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Backer Blog: Sound Treating a New Studio

Added 2018-11-16 01:08:02 +0000 UTC

Hi! Kole here. I know it's been a while since Backer Blogs have been a thing, but I finished a new project today and I want to share the results (and hopefully share some knowledge too).

I recently moved, from an apartment in Cincinnati to a house closer to where I grew up in north central Ohio. Any change in the space where you record is going to change the sound of your recording. And this move entailed a dreaded change... I moved from a carpeted office to an office with laminate flooring.

With carpet, I could get away with minimal sound treatment. Most of the echoes would be deadened as long as I had some furniture in the room. This isn't the case with hard floors, which do nothing to deaden echoes. So I had to find a good way to treat the room for better sound.

Please note the distinction between sound treating and soundproofing. I used to call this soundproofing before doing a bunch of searches on the topic and getting my terms straight. The goal of soundproofing would be to keep outside sounds out, and inside sounds in. Sound treating is when you do something to make a room sound better when you record in it.

The studio in my new home is the master bedroom, which sits at about 12ft by 13ft with an alcove, two closets with sliding doors, a big door to the hallway, and a small door to a half bath. My goal was to put up just enough sound baffling to reduce "flutter echoes", which result when two untreated surfaces sit parallel to each other. My other requirements were:

The sound treatment needs to hang on the doors and closet doors without damaging them.
I don't want to damage the walls, either.
It should look somewhat good.
I don't want it to cost a lot of money.
I want to avoid putting a rug down, because it's much easier to live in a house with hard floors if you can just run a dust mop over it a few times a week.

Some good baffling would ease up another problem I noticed: That when I played audio loudly (either listening to music, playing a game, or mixing a podcast) the sound would bounce around and get really boomy and distorted in the room. I swear I'm not a crazy audiophile who's spending hundreds of dollars on wooden stereo knobs, it was a problem I noticed.

Here's the solution that I settled on, with photos to show how it works.

Ingredients:

You will also want a utility knife, a level, and a tape measure. You should be able to have the MDF cut at the hardware store.

Here's my rationale for each item.

The acoustic foam is the material we'll use for baffling. It comes pre-cut when you order it. Why pyramid? There's a bunch of copy about what foam is best for what applications, but I like the way pyramid foam looks (reminds me of Bowser's castle somehow). I got a 12 pack because I don't need to cover every square inch of wall, I just need to reduce the amount of flat wall surface.

3M Super 77 is the spray adhesive Foam Factory recommends. I don't know enough about chemistry to recommend another adhesive that won't dissolve the acoustic foam, so I took their recommendation.

MDF is cheap, light weight, and easy to cut. We'll be cutting it into 24 2"-wide strips, gluing a strip to the top and bottom of the backs of the foam panels, and using that as the mounting surface for the Command Strips.

Command Strips are costly, but I want to hang the panels up without damaging the walls, and I want to be able to move the panels at a minimal cost if I decide to rearrange. Nailing or gluing the panels directly to the wall would not be good.

Here's the breakdown of how to get the project done.

1. Open the foam and let it expand. Like an internet mattress, the foam is shipped to you all vacuum-sealed. You'll want to let it expand for 24-48 hours so it's not all weird-shaped when you glue it.

2. Cut your MDF into strips. To hang 12 panels, you want 24 strips that are 23.5" long and 2" wide.

3. Spray the MDF strips with adhesive. I recommend doing this outdoors, or in a well-ventilated area with a tarp down. This stuff stinks, and overspray is a problem. Wear gloves and long sleeves, because this stuff is difficult to get off of your skin.

When you're spraying, try not to spray all the way up to the ends. Leave some un-glued space. You'll see why.

4. Affix the strips to the back of your panel. You'll want to wait about a minute for the adhesive to set before you stick it to the foam. Otherwise it will be too wet. Wait until the spray looks a little white, and feels tacky when you touch it. Line the end of the strip up with one of the sides of the back of the panel, don't try to center it. You'll see why (it reduces the amount of cutting you need to do).

4. Remove any excess length of MDF. You can avoid this by cutting shorter lengths of MDF strips, but if you go too short the panels might flop around.

The foam panels won't be a uniform 24" wide, which leads to some natural overhang. We don't need to get a saw back out to fix this... Just score the board with a utility knife, and break it off. It will be facing the wall, so it won't need to be pretty.

This is why I told you not to glue all the way to the edge (so you wouldn't have to peel foam off of glue to make the cut). And also why I told you not to center the strip (if you did, you might need to cut two edges instead of one).

The goal is to not have any MDF strip peeking out from behind the panel.

5. Attach your Command Strips to the back of the strips, roughly one in each corner. This is easy enough. You don't need to worry too much about placement if you're putting the panel on a flat wall, but if you're putting a panel on a door with molding you might want to make sure the bits of adhesive foam don't precisely line up with a cutaway... just eyeball it.

6. Repeat this many, many times. This process took a while because of all of the gluing and cutting. You want to have all of them done so you can hang the more unsightly panels in hard-to-see places (some of my panels had weird edges, which wasn't a big deal because I could just put them in corners).

7. Hang the panels. The Command Strips adhere quickly, but they have enough give that you can take a couple of tries at placing the panels before the bond forms. I recommend using a measuring tape and level to make sure the panels are put up evenly and aesthetically.

As for placement, look for spots where you have lots of flat, exposed, parallel surfaces. Big stretches of empty drywall are no-nos, and naked hollow doors are no-nos.

Here's my placement, from four angles in my master-bedroom-turned-studio.

The windows aren't a big deal because of the blinds, but the closet doors needed baffling.

This is roughly behind where I sit. The shelves do plenty to dampen sound, but the bathroom door was a bummer.

Here's the door out to the hallway. I put panels up, and also put some facing panels on the bare wall so there wouldn't be corner bounce. I don't know if that's a thing, but I did it anyway.

And here we are back at the desk, but looking into the other corner/alcove. This is the biggest area of blank wall, and I also turn my head slightly toward it while recording, so the baffling there stops reflection. The guitars hanging in the alcove _should_ provide enough irregular surface.

I tested this out by recording some shows today, clapping, shouting, and playing loud music. Generally acting like a maniac. And I think it worked pretty well. I don't think I'll need to get a rug (or at least not a very big one), and I think all I have left to do is get some curtains for my window (more for aesthetic reasons than soundproofing ones).

I hope this has been informative. I know several of you make your own podcasts, and figuring out how to treat any given room can be a real task. I think I've found a cost-effective way to reduce echo and boom, while also not damaging my walls. This might be a good solution for renters, but please check to see if the Command Strips will damage your walls before you commit to this! I accept no liability for your lost security deposits!