Acoustic Treatment, How it helps!

            Having awesome equipment, knowledge of what microphones work best for different applications, having all the plug-ins your heart desires and mixing until your finally happy with a mix is just half the battle for Audio Engineers.

           That other half is working in an acoustically balanced environment. If you’re not working in an environment where frequencies are accurately represented, you might as well throw away all those hours you spent perfectly tweaking that kick drum in that track. It is very crucial for engineers to familiarize themselves with the environment they are working in and acoustically treat that environment so when they take their mix outside of that environment it still sounds as great as it did when they were mixing it.

A great way to effectively accomplish this task is simply treating your room. A large problem about untreated home studios is that normally they are in perfectly square or rectangular rooms, which allow the room to have standing waves. Standing waves can highly impact how you mix because they are waves that have peaks and nodes in the same spot in your room, this means that they can normally either sound much louder or much quieter than they would anywhere else. If you have a standing wave of 100Hz in your room and it makes that frequency sound much louder than it really is you will drastically turn down your 100Hz in your EQ and when you go to listen to your mix in your car or any other sound system you will find out that it sounds thin and your lacking that bottom end that you swore you heard too much of in your studio. As I stated earlier it is crucial for Audio Engineers to have mixes and tracks that translate from room to room and medium to medium. If you were to play any popular song today on anything you would find out that it pretty much sounds the same anywhere you play it, the same parts and details of that song stand out no matter where you listen to it. In any studio no matter how big or how small it is very important that you have a room that will accurately reflect the what your mix will sound like outside of your studio, acoustic treating is your answer to that especially if you can’t tear apart your walls to insulate them from the inside, build new walls with angles, etc.

To acoustically treat your room is probably less expensive and much easier than you think! You do not need to be an Acoustician to find out how to properly treat your room, in fact, there are several sources online such as Auralex’s Personalized Room Analysis, which is a free service they provide! All you need to know is how to measure your room, materials your room is made of, and how to essentially draw a little “blueprint” of your rooms layout and Auralex will do the rest of the work for you. Once they get back to you they give you a list of items they suggest you purchase but it is still your decision. I have a room that was approximately 11x12 ft and had 8 ft ceilings, I was able to acoustically treat my room with foam for under $400, keep in mind you are not limited to using any specific companies products, look around and do research for foam companies.

            Having that acoustically balanced room is a crucial part of having mixes translate properly this also goes hand in hand with your choice of monitors. I was able to completely treat my room for less than $400 by doing it all myself and that was a pretty big room, email me at rmesquita92@gmail.com I would love to hear about how you treated your room or help you out with treating yours! Happy mixing and recording everyone!