sound attenuation fire blankets?

JoeDotCom

Super Member
place where I work has some extra of this sound attenuation fire blanket stuff. I was thinking of building some panels using it, to hang in my listening room. the room is currently untreated. ( the room is made from wood paneling with a standard drop ceiling and carpeted floor. room is in my basement which has concrete on all 4 sides plus the floor and ceiling are concrete above/below.)

I will post some dimensions and photos of the room in a little bit, but first I want to ask about if this insulation would be helpful in knocking down the bass a bit, and maybe get me started on the road to having a nicely treated listening room.

I'm thinking I may either build some panels for the walls using the stuff, or maybe I should user it above the drop ceiling?

I also have access to some other acoustic tile ( see photos) and also some ceiling tile.

do I have enough stuff to get started treating my room? recommendations?

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These are the other materials I can use.
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Sent (and possibly poorly voice-to-text transcribed) on a mobile device. :)
 
Those fire blankets are mineral wool. For all intents and purposes, it's equal to fiberglass batt insulation in terms of sound absorption. You can use them with fairly good results, but you'll want your panels to be pretty thick. 3" or 4" at least.

Don't mess with the ceiling tiles. Those aren't useful unless there's a significant cavity behind them. And "generic" ones rarely have NRC more than 0.55. The very absorptive ceiling tiles are more expensive and harder to come by.

That stringy stuff looks like Tectum. It's good for use in schools and gymnasiums because it resists damage and it can be painted, but it's not generally used for critical listening. But maybe it'll be useful to you. If you measure the thickness I can look up its absorption values.
 
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You can see by the absorption coefficients that you need to have fairly significant thickness before you start to see good absorption in the 125 Hz band. That'll be even more exaggerated in the 63 Hz band.
 
OK, so here is my official 'listening room specs' post. Honestly, I really dont know what I want. I have good ears but i have never really heard a home stereo that blew me a way that I am trying to emulate or anything. I like how my system sounds so far. I liked how it sounded when i started, and i have enjoyed every improvement I have made in it so far.

So, I want to consider my room. This is my spot in the house. It houses my computer and my stereo, and it also is (very unfortunately) one of the few places I can store gear/toys.

The room is in the basement of a townhouse. I love it because this townhouse has concrete floors/ceilings. I get decent isolation, but unfortunately my wife likes to read in the living room which is directly above my listening room and even with the concrete floor, the floor vents transmit plenty of sound between my space and hers.

But like I said, It is a townhouse, so I never listen at too high of a volume (maybe 80db? on average. I measured once a while ago)

Any way, I want to shift this room from a 'office w/ a stereo' into a 'listening room w/ a computer'. I am hoping for some ideas from the experts here on AK.

My budget is about Zero. I am a good scavenger, so I need to rely on that. And as I buy/sell stuff at goodwill/CL, i can build small amounts of funds to roll into the room/gear.

So my goal is 'improvement' of my listening space. The problem is; I don't have any specific complaints. I do think that bass builds up and booms down there. Sometimes, i can play a bassy song (example: Angle From Massive Attack) and the bass it audible / nice in the room, but really loud / boomy in other parts of the basement.

The only other goal is have is to achieve some 'imaging'. I am not sure if my speakers / setup are really capable, and I plan to keep climbing the hifi ladder, but I do know that i have read here on AK that room treatment matters.

So, here are the dimensions I am working with. (Remember the basement is all concrete; wall to wall and ceiling and floor... but finished w/ (crappy) wood paneling on studs.) My measurements are from panel to panel unless otherwise noted.

7' 7'' concrete ceiling
6' 7'' drop ceiling

Whole Basement
24' 5'' x 35' Panel to panel

Listening space:
11' deep
16' 1'' wide (the last 2' 6'' of the width is a 'whole wall' closet w/o doors)
ceiling matches rest of basement.

Embarrassing but (i think) necessary; here are some photos of my space. I need to clean it, but unfortunately i have little storage space in the house, so this room needs to be a listening room, office and a storage space. I am hoping to balance that better.



Here is my rig. this is the photo I show off when i want to show my rig. It hapily excludes the piles of crap hiding all around my listening room.
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Now I show you the 'real' room, here is a pano from the listening seat in all it's glory.
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Next i did a 180 from the left side of the room. Here you can see the computer desk, speaker storage, and the 'rig'. I should also note that the speaker storage area is also the outside wall of the basement, that corner is where the two concrete walls meet. so the opposite corner (where I am shooting from) is near the middle of the building in general.
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Next I shot from the other corner of the same wall. here you can see my speaker pile, the 'rig' and the 'doorless' closet. All the way in the right you can see the door to the room. Also in this shot, you will notice a dartboard... that is above the listening seat.
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So I feel like i am being 'that guy'... asking a non-specific question, with crappy details, no specific complaint, and limited resources.

I am hoping that there are some things I can do w/ what I have to work with here (my room, and the various types of insulation mentioned in my first post in the thread) to help move me along the road to audio nirvana. (note: the JOURNEY: so far has been pretty nirvana-esc, henc my continued driving.)

What can I do (what would YOU do) if you had my limited resources to make this space more acoustically hifi-friendly?


thanks for reading.

-Joe




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This thread is continued here: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=418411
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