Tech Section > Your Room / Acoustic Treatment

Help me improve ma jam/recording place!

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j_micho:
Ok, so,  I play bass guitar in a rock band with a very typical lineup (a drum, a bass, one or two guitars, a singer and back vocals). Our jam place looks like this (it's not up to scale but it's a good approximation):



The mix often gets very muddy and we all end up playing too loud. We were jamming the other day with me on drums and I couldn't ear anything but bass. I think we could improve the sound of the studio by placing our instruments/amps in more "strategic" places, and also by installing acoustic treatment. I'm currently building 8 acoustic panels (2' by 4') using a material that should be equivalent to 3" of owens corning 703 panels.

I'm new to the science of sound, so my question is simple. Where would you place the instruments/amps and where would you install the acoustic panels?

Thanks!
Jon

RawDepth:
Bass builds up in corners. It somehow bounces back and forth at the corners which causes a standing wave effect which can extend several feet out from the corner. (A standing wave is where sound waves criss-crossing each other join together and become stronger at that spot.) Having your drum set in the corner puts your ears within that standing wave area.

First, you should move your drum set to a straight wall area to get away from that standing wave. Then place the new sound panels diagonally across as many corners as possible to reduce those standing waves. The thicker the better.

Try to avoid putting the bass amp in a corner. This will also exaggerate the lower frequencies making the room sound even more full of bass.

stainless:
some gobos in front of the drums, and actually any of the amps might help.

if the ceiling is high enough some hanging baffles  ('across the length of the room) may benefit the sound

You can also try facing amps into the wall (this isn't all that effective with open back guitar amps)

Or, ran as many instruments through the board (direct boxes, or the line inputs)  instead of through the amp- This may take more getting used to for the guitarist(s), but it puts all the instrumenst except drums) coming from the same source (mains)

In a small room, there's going to drum bleed in every, so learn to live with it. Using dynamic mics will help some, but it's hard to isolate the drums in a small room

and moving to headphones instead of mains is a realistic possiblilty/solution (the cables can be a pain)

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