Acoustic panels act as a buffer between soundwaves that reflect around a room, helping reduce reverberations and improve sound quality.
Once bass traps have been installed in a home studio, the next step should be installing some foam or Rockwool absorbers – these should preferably be attached at each corner.
1. The Front Wall
Every room requires some form of acoustic treatment – even home studios! Front walls should be the first place where changes should take place.
Wherever reflections occur most frequently and should be treated first is usually where sound waves reflect off hard surfaces, and if strong enough they can cancel out their direct wave and create what is known as echo or reverb, giving an unnatural sound to any space. Acoustic panels have been designed specifically to absorb reflections and reduce echo.
Acoustic panels can be placed in various spots around your room to achieve maximum effectiveness; certain options will work better than others depending on its size and layout. As a general guideline, smaller rooms need more panels; conversely vice versa.
At the same time, it’s crucial that you consider the height at which the panels will be hung based on where people will be sitting in the room. For instance, when recording bands in your studio, the front wall may require extra coverage due to most speakers likely sitting above ear level and needing more room than normal to move freely.
If you’re mixing on your own, it’s advisable to hang panels along both side walls as well. This will help reduce reflections from monitors and echo in that area; but this can be tricky due to difficulty pinpointing reflection points. To do so effectively, get an assistant hold up a mirror next to each speaker; when you see its tweeter appear in the mirror mark its location on the wall and repeat this process on both sides of the room.
Even on a tight budget, egg crate foam can still help you improve the acoustics in your studio by treating its front and back walls with it. This will reduce echo in your studio while still being effective compared to acoustic panels or bass traps.
2. The Side Walls
No matter if you’re recording music at home, watching a movie in your living room, or running an office; quality audio depends upon absorbing sound reflections and reverberations. Acoustic panels offer one of the easiest, cost-effective solutions for accomplishing this objective – not to mention being very easy to install and making an enormous difference to how a room sounds.
For optimal results, acoustic treatment must be applied on all surfaces in a room where multiple reflection points exist – this includes walls, ceiling and floor surfaces. Foam treatments typically only affect high frequencies, therefore bass traps must also be added to address low frequencies.
Home studios should prioritize installing acoustic panels on walls either left and right of speakers to control first reflections, reduce echoes and overtones and maintain clarity of sound. Imagine that these walls were mirrors, placing panels where you can see your speakers in their reflection. This will provide control of first reflections while mitigating any overtones from speakers being seen as reflections in their reflections – providing control of first reflections that reduce echos or overtones.
Treating walls should always come first; however, adding some treatments to the backwall behind sitting positions will also help eliminate back reflections that cause loss of directional sound in listening areas.
Hang some panels from the ceiling to improve acoustics in spaces that experience heavy standing activity, such as offices or hospital wards. As ceilings do not absorb sound very effectively, placing panels there could go far towards improving their acoustic qualities.
Attentiveness to detail when installing acoustic panels and bass traps is of utmost importance, since acoustic panels only absorb what hits them; without enough added, your room could still sound dead. Too many panels installed may create an undesirable echo environment as well. If budget is an issue, egg crate foam may serve as an excellent replacement option to more expensive acoustic panels and bass traps.
3. The Ceiling
Acoustic panels can absorb soundwaves bouncing off of ceilings to give your space a more natural-sounding ambiance, dampening noise levels and eliminating echos, making them essential components in any home studio setup.
Ceiling treatments allow for more creative acoustic treatments than ever. From using acoustic clouds or T-grid systems in schools and offices to suspend individual acoustic panels from the ceiling for effective sound absorption that kills standing waves, ceiling treatments can bring new possibilities to light for creating optimal conditions in any space.
Home theater owners looking to add cinematic feel should consider installing ceiling acoustic treatment as part of their experience. Panels should be installed either left and right of your speakers in an equilateral triangle shape covering early reflection points from each speaker, along with bass traps in corners to combat low frequency build-up and room modes.
Acoustic panels can also be useful in home offices. Working from home often means dealing with distractions from family, pets, and other noise sources that impede productivity; adding an acoustic treatment to the ceiling can create a more serene working space and promote productivity.
If you’re on a tight budget, acoustic foam may provide an economical alternative to paneling or bass traps. Egg crate foam can be cut easily to meet your specific needs – just keep in mind it won’t provide as much coverage or attenuate high frequencies as quickly. When used alone or as part of a planar system it should only be used sparingly!
4. The Back Wall
Acoustic panels absorb sound waves to reduce reverberation within your room, but can only absorb what hits them; placing them strategically is key to getting optimal results from treatment.
Home studios typically rely on speakers and microphones as the main sources of sound, making the back wall of your room an essential area to treat with acoustic panels. Not only will this reduce echoes and reverberation but it will also prevent sounds from reflecting off other surfaces such as floors and furniture, further diminishing echo effects.
If your recording space features large windows on its rear wall, consider adding acoustic treatments as a means of blocking outside noise from entering and making your recording session more private. This will reduce noise from entering and make your studio space feel more like home.
Place acoustic panels higher up on walls and ceilings as this will enable sound waves to have difficulty reaching them more effectively and be absorbed faster. Hanging them well above eye level also helps hide any imperfections or stains caused by their installation process.
After treating the front and side walls, it’s advisable to focus on treating the rear wall to decrease reverberation from behind and improve recording quality.
Make sure to place acoustic panels strategically around the studio, to help control bass waves that may otherwise become overwhelming. Doing this will also prevent bass waves from overpowering other sounds within your studio and potentially overshadowing any necessary music production efforts.
For the optimal placement of acoustic panels in your recording space, perform a “clapping test.” While it might cause consternation among guests, clapping in various parts of the room will allow you to identify areas with early reflections that need fixing acoustic foam panels to. Once these spots have been identified, fix acoustic foam panels onto walls at these points by fastening small offcuts of foam as spacers; to further optimize acoustic performance use offcuts of foam as spacers!