Auralex question

We have MetroFoam in our "A" room on the ceiling, and love it. Smooths out a room without killing it's feel, nor making you feel like you're in a padded box.
 
Foam isn't the answer to most acoustic problems. I can't really say that it's 100% negative, or 100% positive. All I can say is; it won't help the lower more powerful frequencies that tend to be the biggest issues.

They market Auralex like it's the savior of any room. That's just not the truth. Best case scenario, you might deaden a room a bit that's a little on the bright side (according to taste).

Acoustics start out in the structural elements of a room. It's about shape and very exact direction, and diffusion of sound. It's about being rigid and absorbent where it needs to be. Would you add a room on to your house with acoustic foam? Sounds silly huh? That's a vague analogy, but it starts to shed light on what I'm saying.
 
auralex is great for correcting unwanted reflections in a room. for most of us who can't afford to build a room to perfect specs for audio, auralex is great. don't fool yourself into thinking it is a soundproofing device however. it will have very little effect on how much sound makes it into the next room. here's a quick and easy way to treat a room with foam. sit in your chair in your normal working position and have someone go around the edge of the room with a mirror, holding the mirror flat against the wall. look in the mirror as they move it around the room and anytime you see the reflection of one of your speakers, mark that spot. these are the spots that you put foam on. if light can reflect from your speaker to the wall and back to your head, then sound will too. you also want to put bass traps in your corners. auralex sells some but they are very expensive. you can make your own using peg board covered in fabric and with thick fiberglass insulation glued on the backside. nail into the corner from floor to ceiling and you're good.
 
At the risk of sounding like a snob...
I have a 2 year degree in acoustic design.
We have well over 1M in our A and B rooms in gear and construction
They are very well designed rooms, our A room has had 11 Grammy nominated projects, and 2 wins, one as recent as last year with a nomination this year.
We have Auralex in the room.
No, Auralex, Sonex, Acousticord, Owens Corning aren't saviours. But these products are excellent for smoothing out bumps in the room, reducing reflections, etc. There is no such thing as a perfect room outside of an anechoic chamber. There is no such thing as "sound proofing" a the level that most folks are working in. For instance, a Ztrap door costs around 30k, and it's not a complete system by itself. Most folks don't have 30K into their room, let alone just the door. Acoustic treatment isn't just a "poor mans" solution, high end rooms designed by Jeff Cooper, Don Davis, and other highly regarded designers.
Bass traps like Lenrds, Tube Traps, etc all kill or dampen reflections to a very useable point. This is why they're used in virtually every studio in the world.
You have two choices. Control where the sound bounces to, or control how much it bounces at all, or some varying degree of both. You can't stop it without loads of money and loads of time, and to some degree, loads of space. Our tracking room for instance, is built of cinderblock filled with playground sand, masticked together, floating on a concrete bed with 40 neoprene blocks that cost 20.00 each. Then we have a solid hickory door with a Ztrap channel on the bottom, and that leads to another similar door. ( this is called an airlock) There are 5 panels of glass at 3 angles between control room and track room. Control room (where we mix film sound) is floated floor, no parallel walls, angled ceiling, raised and lowered floors with blend of hard oak and carpet, with staggered wall baffles. But we still have Metrofoam on the ceiling over the mix position, and on the wall where the soffit monitors are mounted, 4' behind the near field monitors.
Long post, but the bottom line is, Auralex or other treatment can easily convert a crappy bedroom editing space into a VERY workable scenario.
Other side of the coin....Joe DiBlasi, a world-renowned guitar player, doesn't have a fancy studio. He just has a converted bedroom that looks out over Topanga Canyon. He treated ceiling, back wall reflective points, and MoPads in his room.
Listen to his daughter's voice at the opening of "Pirates of the Caribbean" or his acoustic guitar work on "Desperate Housewives" and tell me that doesn't sound great. Especially for a room that's got sliding glass doors and is next to a kitchen.
You might find this article of use. It's written more for video editors than audio geeks.
 
Acoustic design is as much theory and taste as music itself. Who wants a dead sound? Myself, I want something that feels alive. Products like auralex might smooth out bumps, but in a pleasing way? I guess it depends on the person. It's just like how people can't agree on the perfect speaker. Much like the perfect room it doesn't exist. However, certain ones are quite obviously better than others.

Think of it like this; you can cover a hole in drywall with chewing gum, but it's going to look like hell.

Joe DiBlasi sounds good because he knows what he's doing. You don't need a fancy studio to create some wonderful sounds, you need talent. A studio merely gives you more options, not necessarily more quality in terms of gear. Would Mr. DiBlasi sound better in a fancy studio? Probably. Would it really matter to the end listener on a TV watching desperate housewives? Probably not. As for the Grammy nominated blah blah blah, that's because of the talent as well (that could even be argued, which I'm not at all. GO GRAMMYS).

I stand by what I said before. A "crappy bedroom" is still going to have major acoustic abnormalities no matter how much foam you slap on the walls. You can get *decent* results depending on what is being recorded. I'd rather have a great engineer/musician in a crappy bedroom than morons in a big fancy studio.

I think what bothers me about Auralex is; 1. it's over priced 2. oversells itself 3. it's ubiquitous in the minds of beginner audio ethusiasts because of #2. Oh well, that's nothing new. They're definitely not totally useless. I'm not saying that. The usage of in the big studio you speak of sounds about like a pretty smart application. Treating an 8 ft x 8 ft x 8ft cube bedroom does not.

I'm glad you posted. If gives a different perspective for someone weighing the pros and cons of something. After reading volumes of material all over the net, a good researcher will sniff out the ultimate truth from various sources.
 
"Acoustic design is as much theory and taste as music itself."

To a substantially limited extent, this is so. No, a dead room isn't a good thing. But neither is a reflective room. A bedroom, properly treated, can output pretty darn good sound. A bedroom, not properly treated cannot.
Joe is a great guitarist and knowledgeable musician, but if his room isn't balanced for reflection vs direct proximity, it doesn't matter how good he is, the microphone hears things that shouldn't be heard. His mix would stink because the small size of the room creates reflections that should never have been there in the first place unless he's mixing with headphones, which is equally as dangerous and poor practice. (stupid practice, IMO)

I'm sorry you have a bone to pick with Auralex, let's choose Sonex or other acoustic treatment manufacturer. We've spent at least 10k on treatment from Owens Corning, Auralex, and NotLok.
BTW, our "B" room is a converted office, 14 x 16, so it's about the same size as a "crappy" bedroom.

Bottom line is more about SPL and being able to develop enough of it to know what' s really in your mix, it's about being able to hear all frequencies in balance, and it's about killing nodes. A bedroom isn't ideal if you're monitoring at high levels, that's so. Any more than having very small speakers in a very large room. A great engineer in a bedroom that has no treatment is crippled by his environment. A moron in a big studio is only crippled by his mind.
Blah, blah, blah it all you want, the proof is in the putting.

All that said, at the end of the day, you're right, an acoustically balanced room isn't "critical" to the audio mix. Just like you dont' need a calibrated monitor to color correct.
 
funny how this thread started as some guy asking if an ebay auction sounded like a good deal and ended up in a heated debate about the importance of "acoustically correct" rooms.......
 
cheezweezl said:
funny how this thread started as some guy asking if an ebay auction sounded like a good deal and ended up in a heated debate about the importance of "acoustically correct" rooms.......
Click to expand...

You're right, my bad. It seemed to me (still does) that there was an agenda there to discount the value in treating a room.
As I mentioned before, I think Metrofoam is a very good product when used as designed, for damping reflections in a room.
Don't know if the deal is good, we bought ours as part of a much larger package. The price the same dealer is offering for Sonoflats is a scary good price tho. The price on the Lenerds is only so-so.
 
You guys are both right, and are probably close to being on the same page. Acoustic foam is one of the many tools/devices used to help get a more accurate listening environment, yet is only one tool in the toolbox. There's a lot that can go into making a room sound really good, as you guys have mentioned. Unfortunately for those just getting started out and wanting to make a studio at home, you have a lot of obstacles to get over, but rest assured, so don't professional studios, hence the tons of money that is spent to make those studios right. But here is the bottom line. Whatever you end up doing in your studio, what matters most is whether the mixes you are making translate to a variety of playback systems. If it sounds good in your studio, but sounds bad in your car, in your living room, in your neighbors beautiful surround sound system, etc., then chances are you are not hearing things accurately in your studio, perhaps because of the speakers, maybe the low frequencies are being exaggerated, etc. Many people have "learned" their rooms signature, and have been able to work around the problems, and can make mixes that translate well, but it can take time.

By the way, I'm mixing at a facility that just installed a Pro Tools HD system in a temporary room, and I'll be in that compromised listening environment for at least 2 more months until the new mix room is completed. So I know what it's like to work in an environment you can't trust, but work needs to get done, so you do the best you can.

Anyway, like I said, you guys are both essentially saying the same thing, that there is a lot to accoustic design, and although foam won't solve all your problems, it can be used with other materials to help treat a room. What it isn't, is a miracle product.

Steve
 
I don't believe anyone is saying it's a miracle product. What I object to is the attack on acoustic treatment, and the attitude that Auralex in particular is a company of overpriced, hyped, useless product. They've helped a lot of folks get their rooms together, they do it for free in most cases (of course they do, because they have a product to sell) but they're just good people. I don't work for them, get nothing from them (once they gave me a set of MoPads to review, valued at 19.99, for purposes of full disclosure) and I don't endorse their product as an endorsee.
Auralex (or any other treatment products, AFAIC) are good products for taking a poor room and making it useable. The products can't turn a bad room into a perfect suite. SPL, room size, construction, placement...all part of the game. As is treatment. Treatment just happens to be more important in poor rooms than it is in good rooms, IMO.
 
You can always build absorbers that will match or exceed the performance of any foam at a fraction of the price. The advantage of foam is simplicity and the fact that it looks nice. A piece of O.C. 703 is much more effective per sq. foot than foam will ever be.

Most people that are not using spaces specifically designed for recording ( a bedroom, basement, etc) probably need diffusion as much or more than they need absorption anyway. If you are in a room with carpet, you are probably already in a situation where you have a lo-end heavy room, and foam or OC 703 can't help very much there.
 
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