Recording - September 2014 - 22

Four Steps
To A New Studio

11. Applying FoamTak to a reused foam panel.

4. Conventional wisdom states you can
never have too much low-end absorption,
and it's sound acoustics to get bass trapping into corners of two and three walls
(thanks again, Bruce Black!). I reused
some of the bass traps I already had, and
purchased some new LENRD bass traps,
also by Auralex, to supplement them.
5. Remember what I said before about
a hardwood floor being a good place to
start, that could then be damped down to
suit the room's needs? The last part of my
control room acoustics plan was to add
throw rugs as needed, should areas of the
hardwood floors prove too reflective.
The live room follows a similar plan,
which I will describe a bit later. First,
though, I'll walk you through how I
installed all the items I just listed.
Back to "never say never"... as I was
scraping the glue off of the walls and ceil13. A fiberglass panel
ing back at my old house in preparation
affixed to the wall.
for the sale, I told myself, "Never again
will I use permanent adhesive to mount the foam!" Two weeks later, I was
installing the bass traps using TubeTak Pro, which provides a permanent bond,
as shown in Picture 9. The bass traps are heavy and there really isn't much
choice. Picture 10 shows the end result. For the foam panels, I switched to
FoamTak spray adhesive, which they say is easier to remove down the road.
See Picture 11 for the application, and Picture 12 shows the end result. By the
way, adhesive is a significant part of the budget: mine cost nearly $50 in all.
The good thing about installing 703 fiberglass panels is that there's no glue, but
the bad thing is that working with fiberglass can be bad for your skin and really
bad for your lungs. Be sure to wear elbow-length gloves and a dust mask when
working with it. It's a rigid product, so I used two long screws along with washers
to affix the panel to the wall. See Picture 13. Next I built a simple wood frame that
slides on to fit around the panel, and covered the frame with a breathable cloth. I
chose cambric, and the results are shown in Picture 14. Total cost: around $100.
By the way, I did have one other piece of homemade fiberglass/cambric
construction in the studio: a couple of movable bass traps I had built for and
used in my old studio. For the new studio arrangement, one ended up living
in each corner of the live room. They're made from a wood frame stuffed
with 6" open-faced fiberglass insulation (gloves! mask!) and covered with
cambric. See Picture 15.

12. Foam panels after installation.
3. I wanted to use diffusion on the back wall. As
I mentioned, the back wall is angled slightly with
respect to the front wall, which prevents standing
waves. Diffusion is still recommended, though, so
you don't get clear echoes bouncing back into your
mix position from behind you. As acoustics expert
Peter D'Antonio explains in his fantastic interview
in the October 2013 issue, diffusion on the rear
wall is great for turning the sound from the speakers that passes by you into a rich and enveloping
"environment" that doesn't mess with the direct
sound coming from your monitors. I treated my rear
wall using Auralex MiniFusors.
22

RECORDING September 2014

14. Finished panels with wooden
frame and cambric covering.

15. A homemade movable bass
trap in the corner of the live room.

Recording - September 2014

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