What a difference a good room makes!

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I've been recording a web blog on my Macbook recently and noticed a lot of room reverb in my home studio, so I went out and bought some studio foam and panels and put them up on my walls. I was expecting some deadening for the vocal recording, but what I didn't expect was how much better the Axe sounds through my monitors!

To be fair, it sounded amazing before (especially with v1.05), but now it's much easier on the ears. Less boomy bass, tamer high-end, midrange where it's supposed to be. Even commercial music sounds more amazing through my Yamaha monitors, too. A lot less ear fatigue all around. My favorite model, the Tucana, sounds even more mind-blowing.

I didn't do a ton (because I'm a cheap bastard), but I definitely notice a difference in this small room (and no jabber about my monitors being the corner, I know that's not where they should be, but there's not a lot of room in this room!)

This got me wondering if those folks who seem to not get along with the Axe out of the box might be listening in bad rooms? Is acoustic treatment common knowledge at the level where you can afford an Axe FX II, or do people just stumble on this fact through trial and error (I definitely count myself as the latter)?
 

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One of the quickest way to fix the acoustic environment of a room is to fix the bass traps on the corners (use an Internet search thing to find out various ways how to cheaply fix this.) If nothing else place a sofa or something absorbing into the corners.
 
ksandvik said:
One of the quickest way to fix the acoustic environment of a room is to fix the bass traps on the corners (use an Internet search thing to find out various ways how to cheaply fix this.) If nothing else place a sofa or something absorbing into the corners.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I did. One trick I found is putting them in the upper corners; that covers three surfaces where they meet and is more effective. It's a little hard to tell in the pic I uploaded, but there's not a ton of room for a couch in here :)
 
Hey

From experience some form of treatment is essential in small minimally furnished rooms.

Just clap your hand and if you get that long trail of tiny slapbacks then its likely your recorded track will be less lively than what you expect. If you treat too much the air in the room feels stuffy and i dont like it. Find the balance.

i have a tip for ppl wanting to install treatment at home. Dont glue the panels to the wall! Buy some fluteboard and glue the panels to that then use 3M tabs to stick the board to the wall. Then if you move home you can easily remove and take the panels with you.

My new guitar room is like a semi circle in plan. The circle part is all windows. Most of the straight wall is a glass double door. Not much space to put treatment in. There is a definite node at low b on my 7 string.
 
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I have a small room setup for my studio and the bass booms big time. I know I need to put some bass traps in the corners to alleviate the problem. From what some people have said there seems to be a real science to getting it right.
 
One thing I would recommend is placing some foam at the reflection points that intersect with the listening position. Usually this is on the walls on either side of the listening position somewhere around ear level and typically between the monitors and your head. Killing the reflections at that point can make a fairly noticeable difference.

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Unfortunately even if foam is cheap it doesn't have a lot of mass. Rock wool is an option and you can make your own panel or buying one from major brand (I love GIK Acoustic one).
 
RealTraps have been tested at IBM's Hudson Valley Acoustics Laboratory. One of their MondoTraps (bass traps) is about 6 times more effective than 4 feet of Auralex LENRD bass traps at 100 Hz and below, and at the moment I've got about 8 feet of LENRD bass traps covering the two front corners of my room from floor to ceiling.
 
When I built my studio I put 6" Roxul everywhere possible, here's my guitar wall:





I made panels to place along the adjacent two walls like so:



Couple traps on the "live" wall:





And finally 1" foam on ceiling:

 
Thanks everyone for the great tips. It makes mixing difficult and you can easily over compensate if the room is bass heavy
 
This is really interesting (and coincidentally I've put a new post up on the subject before reading this thread) as I've been experiencing low frequency weirdness every time I play a b note on the low E and A strings so I may have to consider some acoustic treatment in the room.
 
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