28 March 2009

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 7)

Recently I also did some new measurements together with my friend Hans in the studio. This time we tested with the bass traps in place. Compared to the last measurements it looks a bit better and much smoother, but there are still some nasty dips there that we hoped to get rid off. So I'm afraid the bass traps alone wont be sufficient and we will have to do more to get a good room response in the low end. Something else that is strange is that the frequencies of the peeks and dips shifted a bit compared to the older measurements. I don't really understand how that can be. In the higher frequencies everything is quite OK now by the way. And for me it is good enough now to be able to start getting used to working on monitors in stead of headphones. But is as to be better to be able to make good mixes.

The waterfall graphic looks quite different from last time. As you can see RT60 decay times of the low frequencies have drastically decreased. That is the work of the bass traps dampening these low frequencies. But we did decide that it was time now to call in the professionals because we can only start guessing what to do next. So we went to ask around and found two professional acoustic engineers. I invited them both to come over and look at the room. They both had a very different approach in looking at the problem. The first one was more practical and the second one more scientific. I decided to start with the scientific one. On Monday this specialist will come and do some measurements with his own equipment and he will take exact measures of the room. This data will then be entered in a special computer program that will start simulate the sound behavior in the room. From these simulations it is possible to predict what needs to be done to solve the problems. With this data I will go to the first specialist and together we can then determine what needs to be build or bought in acoustic treatment. I'm quite curious what they will come up with. This whole acoustics theory really is starting to fascinate me. I learned a lot of new things in a short time. I'll keep you posted on the progress :)

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