Hi, just wondering if anyone has experience/useful advice on room treatment?
The room I work in is quite small. I get crazy resonance on tones around 130-250 HZ, so much that it’s hurting my ears even in low volumes, it’s just bouncing everywhere.
Does anyone have an advice on how to cheaply/effectively reduce the amount of wall and ceiling reflections so that the low frequency response is more even?
Thank you!
Ok, first off I recommend you use one of the room size calculators online to get a rough idea what kind of frequency modes you can expect with your room dimensions.
If you suffer from flutter echo (you hear a spring reverby “sproing” in a decay tail if you clap your hands as loud as you can in the room), it is easily eliminated by adding more soft objects into the room. Also a heavy carpet and heavy drapes can tame the higher frequencies too some degree.
Next, you need to write down the most dominant room modes and research for bass trap solutions that offer plenty of absorption in your dominant room mode frequencies. Get a few big ones first and obtain more little by little, you will know when you have “almost enough” if you add more little by little. You might not need a vast amount of bass traps to reach a usable “compromize”.
Check and double check your monitor placement, and the angles of the speakers. Distance from the walls and the distance to your listening position are critical parameters to consider when looking for best monitor placement. If you are not using dedicated speaker stands, maybe check if you can get a pair of isoacoustic speaker stand to demo in your studio. If you are using dedicated speaker stands, check to see if the pipes on them are hollow - if so, fill them with sand/gravel.
I’m not an expert on acoustics by any means, but things outlined above have helped to get our project studio room to a usable “compromise” without investing a crap ton on acoustic treatment. Have bought one expensive pair of soffit bass traps though, but ATM don’t feel an immediate need to buy more.
Cheaply, well, a lot of books on the walls 
i bought a lot of isolation foam and i am a bit disappointed
books are good (and for free(
only important foam for me are the corner pieces (basstraps).
Great thread! I am stuck with pretty bad acoustics in my music room too and was about to post a question along the same lines. My room is small and cubic and a total acoustic nightmare. The problem seems often ignored, but every pro in the field seems to say that before you get any expensive gear at all you should get decent monitors and have your room treated. I guess they have a point.
Tsuteks advice sounds great. There’s plenty of nasty spring reverby resonance im my room. The low end response is also terrible. I have a sub and some bass notes get all swallowed up and others resonate like crazy. I guess that has to do with so called “standing waves”?
If I use proper bass traps do I have to have them along all edges of my room? They seem crazy expensive and also I don’t want to drill holes all along my walls. How do they attach? Is there also a cheaper and more noninvasive way to do that?
Book shelves sound like a great idea.
For monitor stands I am using empty gift/storage boxes from Ikea. Should I top them up with something heavy/sandy?
I made acoustics panels from thick industrial foam. It’s OK for me.
I had a very small room in my previous rent flat and small rooms are always issues in acoustic case.
The main issues were low frequencies and flatter echo. To reduce reverb time in general and add some isolating from my neighbors I put carpeting on the floor and sound isolating panels under carpeting.
To solve (as possible) issue with low frequencies I moved the table away from the wall at ~40-50 cm, set bass trim switches of monitor speakers to -1 out of 3. Bass traps made of foam didn’t do any significant changes in low freq area but slightly improved low-mid and mid freqs. I recommend to make bass traps by yourself – there are many working schemes in web.
To solve flatter echo I put a bass trap made of foam between the cabinet and the ceiling. Also put acoustic panels in the first reflection points.
Also its a good idea to have a bookshelf full of books and/or sofa in the room.
Check “Studio rescue” episodes on youtube.
SonicScoop offers 2 great tutorials for effective DIY solutions:
http://www.sonicscoop.com/2016/11/10/diy-studio-design-part-2-build-cost-effective-bass-traps/
Foam isn’t the best solution.
Foam is a good solution, but it has to be thick and dense, not like the foam most people stick on the walls.
Economy foam is useless, the very dense expensive stuff is ok for hf control, for mid and low damping you want mineral wool slabs, you can buy the insulation slabs and make your own, wrapping them in acoustic fabric, but frankly it is a hassle and you probably won’t save much, and end up with something that won’t look as good as an off the shelf well designed product. I’m talking from personal experience, I’m pretty handy at diy and some years back decided to make my own, I was never happy with the results, so in the end I bought a ready made kit which was not much more expensive, but looked and performed way better.
Here is the stuff I used http://www.primacoustic.com/london-room-kits/
Thank you so much for kindly sharing all this knowledge!
I’m going to do the calculations you suggested, @tsutek, start with the bookshelves, and then continue with the insulation suggestions @darenager shared.
The studio room I’m in is small, and it’s also not exactly a cube. One of the corners to the side of the speaker breaks off the side wall and turns into an elongated triangle corner. Do you think that I would benefit by blocking that corner with a curtain so the room is more cube like, or it doesn’t really matter? (I included a picture).
For low frequencies curtain doesn’t matter at all.
You have empty walls, anything you add to them will help with reflections, however for bass you need more work.
That triangle corner complicates everything as well
Thanks, yea, I’ll add books to the walls. I thought that maybe blocking that corner will help in some way, but I’m just starting to read about acoustics so clearly don’t know much
I’m primarily concerned about the bass because it’s really unruly in this room.
You need to know where your reflection points are and room modes.
If your bass is all over the place, you might have to resort to using bass traps. What you need to tame low reflections has to have lots of size (volume), because low frequencies have a very long wavelenght. But speaker placement and monitoring volume can also even the odds in your favour. Obviously, the more SPL your speakers output to the room, more pronounced the low end problems will become.
So I am at this point which I have no idea what my next move will be.I 've read in theory only a few things about sound and acoustic treatment in general but I don’t know.Start spending cash on bass traps randomly straight away with the hope everything 'll be fixed?I have a serious issue with the lower frequencies for example can’t get a clear image when I m adjusting a kick on my md and when I go closer to the monitor the sound is much more clear so I have an idea of what I m doing but still this is not the right way.The lower frequencies don’t travel to me ears clear enough.Also parts of the room like Windows the door and a small furniture start trembling/reverberating when I m in the beginning with a kick or a bass for example and this can be super annoying.My room is small and wooden which plays a role in this I guess.Monitors are Neumann kh120a
I moved to a new place this year and decided to start with acoustic treatment. This took me a lot of time, researching and planning but the results are great and making music is much more enjoyable. I wander why I didn’t do this earlier.
If you post a plan of your room with the exact sizes, where you have your table, speakers, windows, doors etc and the budget you can spent, it would be easier to help.
I can go today and buy a meter thing to give you the exact size and can post pictures of the room and how everything is placed.I really need some advice cause of my ignorance on this subject.Thank you very very much!!
If you get something like this, it can save you a lot of time…
Can’t get my hands on something like that immediately.Will do as I said above tho as soon as I get back home 
