Acoustic Treatment / Room Treatment

Ever since I moved to a new place I'm struggling with too much reverb and a generally muddier sound. I thought after assembling all the furniture and filling the room with stuff the acoustics would get a bit better but apparently they didn't. Music now sounds entirely different on my headphones than on my speakers.

I used this tool to calculate the spectral profile of my room (though using estimated figures): https://www.troldtekt.com/Web-tools/Acoustics-calculator

How do I fix it and make it sound more neutral? Do I just plaster the walls with those absorption tiles and it will magically sound better? I guess I could EQ the speakers, which obviously wouldn't fix the reverb problem but maybe can help flattening the frequency response. But how do I do that? Do I just play pink noise and then tune the EQ by ear, removing the resonances? What do you suggest

DIY acoustic panels are affordable, rewarding and effective. Not hard to build either.

You can add new ones as needed for a reasonable expense, which means you can start with bass traps and early reflection treatment with amazing results already, and improve your room’s acoustics when money allows with additional panels.

You can start with something rough on the eye if budget / time is lacking and improve them later on.

Best solution IMO.

  On 11/9/2019 at 1:33 PM, Nil said:

DIY acoustic panels are affordable, rewarding and effective. Not hard to build either.

You can add new ones as needed for a reasonable expense, which means you can start with bass traps and early reflection treatment with amazing results already, and improve your room’s acoustics when money allows with additional panels.

You can start with something rough on the eye if budget / time is lacking and improve them later on.

Best solution IMO.

Agreed. Build them yourself. There are PLENTY of guides on Youtube how to build bass traps and so on. A lot of the guides make it seem like they have to be fucking huge though and they don't have to be.
When it comes to absorbers just make sure you don't overdo it and end up killing frequencies.

If I was you I would build some bass traps, put up absorbers (check some guides for where to put them) and once you feel like your room is nice and "dead" I would download the trial to Sonarworks Reference (I feel like they should start paying me for promoting this product as much as I do) and use it to calibrate your monitors to your room. I did that in my studio after treating it and it COMPLETELY changed the sound. I completely and totally trust every mix I do now. You can use the trial for 30 days.

Also, do you have a carpet in your room? Having no carpets sucks.

Thank you guys for the input. I will watch a bunch of these DIY videos until I get an idea o  how to build it the best way. I don't wanna go super OCD on this, a relatively balanced and dry sound is good enough

No, I don't have a carpet right now. I like how the bare ground looks, but I might change that

  On 11/9/2019 at 2:50 PM, darreichungsform said:

Thank you guys for the input. I will watch a bunch of these DIY videos until I get an idea o  how to build it the best way. I don't wanna go super OCD on this, a relatively balanced and dry sound is good enough

No, I don't have a carpet right now. I like how the bare ground looks, but I might change that

And give Sonarworks a try. After treating my studio I had a huge dip around 100hz. After using Sonarworks Reference it balanced everything out.

I'm jotting this down (literally)

If you want to do something quick & easy, hang heavy curtains on the flat parts of your walls. That + a plushy carpet/rug will get you pretty far. The ceiling will still  bounce some, but you could throw up a couple soft panels, if it’s still bugging you. 

  On 11/9/2019 at 6:22 PM, J3FF3R00 said:

If you want to do something quick & easy, hang heavy curtains on the flat parts of your walls. That + a plushy carpet/rug will get you pretty far. The ceiling will still  bounce some, but you could throw up a couple soft panels, if it’s still bugging you. 

Yeah, some molton curtains or something like this. .

But again, you might end up overtreating your room which is just as bad. You might end up losing all your low end.

I've just managed to get a load of absorbers from work that we're not using anymore.  Nice and light and can tape to the walls easily but I wanna cover them with something so they look a bit nicer.  Was thinking just like a 1mm felt or something?  Is there something I should be looking out for or is there something better?  It is an aesthetic thing but I also don't wanna use something that's just gonna fuck with the effect.  I do however have a fucking shocking lack of knowledge when it comes to acoustics.  Any suggestions?

I wouldn't worry too much about felt changing the effect of the absorbers. If you simply want to the change the color of the absorbers you should buy some bed linen that's in the color you want and bob's your uncle.

  On 1/20/2020 at 2:44 PM, Squee said:

I wouldn't worry too much about felt changing the effect of the absorbers. If you simply want to the change the color of the absorbers you should buy some bed linen that's in the color you want and bob's your uncle.

ooooh that's not a bad shout at all, hadn't considered that.  Will look into it.  Cheers.

  On 1/20/2020 at 3:32 PM, b born droid said:

ooooh that's not a bad shout at all, hadn't considered that.  Will look into it.  Cheers.

Make sure it's the stretchy kind, otherwise you'll end up with annoying folds that you can tame.

Never forget - https://forum.watmm.com/topic/62408-2d-qrd-diffuser-make/