10' apart (a bedroom, in other words) you may have flutter echoes, where a sound basically ricochets back and forth. Clap your hands and it goes "Blaaaamp." Putting up foam panels can reduce or eliminate that. And the good news is, you only have to treat two of the four walls (one side and one end) to do it.
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Thanks
Super helpful, everyone! Any knowledge I retain is from helpful people like yourselves!
The panels are mainly flat, wall or floor panels, so as you all said, not worth it. There are two corner bass panels, so I may see if I can buy just those for a few bucks. More questions to come, I'm sure, as I continue the journey of at-home recording... |
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I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the majority here.
Lookup "Live end, dead end" room treatment. It is the defacto standard for recording studios, and you'll be just fine with your panels. |
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Live/dead rooms are nice if you have the space and the need for them. But it's a different issue from how to treat that part that is non-reflective. That said, whatever works... If you put up foam and it sounds good in your room, then it's good! |
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It will make a huge difference. The OP also needs to realize that placement is crifical as well. Playing close to a wall is worse than being a few feet from it. This is because short reflections muddy the sound, and our brains ignore longer ones. Which just happens to work within the math of live end dead end rooms. |
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