One mission-critical aspect of a home music studio involves giving it a much-needed acoustic treatment. It’s a process that lets you trust your ears regarding everything you hear inside the studio. Untreated rooms will change the sounds produced by the speakers in various ways. As a result, you’ll make misinformed decisions regarding mixing and mastering the tunes. The outcome won’t translate appropriately on other playback systems, even if they sound perfect to you.
This topic will highlight some of the most common acoustic issues people encounter.
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Comb filtering
When it comes to acoustic treatment, the first significant issue worth mentioning is called comb filtering. If a direct sound coming from a source merges with its reflection, it results in what sound mixing experts describe as comb filtering. You’ll recognize it by the notches visible on the frequency response of the resulting sound. The location of these notches in the frequency spectrum depends on the delay time between the direct sound and reflected sound.
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Flutter echo
Another problem you can fix with the appropriate acoustic treatment of your studio is called flutter echo. It occurs when a sound bounces back and forth between parallel walls not treated acoustically. As long as the time between the reflections is large enough, your ears will perceive them as echoes instead of the sound diffusing throughout the room. The effect gets bolstered by the regularity of the echoes. As a result, it’ll be audible to the human ear.
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Nodes, anti-nodes, waves, and room modes
The level of sound pressure in a room will differ at various locations, which acoustic treatment can fix. It’ll also vary in terms of frequency. It happens because of the way your speakers produce sound, which gets reflected off the boundary surfaces like floors, walls, the ceiling, and even the desk. The problem is that in specific areas in the room, the sounds will be potentially more resonant with certain frequency ranges than others. These resonances are room modes. Standing waves, room modes, nodes, and anti-nodes are the primary culprits. They’re responsible for the issues you experience in setting the low-end level appropriately.
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Decay time
If you go to a gymnasium, the sounds there are “lively.” You notice a clear “tail” of the sounds audible, and this “tail” deprecates over time. Now, compare the situation with someone sitting inside a car with the windows rolled up and shouting. The sound created will be “dead” by nature with a negligible decay time. You have to strike a balance between a “live” and “dead’ room while remaining subjective about doing it. The former will let the sound created by the speakers interact with them to a specific extent before decaying, but the latter will absorb most of the sound almost instantly.
Conclusive statements
Well, there you have it – some of the most common problems you’ll experience at the studio set up in your house. Fortunately, treating the studio area acoustically is the only solution you need. So, get in touch with any soundproofing companies working around your vicinity and ask them how they can help you. Various types of soundproofing systems are available these days at affordable prices. Installing them will also be relatively straightforward.
