VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[Mike Sommer]

Just to be clear:

A square box has 12 corners and 8 intersecting corners. Intersecting corners are points were 2 or 3 corners come together.

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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[TheVoiceOfBob]

This has been a really interesting thread! Thanks to all involved for keeping it going.

When your voice room is small, is there an option for making effective bass traps? With a space only about 4 - 5 feet, rolls of insulation would require me to lose about 180 pounds to fit in there.
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Try to imagine a world where there is no such thing as hypothetical situations.

The Voice of Bob

[Mike Sommer]

[Hestoft]

Having just gone through this myself, with a lot of help from Mike, I have several suggestions. First, it really helps to get a handle on the frequencies you need to tame. Programs like FuzzMeasure for the Mac can give you a graphical view of how your room responds and FM even has a free trial period. This is really important because treating for 40Hz problems is a lot different than treating for 125Hz problems. Also, you can see if what you are doing has any effect!

Second, if I had it to do over, I would have spent less money (and time!) on 703 insulation and building DIY traps and more on RealTraps Bare Traps. Why? The insulation and especially the fabric from ATS I used to cover my homemade traps sheds fibers like the dickens. I have to vacuum the room constantly and there are fibers everywhere. In addition, while more expensive by far than insulation ($125 each for a 2' x 4' panel) the Bare Traps are much more efficient at trapping bass, especially at lower frequencies, at least in my experience and in my particular room. (I had some vicious resonances at 40Hz to 55Hz that the 703 just could not tame, no matter where I placed it. but four Bare Traps on my back wall killed it dead) Also, they are only two inches thick, can be attached to the wall or hung from the ceiling and never shed fibers. They are also probably easier to take with you if you move or build another room.

Of course, your mileage may vary and you may enjoy breathing all the shards of insulation that you will get all over everything if you work with the DIY traps, but I know I did not. And, no, I am not a shill for Real Traps, just a satisfied customer.

As an aside, I would recommend looking into unbleached muslin for making DIY traps instead of the fabric from ATS. I got lazy and just used painters dropcloths from Home Depot which worked fine and don't shed, but I am sure I could have found the muslin more cheaply.
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Ralf-Finn Hestoft
The Great Dane

[Mike Sommer]

I agree that that one should test the room first.

Your 40Hz peak would have been very easy to take care of with a piece of butcher paper. But the bigger problem with your room was getting the decay times down, and I didn't want to worry about the bass until that was taken care of first, because there was the chance that taking care of the decay times, would take care of the bass. And that's what conturing a room is all about, using the available knowledge, and not just throwing money at it.

As for the ATS material, it is nothing more than burlap, and it is messy.
I will point out that tough the ATS material is cheaper, you get a lot of unusable wast from it, do to it's width. When I've estimated the yield of ATS material against that of Guilford of Main's fr701, I would almost end up spending more on the ATS. This is because the fr701 is 66" wide and the ATS is 56" wide, that 10-inches allows one to cover two 2'x4'x4" panes with less than 3 yards of fr701 material. Where with ATS, one can can only cover one panel, with a 23-inch wide piece left over, that you might be able to make a few pairs of burlap underwear with.

Now as for painters tarps, that may not be such a good idea. You need to use material that you can breath through. If you can breath or blow through a material, it is "acoustically transparent." If the material it is not acoustically transparent, you've defeated the absorption properties of the 703. And that could be one of the reasons you had problems controlling the bass

When I crunched the numbers for your room, I found that the low frequencies would be a problem, and low frequencies are always a problem with any small room. And may I point out that no room is ever "perfect" acoustically, there are always anomalies. All we can do is smooth them out the best we can.

I think the lesson here is that when your starting out to build a booth from scratch, and you have no experience in this matter, you should seek out help first. Or be prepared to spend more money fixing the problems you've created.
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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[TheVoiceOfBob]

[JSantucci]

Wow! One simple little question turns into a whole thread about completely redoing my set up. Thanks for all the feedback, everybody. I will see about posting a sample here soon. What would be the best thing to post? I assume, since we are treating for my voice, that a recording of me talking would be the best. Or should I play a series of different frequencies through my monitors? How long should the sample be?
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Teacher, Voice Actor, Balloon Twister, Tuvan Throat Singer (I know... weird, right?)

[JSantucci]

This is my result using FuzzMeasure:



Now what do I do with this info?
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Teacher, Voice Actor, Balloon Twister, Tuvan Throat Singer (I know... weird, right?)

[Mike Sommer]

I would like to see the "waterfalls", this will tell me the rooms decay times.

Also were you using an omni microphone when you did this test?

And where where you in the room? Were you in the 38% position?

Also what are the dimensions of the room and can you post some pictures of it?


About your test, Where the doors closed when you did this test, and how far away were you standing form the mic?

From what I see on this chart, you have a nice dip at about 245Hz, but it looks like most typical rooms.
_________________
The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[JSantucci]

I was sitting on the stool I use when I do a lot of auditions or narration. I had my regular mic (TLM 103) in the normal recording position for me when sitting, and played the sound through my monitors (BX5s). I don't own an omni mic. My "booth" is in an 8x10 spare bedroom (there is a bed, a full linen trunk, an empty dresser and a 5x6 area rug). The door to my booth and the bedroom door were both closed during the test. Here is a video I made last year about my booth (it's a little embarrassing now).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_MM3kCWMPc

I have since made many changes. First, I am using different audio equipment and have moved the computer out of the booth. I have also add a second ceiling quilt. I have put plugs (¾" particle board with foam seals) in the bedroom windows and added foam seals and a sweep to the bedroom door.
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Teacher, Voice Actor, Balloon Twister, Tuvan Throat Singer (I know... weird, right?)

[cyclometh]

Is there an equivalent piece of software to FuzzMeasure for PC/Windows platforms?
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Corey "Vox Man" Snow
http://voxman.net

[JSantucci]

I also wasn't sure what you meant by "waterfalls." What setting should I use for that? For the top graph, the software can do: frequency response, SPLs, mixed phase response, group delay, minimum phase response, excess phase response, or harmonic distortion. For the bottom graph, it can do: step response, energy decay curve, impulse response, log squared impulse response, or envelope time curve.

When measuring for the 38%, do I measure for the room as a whole, or for my booth? I am about ⅔ of the way back in my booth, but that places me right near the edge of the room as a whole given that my booth extends into the closet.

Also, while I appreciate the free help, honestly, I am not going to upgrade or change much at this point. With the teaching situation in the crapper and my wife changing jobs, money is going to be very tight. The window plugs were my last wife approved project for awhile, and I needed those badly to help cut out the noise bleed from the freeway ¼ mile away. Plus I have gotten mostly positive feedback on my auditions since upgrading my mic and interface, so I'm not too worried about the room.

So going back to my original question: I can use the rolls of insulation I already own as bass traps, right? They wont do a lot of good, but might help just a little. I was going to stuff them in the closet corner behind the GOBO behind the mic or up on the closet shelves. I could also shove them in the corner behind the dresser in the bedroom if you think it would help more, but they need to be hidden if they out in the room (per wife's instructions). If you have any other advise based on the video, I would appreciate it, but I can't afford to make a lot of changes. I know my setup isn't optimal, but I can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Thanks again.
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Teacher, Voice Actor, Balloon Twister, Tuvan Throat Singer (I know... weird, right?)

[Mike Sommer]

[Mike Sommer]

[D Voice]

Apparently the same $150 price tag, there is something for Windows called ETF:

[ur]http://www.etfacoustic.com[/url]


Don't know if there is anythiung for Linux or any freeware that does the same thing.[/url]