Anyone use Room Treatments for Further Noise Reduction?

crazyox · Post by **crazyox** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:17 pm

I'm talking about the kind of room treatments use by music studios for proper recording and mixing of music. These absorb high frequency (or low frequency in the case of bass traps) sounds before they can echo back to your ear. I think that this way you might hear less total noise because you are only hearing the direct sounds.

I am currently building homemade basstraps using fibreglass sealed in quilting material, then hung from the corners of the room in mesh containers I got from a dollar store. I have no idea how effective they will be, especially since my design is different than those I have seen that are tried and true methods.

My purpose is for proper music studio use, as well as my silent computer being for that purpose, but I hope it will slightly decrease everall noise. However, DO NOT SEAL YOUR COMPUTER IN A FIBREGLASS MATERIAL...you'll most certainly fry it within minuted. I have heard of people using a fibreglass baffle around the computer with the top still allowing free are movement, but I think one is better of to use acoustic dampening material inside the computer than to do that.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 6:43 pm

studios i work in, computers are isolated, so noise is no initial issue. but, the music computers are loud as anything to be quite honest.

i'd say best bets are with dampening foam, but a think table cloth and keeping the computer under a desk can help a lot. also, acoustic tiling on walls helps, but it depends on the shape of the room and positioning of the computer.

The dman · Post by **The dman** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:48 pm

crazyox

Funny you should mention that. I also have a recording studio and have made many corner traps and broadband absorbers. I have some OC 703 and 705 left and I was thinking about doing what your talking about, put it in the general vicinity of the computer. I tried it today with a 2x2 piece of regular foam but it only tamed the upper frequencies. To absorb more frequencies you need something denser like OC 703 or 705 I have a slight lower Z sound coming from my computer and I think some 703 0r 705 could help tame down some noise, when I have time I'm going to make a couple of panels and try it out but yes I do think it will help some.

P.S. Standard foam and Owens Corning 703/705 are two completely different animals the latter works much better. But when all is said and done, a machine room is the only way to fly.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:14 pm

when all is said and done, a machine room is the only way to fly.

silencing a PC is a lot easier than silencing a room. nowadays a totally solid-state PC can be made using off-the-shelf parts, expensive yes but not more than the usual budget for a high-end gaming computer.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:00 am

silencing your ears is even easier. Ear muffs or noise cancelling earphones.

crazyox · Post by **crazyox** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:37 am

Okay, today I finished building my experimental 14" fibreglass cubes (703 fibre) wrapped in two thin layers of quilting batton. The cubes are not ideal bass traps, which would be 705 fibre and about 2 layers, eight foo by two to thee feet, but I can place them anywhere in the room and easily remove them (which is handy since the studio is my bedroom). I only have my ears to judge the difference, but I do think it is a signifigant difference in getting rid of muddiness in the music speakers...but I don't think it romeves noise in the room in the sense of computer noise, it is more of an effect on a particular low frequency dampening and echo reduction for recording and mixing accuracy, and it has little effect on overall room noise volume.

The traps are suspendable from mesh hangers so that they can be place in the corners of the room, six inches from the walls, to maximize the effect. All comments on this are appreciated greatly.

The dman · Post by **The dman** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 5:04 am

I only have my ears to judge the difference, but I do think it is a signifigant difference in getting rid of muddiness in the music speakers...but I don't think it romeves noise in the room in the sense of computer noise, it is more of an effect on a particular low frequency dampening and echo reduction for recording and mixing accuracy, and it has little effect on overall room noise volume.

Your right, absorbers won't get rid of the room noise only treat the quality of the noise in the room. The only thing that will really get rid of the noise is removing the source. Do you have a closet you can put your computer in? This is what I was talking about in my previous post, my computers are in a machine room and I plan on placing some 705 in there just to tame the machine room reflections locally. I don't expect it to kill the computer noise but I know it will make some difference. it's very quiet now but I'm going for every ounce of quiet I can get. A LDC microphone can can pick up an ant burping at 50'

The best thing to do is play a cd (not Mp3) of a high quality source that you know like the back of your hand (for me it was Steely Dan AJA)and move the absorbers around and see if you can hear a difference, it's amazing how much difference placement can make especially on stereo imaging.

Another thing you have to be careful about is too many highs being sucked out of the room, if you have a bed in the room you already have a giant absorber . I'm assuming from your post that your panels are 1 layer of 2" 703? If this is the case you have mid/high absorbers as opposed to broadband absorbers. If you find the highs are being attenuated too much you can put plastic on front of the OC, underneath the cloth this will reflect the highs back into the room while absorbing the lower HZ.

I treated my studio a couple of years ago and it made a profound difference on the sound, like you said it got rid of the muddiness. This is the single most important factor in getting a good sound. It doesn't matter if you have the best equipment, it's still going to sound like mud in a acoustically inferior room but we musicians would rather spend the money on the fun stuff like instruments, gear etc than a bunch of insulation.

After all that is said and done if you can't move the computer and you do use microphones, when you record position the mic so it's facing away from where the computer noise is coming from.