Acoustic treatment for exposed brick walls.

[Vass]

Hi,

I am soon moving to a new house with a detached single car garage. This will be my studio but unfortunately will take time to get to a satisfactory standard sonically as my budget is very restricted at present.

The garage has a pitched roof. From inside there is no ceiling and the timber roof is exposed. There is a concrete floor and exposed brick walls. The only way in/out is a metal garage door at one end basically the size of that wall. Ideally in the future i want to build interior walls but for the time being i have to work with what i have.

I have a very modest budget of 200-300 British pounds.

I will obviosly carpet the floor first and foremost.

After that im thinking one or more of the following:

Carpets/ rugs covering sections of the brick walls
I can get acoustic panels and bass traps but will these be wasted on exposed brick?
Make broadband absorbers using timber, rockwool and fabric to place in the corners and on the walls at point of first reflection etc.

What would you guys recommend givin my limitations?

Thanks for your help!

[cballison]

two things come to mind quickly. One, try to get rid of the corners. Two, carpet can be used on the walls but the result will likely be a little different than using drapes or curtains. Before you do anything other than carpet the floor, you should find out what you have acoustically and decide what you want to have acoustically. Then, you can decide how best to achieve it.

Brick should be a terrible absorber at all frequencies. cloth or carpet covering will mostly absorb higher frequences as I recall but it does absorb lower freqs some (I don't have my reference book here). The same goes for most acoustic panels.

Fiberglass insulation stuffed between the 2x4s with chicken wire or window screen material holding it in would help deaden the room and help insulate it from temperature changes. Also, I've seen some cork tile flooring that might work better than wood or concrete floors without going to carpeting. Ceiling acoustic tiles not mounted as a flat ceiling might also help out. Take care in your choice of wall and ceiling materials and do not use materials intended for other purposes like shipping carton foam that could be flammable and subject to giving off toxic fumes while burning.

[Vass]

Thanks cballison!

A lot of helpful advice there, appreciate it! I have been thinking a lot about my budget and options and I am considering timber framing the side and end wall where the desk will be, then packing it out with fibreglass and stapling a breathable fabric over that as some cheap fake walls that will help with the acoustics.

I also then plan to either build some broadband absorbers with the same material to fit in the corners to help trap the bass. Or if I think my diy is up to it I may even make the corners angled in that fashion when I am framing the timber. Need to think about that tho! Im out of my comfort zone with all this diy stuff.

If possible as well I was think about making the timber framing come across the 3/4 of the way a few feet in front of the garage door. That way the garage door would still open and there would be some treatment there.

Any thoughts on that?

[lingyai]

This has helped me record in some horrible acoustic spaces and worked suprisingly well. It is based on advice I got from one of the Sound On Sound editors. In this example it is to record singing.

On ebay or Amazon, get 4 photographic lighting stands (telescopic) -- you can find them for around £10 each. Place 2 next to each other. Place the other two around 1.5 meters away so that they form a 45 degree angle to the two you've placed together -- i.e. seen from above, you've made a "V", where the junction consists of the two stands which are placed together.

Raise them to around 6.5 feet high. Get some cheap duvets to drape between them, so that if you back into the V, you've now got cloth walls on either side of you. I used two duvets for each side, and then finally tossed an extra duvet on top of the whole structure. So now, when you back into the V (bringing your mic stand), you are standing in a cloth V with a cloth roof.

When you sing (or play, or whatever), don't worry that you will be singing out into the open part of the V. What happens is, sound comes from you, some of which passes the mic, hits wall in front of you, and then starts bouncing all around, including to the wall behind you, and then back to your backside -- in other words, bouncing in a way which would easily feed back from various angles into an unprotected mic, indelibly stamping the sound of the room onto the recording. But -- you've got a protected mic -- all this sound strikes the duvets, and doesn't reach the mic. Or very little of it, if any.

This is not absolute sound-proofing; but it is pretty sound-deadening. And between the 4 stands and the 5 duvets (3 of which I already had) I spent around £60. I was surprised at how well it works. For example, I recorded the vocal accompanying the video for which you'll find the link under my signature this way -- judge for yourself. This was recorded in a brick garage too.

Anyway, hope you find a good solution.

[ObiWonder]

I've done the same thing with green screen stands, moving blankets and dynamic mics are ways to make recording there a bit easier.