Hi everyone, Dennis Foley from Acoustic Fields.
As you know from our website and our videos we do a lot of building, we do a lot of ground
up, we do a lot of renovation and of course we have our products that you can buy.
Freestanding that you can put in your existing room and treat your existing room which may
or may not be the right size and volume for your usage and that's why you're using treatment
because things aren't sounding good.
So the first thing we're going to talk about today is in building, when you're really serious
about sound and you've decided you know I'm tired of using Band-Aids in existing rooms,
I'm going to build my own room, I'm going to dedicate it to what I want to do in that
room whether it's recording, playback or whatever it is.
So I'm going to call a guy like Dennis, I want to get the proper room size, volume and
usage… the proper room size and volume to match what I'm doing but I'm just recording
vocals, I don't need an auditorium but I don't need a closet either and that's why most vocal
rooms sound like we talked about in another video.
So the bottom line here is if you match the usage to the size and the volume or match
the size and the volume to the usage you start to see break points where a little bit more
of this would help with that.
A little bit larger volume would mean less low frequency absorption if it's going to
be a live room and we're going to be recording drums or choirs or lots of sources.
So there are break points tradeoffs in real estate that you're going to use, the amount
of labor that's involved and obviously the amount of materials that are involved.
Low frequency management is one of the most expensive treatments that you're going to
have to prepare for in your budget because it has to be treated almost every place in
the room.
So how much, where and all that, what frequencies were dealing with that all has to be analyzed
but the goal when you're designing and building a room from scratch is to always keep this
low frequency requirement in mind because it's the most expensive to treat so you have
to choose the right volume to match what you're doing in the room and there are like we say
break points and we know those where maybe if you're 23 foot in length and you go to
27 foot it might cut your low frequency absorption costs 25% but only increase the size of the
room 5 or 10%.
So we know from our experience in building all of these rooms, we know where these break
points are.
That's why I always tell people when they come to me with a specific footprint in mind
for a project, “can you give me another 4 feet on the length, can you give me another
3 foot on the width, can you give me another 3 foot on the height” because I know if
you can give me that for the shell, I know I'm going to cut your low frequency costs
down and then we can use money for other things.
What's our next cost?
Diffusion, especially quadratic, quadratic diffusers are labor intensive, they're not
difficult but they're labor intensive to build.
They have a lot of parts and the parts are all wood so the cost is rather expensive,
you have to use wood because wood gives a more natural warm sounding tone especially
your soft woods for diffusion.
Quadratic diffusion would be your next expensive cost when you're considering building, low
frequency being the first.
So like we said before to minimize your low frequency cost get the right size and volume
and a few feet can mean a huge difference especially when you're dealing with live rooms
where you have full range instruments.
A drum set will produce sounds from 40 cycles all the way to 8,000 so we can handle the
8,000 in almost any room size but the 40 cycle energy, completely different story.
So how do we do that with drums?
We put the frequency absorption right under the drum, we build it into the platform elevates
it off the floor which is best for pressure and absorbs closest to the source so all kinds
of things we can do but when you're building your room you're always thinking about cost.
I've got X amount of space, I’ve got X amount of money and we want to match the space, usage
and volume to the amount of money you have and make sure we're addressing the issues
first.
Now a lot of times we can phase it, you start to see the numbers and you start to see the
cost you realize oh I don't have enough money to do what I really want.
So then we address the issues that are the most important first and that's a little frequency
because if you don't have the low end right in the room you're never going to have anything
else right.
We want to get the low end right because remember a 40 Hertz problem is also a problem at 80,
120, 160 because of our harmonics so the fundamental is the beginning of the nightmare and then
the harmonics are the end of it okay.
So match size, volume, treatment to cost it's all a juggling act, a ratio.
Where do you go to find this information?
Only experience can give it to you I've been building buildings for 40 years, I have a
lot of experience and I've been building sound and acoustic rooms for last 15 and I built
over a 135 now.
So that database and that experience is available to you so please don't hesitate to call I'll
be more than happy to share it with you and let's know what we're doing first before we
do it, saves time and money and aggravation and then we know what your end result is going
to sound like.