Want to soundproof bedroom studio - Is acoustic foam going to work well?

J

justgettingstarted

New member
Hey everybody,
So I've been producing for about 7 months now and I bought a bunch of new gear and I plan on making my bedroom into a studio when I move out in a month or so. I'm just trying to accurately hear everything and to be completely honest, I still don't know jack **** about mixing but I'd rather hear things correctly from the beginning and improve from there. Anyways, I've seen acoustic foam online (the panels that come in different colors) and I was wondering:
-What exactly will they accomplish?
-I've heard mixed opinions about foam
-What are bass traps and should I get some?
-The room is rectangular, what is the best way to placethem?

Thanks in advance guys, this forum is awesome!
 
Foam will dampen the mid & high freqs a bit, but in general it won't do much - the low end is what causes the most problems in any room, and for that, foam is practically useless. That's what bass traps are for. Basically there's no such thing as too many bass traps.

Someone else can probably fill in on the placement.
 
Thanks a lot for the responses man, I really appreciate it. So I'll look into bass traps and get going with those but could the foam be detrimental or is the worst case scenario that it just doesn't do anything? I'm going to be living with 4 other people so will it help in reducing the amount that they can hear my music?
 
so foam is treatment, it will alter the acoustic response of the room, hopefully for the better. Soundproofing requires structure to be built. Nothing you do with foam will reduce structure borne noise/sound.

Without dimensions of the room, it is hard to advise you where to place your side wall foam.

However some basic ideas are easy to come by
  1. orient your desk so that it is facing one of the two short walls
  2. speakers should be equi-distant apart and from each ear
  3. as a result of this you can take straight line from the center of the speaker and mark the centre point of where the signal will hit the opposite side wall: this is where you would put your first foam panels to deal with first reflections behind you
  4. you can do the same thing and draw a line in the reverse direction to find where to put your panels on the side walls or front wall to catch the reverse first reflections
  5. bass traps should go intothe front corners definitely and possibly into the rear corners as well
  6. further acoustic panels along the rear wall should deal with later reflections
  7. you may need to consider flying some panels in from overhead

see this for more info

John L Sayers recording manual

read everything on the right hand side
as you go into each topic, make sure that you click on each of the tabs at the top to access all information in that sub-topic
 
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