New Studio: "Do I need a carpet?" - AcousticsInsider.com
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- čas přidán 21. 07. 2024
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Does your room have a carpeted floor? Or are you thinking about putting down a carpet?
Because you often read that that’s one of the first things you should do if you’re just getting started with treating your room. And it does reduce the reverb in the room a little after all.
But does it actually help in the grand scheme of things?
And how does it affect the floor reflection or floor bounce?
In this video I want to show you what a carpet does to the acoustics in your room, and why it’s not really a good idea if you actually want to take treating your room seriously to get a better sound from your speakers.
I’ll also show you what to do if you’re stuck with a carpeted floor in the room that you have available.
Related blog post on Acoustics Insider:
www.acousticsinsider.com/blog...
Resources in this video:
ppvmedien.de/studio-akustik-b...
mehlau.net/audio/floorbounce/
Acoustics Insider - Home studio acoustic treatment techniques for audio professionals, but without all the voodoo.
www.acousticsinsider.com/
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Jesco Lohan - Mixing Engineer
jescolohan.com/
Was just about to shop for carpet! You are reading my mind.
literally was installing my new rug when this video dropped...lol
In theory i agree. But actually putting a carpet on my current bedroom studio, saved me from a massive amount of flatter echo. I have tiles on the floor and cement ceiling at 2.7 meters. When i was clapping i was hearing a "doink" sound with around five obvious fast repeats. I had a thick carpet that i put and now it is almost gone. I still have the resonance from the roof to floor at around 120hz ( as i saw in sonarworks, around 6-8 db) but the decay of that echo has reduced significantly. I can't live without one in that room. Every instrument i play sounded awful without one, from voice to guitar and percussions, also i can mix easier. Next step for me is a cloud panel to reduce that floor to ceiling mode. Having windows and a balcony glass door on two sides and one side with a closet/ wall and being totally asymmetric, my room has almost no problems in low frequencies except that one ( it has awful isolation also and no space to put treatment)
This video was super helpful Jesco, I'd forgotten how to measure the right distances in a small room. Makes perfect sense and I now know where to go to calculate these things. Wow.
I use the carpet to stop the footstep noise of singers during recording vocals :P
I'm loving these videos, super glad I found your channel!
Great channel Yesco!
I'm "absorbing" the complete guide bass traps & trapping" cheat sheet. Thank you for putting that together :-)
On carpets: You put it well. Carpets and rugs make rooms feel more comfortable acousicaly. Don't they have more effect for audiophile listening rooms where the listener is further away from the speakers?
Aren't high frequency reflections bad in that situation for imaging? One of my listening rooms has a concrete floor so there's no way I could live with that !
I've been in so many American homes with fake hardwood floors that sound like echo Chambers!
My British sensibility is to stick with thick carpets and a nice warm room sound.
Also: Mixing studio desks are usually a near field listening setup...
Thanks again;-)
Drivers located more than 100cm from the floor are twitters but the frequency range of twitters is way higher than 130kHz. Reflection of sound not only creates cancellation of frequency but also interferes direct sound from the drivers. Those interference creates distortion. Louder the sound, higher the distortion. If carpet doesn’t help, acoustic panel is useless too because they also only absorb high frequencies. However, I see you have few of them installed.
This is very well explained, thank you
Great insight and thanks, I am going to put an acoustic absorptive pit at the first point of reflection in the floor, I have the opportunity so will see if this is the solution to this issue.
Another great video. Thanks, Jesco!
Just found your channel. Great stuff! I recently moved to a new place, not ideally shaped.. but with some treatment I think it will work for the unprofessional stuff I do. Talking about reflection, how about the desk reflection in most home studios?
Thanks a lot. You got some serious knowledge, I was lucky to bump on to one of your videos and immediately subscribed.
same here :)
Finally! A proper scientific explanation I can actually understand. Thanks 😊
Thanks Jesko! Great video
Thanks again for another interesting video. I like a carpet just because it means that every part of the ceiling has a less-reflective surface directly opposite it and thus is does a lot to dampen flutter echo. Also, you can swipe biscuit crumbs off your desk, rub the floor with your foot and they just disappear..!
I think this is an important point! While a carpet certainly won't work as an effective absorber, it should be more than enough to remove flutter echo, and everyone that has ever dealt with flutter echo knows how detrimental that can be to your listening environment.
I had it in the early days of my Home Theater...I literally couldn't eat Nachos down there, because the cracking sound they make when you bite into them triggered a flutter echo between floor and ceiling...😬
@@rolandrohde So, let me guess... they were _nacho_ snack of choice..?
@@HandbrakeBiscuit
I see what you did there...
But no...I like Nachos, so I killed the Flutter Echo...😉
Hi. Great content! Helps me a lot! If you will teach not only audio professionals but just stereo home listeners you might help more people.
Jesco, excellent information and application of that information and also very well presented.👍
I have a square room ~ 23x25 ft and have a glass panelled stair leading to this room. Obviously it’s a very “live” room and arguably too live, would you say the carpet has any benefits in this application?
Excelent video, thaks for the content!
Good to know. I was wondering about this. Money and anxiety saved. Thank you!
Great content like always!
I have to point out though that a carpet in a music studio also has another value when talking about acoustics and thats the reduced impact sound between for instance a shoe against a hard floor or a cable falling into the hard floor.
And also, subjectively: a carpet could of course also have an impact in the vibe and like with lots of decisions, you´ve got lots of compromises. I choose to have a couple of small carpets in my home studio because I want to reduce these impact sounds mentioned above and make the studio feel like a cozy living room as well. Tonal balance is still sufficiently intact thanks to well thought out acoustic treatment overall.
I've put two high pole carpets on the floor of my rather large living room and succesfully dampened the reverberation in those places. Othere than curtains for the windows or carpets, I never put special room treatment stuff on my walls. Bass in this room is not a problem. However, it is a problem in my smaller room (studio) but only when a recording keeps the sub-bass completely intact, which is rare, in my experience. Still, I'm thinking of placing some burlap sacks filled with rockwool in the corners of that room.
Always a pleasure 😉
I have "real" wood floors in my living room, which is the room I have my Klipsch 7.1 surround sound audio system. I use large rugs on the floor covering most of the floor and for my sub, I placed woodstove bricks under the legs of the sub to raise the sub off the floor a couple of inches. And I have a bathroom towel covered over the bricks.
Hi Jesco. Great Channel - I watch Acoustiv Insider all the time. Even then: What would you recommend in a appartement with way too much reflexions 'cause of hard, parallel walls, floor and cieling? All spoken words and noice from living is echo-ing (flatter echo). I hope you can help me out beside the expert knowledge for home studios. Best wishes from Bern, Michael
Hi Jesko! Great but compare it with Wood floor? When you say midrange What is your definition of that?
Excellent video however for voice over surely carpet will help with echo? My studio has ceramic tile floors and big windows on one side
It depends on 1's room. My room is 12 m. x 4 m. and all brick/cement mortar walls and a 5 mm pe foam over metal sheet somewhat enclosed (tropics). I need a few rugs and absorbers. A sofa or two will help two. Curtains two (I have one wall with blocks of blocks with holes to take the reflections out, acting like "absorbers" to nowhere (outside).
thanks for always professional information , i just want to ask u please that i have on my left wall(Length 418 cm /height 305 cm ) a stand alone big wood closet (length 240 cm /height 260 cm) so should i treat the closet as a wall and does it do any benefits for my room treatment or it's better to get rid of it ?
thank you.
Good point but one point that i notice is not addresed is the following (please let me know if you agree).
Only in case with laminated floor that can be resonating in some low frequencies, by puting a carpet we increases the mass of the laminated floor and thus making it harder to respond to low frequencies resonances, right??
Thank you and happy new year 🎆😉
I don't think many people really expect a rug or piece of carpet to work as a grear basstrap. But it can still be part of the total treatment, an addition to reducing some high frequency comb filtering in a room with lots of hard solid surfaces (walls, ceiling, floor) don't you think? Isn't it a cheap and easy detail to help make a echoy room a bit drier? Why wouldn't you want to reduce the first reflections of higher frequencies? It's quite impracticle to put a thick porous absorber frame on an i.e. tiled floor in front of your feat..
Nice Video!!🙏
yesterday my ikea stoense rug said to me in my dream. if ur home is made of concrete and so there are a lot of reflection in floor. rugs are the best option for money. lol
thanks for this vid! you spell things out very clearly.
how about using a rug under a drum set? and... could you do a vid on how a drum-riser effects the sound?!?!?!
The best thing to do IMO is to put a carpet under the drums, it helps since there is a ton of high end information from the cymbals. Then you can put some maple or other kind of hard reflective wood under the snare to gain some more vibrancy.
Great video thanks a lot.
Would you be able to share your design for those diffusers you have on top of your absorption?
Jesco, what suggestion would you give if someone already has carpet installed and they don't have the option to remove it?
So, what do you use in place of a carpet when you have two electric drum kits, with 2000 watts Alesis speakers putting out a lot of low end volume?
apart from wood floor is there any other solution? can you leave the floor bare and work only with ceiling and wall panels? tnx!!
thanks!
What about the thick padding underneath the carpet? Does that do anything
Doesn't "floor reflection" assume a workplace without a desk? ...which everybody has?
what if put carpet vertically in walls? How absorb coefficient change? Also not all materials are the same, so I make supposition that fat wool carpet doesnt same characteristics as cotton. For me I looking just to break reflections in addition to already installed bass trap in the corners.
registered and confirmed email but did not receive a link to bass traps guide :(
The carpets are useful for my 'live' room.
Thank you!
My studio room is 9meters wide by 5 meters deep and 3.20 meters high, can u please talk about a room like this for a change, everyone is talking about 4x4 dungeon cell appartment rooms and what not. This room sounds AMAZING.... it sounds so good, and once i igured out the modals, I don't really want to lose its magnificent sound... choise to be made is ad another sofa, or add a 2nd subwoofer to get perfect balance....
How about a tile floor? Is tile a good start? We have a house in Spain and I would like to know how best to deal with such a solid / hard floor. Please could you advise? Thanks 👍
Thanks Jesco, great advice, ripping up the bloody carpet in my studio right now.
your carpet is bloody? Do you record black metal bands or something
@@ozzy3ml I was going to say something similar. You beat me to it
In a mix room, why not diffuse as many reflections as possible? I don't understand the point of keeping higher frequency reflections given that during mixing you will (likely) be applying an image of a completely different acoustic space, in which the addition of any reflections in your own space only distort this purpose. Wouldn't the best goal therefore be to eliminate as much reflection as possible, in every frequency range?
Lots of serious and professional studios have carpet floors. No one just uses carpets to tame bass or mid-frequency reflections that's what the 4" or 6" acoustic panels on the walls and ceiling are for. No one uses carpet for bass absorption. The level of high-frequency absorption of carpet is pretty small in the upper range as you just demonstrated. Carpet is super useful for taming HIGH-FREQUENCY reflections. Telling your audience that taming floor reflections from wood (NRC = 0.07) are easy is deceptive as a solid wood floor requires a lot of testing, a lot of taming, and a lot of acoustic treatment on the walls and ceiling. This is exactly why you see a lot of big area rugs on wood floor studios. No one demonizes thick area rugs on wood floor studios, but oh man... talk about a thin area of carpet and it's the devil himself!
So gotta ask is hardwood floors or bare concrete floors be better.?
Is the removal of high frequency reverb undesired when treating a studio intended for mixing? Am I understanding this correctly?
Bookshelves in room corners are helpful?
When the sound comes from a real piano, not speakers, a carpet could help anyway to reduce sound going down, right?
What about for a room with 6.5ft ceilings?
So what kind of floor do i put in?
Carpet with 1cm spacebetween the wall en carpet wil give a better result?
I think reducing high frequency reverberation is great. It keeps you from making dull mixes, when you are trying to keep them from being harsh.
You are not thinking of this correctly. It makes your monitoring situation less harsh but when you take your mix to a different playback system, now the high frequencies that were dull in your room are now a horrible harsh sibilant mess
@@dougleydorite That is not my experience. I like quite dark mixes, and dampening the high frequencies help me not making my mixes TOO dark.
@@kyber2401 that is contrary to what most people have experienced, but I’ve had plenty of things turn out working for me that went against all other internet people’s experience, so I hear you
@@kyber2401 So you want to make mixes you don’t like? I’m not getting it, if your mixes turn out too dark wouldn’t it be better to learn to mix brighter? I’m all for doing what works, but to me it sounds like the kind of “hack” that could easily cause more problems than it solves. Ofc, if you’re churning out killer mixes just keep doing what you’re doing, but for anyone else reading your comment it’s a dangerous route to travel.
@@eugenemartone7023 I think you are making a problem where there is none. All I am saying is carpets arent bad. Disagree if you want.
is carpeting less big of a deal if it's in a very large room?
Very interesting! I have a carpet in my listening room between speakers and listening position but after seeing this video, I just tried to put some polystyrene diffusers at the first reflection points on the floor (I have no ceiling treatment yet). And indeed, those diffusers gave a marked improvement. Having diffusers on the floor is of course impractical, though.
This has made me wonder whether it would make sense to put up some vertical panels of a kind in front of each speaker to catch the sound that would otherwise travel freely to the first-reflection point on the floor?
I have tried this, and it does help. It is of course not very easy to live with.
I think you're better off leaving the carpet and installing a 3" mineral wool acoustic panel over the listening position and speakers. If the sound is not reflected at one point between top and bottom, side to side, or front and back, it can't reverberate.
@@wintersthrall like a normal sofa. Simple solutions are under-rated. Acoustic companies just left this chat ... room!
Hi Jesco! I am planning to put a wooden floor in my studio. Is there any difference between puting a floating or glued wooden floor? I yes which one would you recomend? It is for both - mixing and a live room. Thanks Sebastian.
it will make the diference..
thanx bro
Can we buy the designs of your basstraps/diffusers that you have in your room?
Why would I want to "trust" the reverb of the room? When I mix or master, I don't want the room's "reverb" to affect my decisions?
What if the desk is between you and the monitors. do we use it as the floor in term of measurement. Should it be treated?
Bright Glitch Records unfortunately I’m in a small room where there isn’t an alternative. In saying that most “studios” I see have the work / mixing desk between the speakers and listening position
Which frequencies reflect off half inch drywall and which ones pass through?
I figured out the answer by myself. It is: If we're talking about porous absorption, it doesn't matter. You want as thick as your room allows no matter what. Cuz it's a curve brah.
How it’s a carpet in term of dialogue?
Does it help or it’s not necessary?
High frequency reverb is actually what I would want to eliminate/dampen in a living room for casual listening
Living rooms for listening to music/movie watching is different from music studios for mixing/recording music.
Carpet is used 99% of the time for home cinema's. As the floor requirements are different.
One area that the carpet makes a massive difference is minimizing the wear and tear of my laminate floor from my office chair :D
How CAN you deal with floor reflections, then?
Furniture, rugs but my understanding is with proper treatment on other surfaces you shouldnt really have to worry about it too much
so... is a carpet will help with a serious flutter echo?
As far as noise floor is concerned (background electricity noise) I find it best not to have speaker cables on carpet.
Just in time, I almost bought a great big carpet!
3 feet away from speaker doesn’t apply to most home listeners. Also, my room with hardwood floors only does not sound good. Once I put a rug down, sonics changed for the better. Dramatically. I wonder if there are measurements you’re not considering? Life experience doesn’t quite match up with your calculations.
Interesting.
Is it useful to have a basstrap on the first reflection point on the floor like on the side wall to prevent the comb filtering?
Yes
The best way to make your recordings sound like they were done in a crappy, hourly rental rehearsal space, is to have lots of carpeting.
Nice video! I have a technical question : supposing you are not in a studio... But you are in your living room with a carpet between you and your speakers which are approx 3m far. Does a carpet do something useful in these circumstances?
Just try it with and without. You'll keep the carpet no doubt.
Hello Can you elaborate on the Diffusor you put on top on your Pad on the walls. I`m looking to make some DIY myself using 3/8 Plywood with random Holes from 4' to 1'.
In a rap-battle vs the carpet, I think you'd win @Acoustics Insider. :-)
He’s at a mixing desk, not a movie theatre 😮
You can put a thick pad under carpet
Maybe it's not a great tool for an acoustic treatment..
But it surely prevents from scratches on your wooden floor caused by the chair's wheels 🤪
My other room sounded better with carpet than my current room with just parquet !
If not carpet, what then?
I don't understand this video. Who ever thought carpet absorbed bass? I've never heard that. I can't stand the sound of hard floors unless the rest of the room is dead.
I must be missing something. The calculator gives the frequency of cancellation.
well, the goal is to reduce the reflection of the frequency that will cause cancellation at that reflection-point. So you d need something that absorbs exactly that frequency at that point. I.e. laying a rug there, that does not absorb that frequency at all, does not help at all with that reflection (i.e. is useless for treating the first order reflection that you perceive as problematic in the listening position).
Hello Jesco. Would you like to do a recommendation on paper for 30 USD for my room I’m building?
I had put a carpet in front of the speakers and it killed all mid-high frequencies in my room, result was big bass overpowering anything. Big gains I have had instead with 3 big bass traps on the back wall, one in the center and two at the corners.
This video gives me the impression that when he sits down his voice becomes muffled.
Lets me save you 11 minutes of viewing - "Do I need a carpet?" - No You don't
Thank you. This guy talks wayy too much
Treble without a carpet becomes unbearably fuzzy, echoey, harsh and pronounced, not using a carpet is a disaster for sound
I had a wood floor in my office once.. unbelievablely piercing highs, crazy echos/reflections, almost zero bass. It did seem to make the vocals sound more powerful but highs were waay to emphasized. Adding a huge rug helped a ton but it still never sounded great.
Carpet can have issues with reflected Bass but it's certainly more manageable than a hardwood floor.
Bought Two Carpets From Roses For $40 From Roses Cover Most Of My Floor
I’m sorry, but, measurements, graphs, specs, ratios Etc. Don’t tell it as it is. I utilise subs in my system, which, employ down-firing drivers. Helps distribute the bass more evenly! Place them on carpeted flooring and compared to placing them on hard floooring, they unquestionably under perform.
Forgive my crude unscientific analogy, but, try sitting directly on a carpeted floor and breaking wind. Then remove the carpet, sit directly on what is now a hard floor and break wind again with similar gusto. In repeated trials, my DB meter registered an average of 51DB on the carpeted floor and 57DB on the hard floor! The carpet irrefutably stifles and/or muffles the fart!
If carpets make no significant difference? Why do many ‘hard core’ audiophiles swear that speaker grills can alter the performance of a speaker?
Carpet with a bunch of moving blankets under it.
Most people sit 6-10 feet away from their speakers.
Repair a music rug mat
Ah , I know what’s missing jasco, egg cartons man! Then the floor reflections would be completely removed 1000% .. disclaimer : might be taking the absolute piss
Only if you're an Arabian Knight! 😁