who said having a dead room is a bad thing? :)

[Rex Aeterna]

over the weekend i bought some rigid fiberglass. it came about 9'' thick since it was meant for attic insulation and attic insulation is always thicker. i didn't realize how much fiberglass you can actually get for so cheap till i walked into home dept.

i use to have nothing but carpet on my walls and ceiling to help with the rooms echo. it helped but after applying about 6'' thick fiberglass behind my listening chair on the wall where there use to be carpet i noticed how much more dead sounding it gotten. i also have 6'' thick fiberglass on the walls behind my table with my monitor and stuff on and it makes a hug difference. even though my table is wood(filipino mahogany to be exact) it sounds so dead under my table .

i did not make panels like most people think. i took advantage of bed sheet sets....yes you heard me bed sheet sets. only thing i could think of at the time. so what i did was staple the fiberglass first on the walls and then the sheet over the fiberglass on the wall. doesn't look too bad and since the sheets you can easily breath through them it'll offer maximum absorption.

i didn't apply it everywhere. i still have 2'' thick Persian carpet on my floor and ceiling. my speakers are on 2 cinderblocks as stands also which helps kill the cabs own vibrations.

for bass traps,since i have only 2 corners in my small area(not very big room. like 10x10 or something) i took the left over roll of fiberglass...i mean i had tons still left over, and wrapped in a bed sheet and threw it in the corner behind the speaker lol. works wonders.

my room obviously don't sound 100% dead,dead, but soon as you walk in my area you hear your voice just get vacuumed out and can't even hear your own lower registry of your voice. also can hear ''silence'' now which is very nice cause i can now relax in my room with no disturbance.

sound. speakers sound amazing now and the 360 degree sound stage and imaging is lot more fluid and focused. micro-detail extraction is very much improved as well. the bloated-ness in the corners completely gone.

i know people will probably not like my room and insist to never make your room completely dead,but so far i really like the sound of ''silence''. but like i said my room is not dead,dead like a professional anechoic chamber.

i had no measuring equipment so i can't say on technical terms how dead it is. i always use my ears as guidance on distinguishing details on what i hear and want. always been like that since i started playing instruments when i was little using my ears to do all the tuning. not equipment.my area is not the prettiest in the world(or at all) but the sound is what matters to me most and so far i like what i'm hearing.

 

[Spectrum77]

Glad that worked out for you.
Rolls of f/glass really are effective bass absorbers when placed in corners. Any thoughts on experimenting with some hard (flat) surfaces and/or diffusers now that you know that the room can sound 'dead'? Perhaps unnecessary in a 10 X 10 room?

 

[RevMen]

I'm a big fan of very dead rooms. I like the feeling in them and I like that the speakers have total control of the stereo image.

i use to have nothing but carpet on my walls and ceiling to help with the rooms echo. it helped but after applying about 6'' thick fiberglass behind my listening chair on the wall where there use to be carpet i noticed how much more dead sounding it gotten.

You've debunked the myth of putting carpet on the walls. I don't know when this happened, but sometime in the past people started telling each other to put carpet on their walls for both sound isolation and reflection absorption. It's a poor choice for both of those tasks, yet still that advice continues to circulate.

doesn't look too bad and since the sheets you can easily breath through them it'll offer maximum absorption.

If they let air through unimpeded, they'll let sound through. As long as your sheets do that, there's no reason (acoustically) not to use them.

also can hear ''silence'' now which is very nice cause i can now relax in my room with no disturbance.

I love the nearly anechoic environment. But, like you say, it's not for everyone.

always been like that since i started playing instruments when i was little using my ears to do all the tuning.

Have you tried playing any instruments in your room? If you play something that has strong interaction with walls, like a violin, guitar, or wind instrument, you'll probably find it very frustrating to play in an echo-free environment. I'm a trumpet player, and when I play in a room like that everything that comes out of the horn seems weak and faint.

 

[Rex Aeterna]

i haven't tried playing yet in my room since i mostly use headphones and record off the computer. will try later on but i know what your probably saying.

i found carpet not so bad, but i never would recommend for sound-proofing. i never had intentions for sound proofing. just cleaning up the image and soundstage a bit and ridding of the major echo from my room. i guess depends on thickness of carpet cause mine did pretty well in some areas but not nearly as effective as the results as the rigid fiberglass i used.

 

[Rex Aeterna]

your right. i brought my guitar up and it sounded weird. no where for the sound to go and just gets vacuumed up. i like using nylon strings too. i won't be playing anything in here. just strict music listening and relaxing. it'll help also to determine my speakers complete soundstage and imaging capabilities and how well my amps perform as well being in a almost dead room.