Sound control

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

I hear you on that - your main room sounds a lot like our entire space :wink:

Hanging sound-absorbing stuff from the ceiling can help a little, but not if your room is a sound-reflecting box. Covering up some of the flat, reflective surfaces helps a LOT more.

Soft furniture (couches & arm chairs), a nice area rug or two, even hanging some framed canvas art (not behind glass or plexi) makes a huge difference.

Sound absorbing panels get expensive quickly - but they can be worth it IF some of the simple, practical solutions don’t improve the echo. This place has some of the best priced options I’ve seen that also look really nice!

Good luck, let us know what you end up using and what works for you!

···

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Gretchen Bilbro [email protected] wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

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Hi all. One very cheap solution I’ve always liked is Homasote. It’s available at any Home Depot. Maybe $25 per 4x8. They’ll even make a cut or two to size down for you. It’s made of recycled paper (eco friendly!) and can be used as a tack board. Wrap it with fabric (staple it on the back side) for some color or just paint it. Then just nail it to the wall. Small tip: these panels often warp so you’ll want to put use more nails all around than fewer.

···

The bigger the panels the more effective to help reduce “echo”.

In fact, you can even use these in lieu of drywall, or maybe double up Homasote with drywall. Now the wall be a “performance” wall because it has another purpose.

As for the sound balls, NextSpace Berkeley made their own out of yarn. Very labor intensive. Maybe 12-15" in diameter. You’ll have to ask them how effective they have been.

Jerome, architect

www.BLANKSPACES.com

On Sep 24, 2015, at 8:18 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I hear you on that - your main room sounds a lot like our entire space :wink:

Hanging sound-absorbing stuff from the ceiling can help a little, but not if your room is a sound-reflecting box. Covering up some of the flat, reflective surfaces helps a LOT more.

Soft furniture (couches & arm chairs), a nice area rug or two, even hanging some framed canvas art (not behind glass or plexi) makes a huge difference.

Sound absorbing panels get expensive quickly - but they can be worth it IF some of the simple, practical solutions don’t improve the echo. This place has some of the best priced options I’ve seen that also look really nice!

Good luck, let us know what you end up using and what works for you!


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Gretchen Bilbro [email protected] wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Oh +1 for Homasote. We had an entire temporary wall made out of it and had a huuuuuuge mural painted on it. We’ve since repurposed some of the mural panels in an area set up for phone calls and it makes a big difference.

The only downside to it is that it does “shed” quite a bit, even after being painted on. That dust got on peoples’ desks, and that wasn’t so cool.

-Alex

···

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Jerome Chang [email protected] wrote:

Hi all. One very cheap solution I’ve always liked is Homasote. It’s available at any Home Depot. Maybe $25 per 4x8. They’ll even make a cut or two to size down for you. It’s made of recycled paper (eco friendly!) and can be used as a tack board. Wrap it with fabric (staple it on the back side) for some color or just paint it. Then just nail it to the wall. Small tip: these panels often warp so you’ll want to put use more nails all around than fewer.

The bigger the panels the more effective to help reduce “echo”.

In fact, you can even use these in lieu of drywall, or maybe double up Homasote with drywall. Now the wall be a “performance” wall because it has another purpose.

As for the sound balls, NextSpace Berkeley made their own out of yarn. Very labor intensive. Maybe 12-15" in diameter. You’ll have to ask them how effective they have been.

Jerome, architect

www.BLANKSPACES.com

On Sep 24, 2015, at 8:18 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I hear you on that - your main room sounds a lot like our entire space :wink:

Hanging sound-absorbing stuff from the ceiling can help a little, but not if your room is a sound-reflecting box. Covering up some of the flat, reflective surfaces helps a LOT more.

Soft furniture (couches & arm chairs), a nice area rug or two, even hanging some framed canvas art (not behind glass or plexi) makes a huge difference.

Sound absorbing panels get expensive quickly - but they can be worth it IF some of the simple, practical solutions don’t improve the echo. This place has some of the best priced options I’ve seen that also look really nice!

Good luck, let us know what you end up using and what works for you!

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Gretchen Bilbro [email protected] wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Thanks for the tip on Homasote and the shedding - very good to know!

Any one have tips on phone booth construction?

···

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:34:55 AM UTC-7, Alex Hillman wrote:

Oh +1 for Homasote. We had an entire temporary wall made out of it and had a huuuuuuge mural painted on it. We’ve since repurposed some of the mural panels in an area set up for phone calls and it makes a big difference.

The only downside to it is that it does “shed” quite a bit, even after being painted on. That dust got on peoples’ desks, and that wasn’t so cool.

-Alex


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Jerome Chang [email protected] wrote:

Hi all. One very cheap solution I’ve always liked is Homasote. It’s available at any Home Depot. Maybe $25 per 4x8. They’ll even make a cut or two to size down for you. It’s made of recycled paper (eco friendly!) and can be used as a tack board. Wrap it with fabric (staple it on the back side) for some color or just paint it. Then just nail it to the wall. Small tip: these panels often warp so you’ll want to put use more nails all around than fewer.

The bigger the panels the more effective to help reduce “echo”.

In fact, you can even use these in lieu of drywall, or maybe double up Homasote with drywall. Now the wall be a “performance” wall because it has another purpose.

As for the sound balls, NextSpace Berkeley made their own out of yarn. Very labor intensive. Maybe 12-15" in diameter. You’ll have to ask them how effective they have been.

Jerome, architect

www.BLANKSPACES.com

On Sep 24, 2015, at 8:18 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I hear you on that - your main room sounds a lot like our entire space :wink:

Hanging sound-absorbing stuff from the ceiling can help a little, but not if your room is a sound-reflecting box. Covering up some of the flat, reflective surfaces helps a LOT more.

Soft furniture (couches & arm chairs), a nice area rug or two, even hanging some framed canvas art (not behind glass or plexi) makes a huge difference.

Sound absorbing panels get expensive quickly - but they can be worth it IF some of the simple, practical solutions don’t improve the echo. This place has some of the best priced options I’ve seen that also look really nice!

Good luck, let us know what you end up using and what works for you!


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Gretchen Bilbro [email protected] wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Search this forum for phone booth plans, I posted our designs as a PDF. :slight_smile:

-Alex

···

On Monday, September 28, 2015, Alessia [email protected] wrote:

Thanks for the tip on Homasote and the shedding - very good to know!

Any one have tips on phone booth construction?

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:34:55 AM UTC-7, Alex Hillman wrote:

Oh +1 for Homasote. We had an entire temporary wall made out of it and had a huuuuuuge mural painted on it. We’ve since repurposed some of the mural panels in an area set up for phone calls and it makes a big difference.

The only downside to it is that it does “shed” quite a bit, even after being painted on. That dust got on peoples’ desks, and that wasn’t so cool.

-Alex


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Jerome Chang [email protected] wrote:

Hi all. One very cheap solution I’ve always liked is Homasote. It’s available at any Home Depot. Maybe $25 per 4x8. They’ll even make a cut or two to size down for you. It’s made of recycled paper (eco friendly!) and can be used as a tack board. Wrap it with fabric (staple it on the back side) for some color or just paint it. Then just nail it to the wall. Small tip: these panels often warp so you’ll want to put use more nails all around than fewer.

The bigger the panels the more effective to help reduce “echo”.

In fact, you can even use these in lieu of drywall, or maybe double up Homasote with drywall. Now the wall be a “performance” wall because it has another purpose.

As for the sound balls, NextSpace Berkeley made their own out of yarn. Very labor intensive. Maybe 12-15" in diameter. You’ll have to ask them how effective they have been.

Jerome, architect

www.BLANKSPACES.com

On Sep 24, 2015, at 8:18 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I hear you on that - your main room sounds a lot like our entire space :wink:

Hanging sound-absorbing stuff from the ceiling can help a little, but not if your room is a sound-reflecting box. Covering up some of the flat, reflective surfaces helps a LOT more.

Soft furniture (couches & arm chairs), a nice area rug or two, even hanging some framed canvas art (not behind glass or plexi) makes a huge difference.

Sound absorbing panels get expensive quickly - but they can be worth it IF some of the simple, practical solutions don’t improve the echo. This place has some of the best priced options I’ve seen that also look really nice!

Good luck, let us know what you end up using and what works for you!


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Gretchen Bilbro [email protected] wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

Sound reflection is the hardest…I have a minor master’s degree in acoustics after setting up our shared rehearsal space: Cohere Bandwidth. Our use is for rock bands so the construction of our space is super specific and not at all helpful to what you need. However, these little guys come in fun colors and are super affordable. About $31 per 3’x4’ worth of tiles. http://www.amazon.com/2x12x12-CHARCOAL-Acoustic-Soundproofing-Studio/dp/B00ATPD9T0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1443557641&sr=8-4&keywords=acoustic+foam+panels

You’d be aiming for about 30% coverage total over all your walls/floors/ceilings. Giant area rugs are spectacular. Whatever you do–don’t paint acoustic sound panels. You destroy their effectiveness. Re: the shedding that Alex experienced, you’ll get that from “glass wool” or fiberglass panels and that stuff’s not fun to clean up and it can make you itchy.

I’d also check on a spray-on solution for your ceiling http://www.sonaspray.com/ this product would completely mitigate any sound reflection off your ceiling.

Angel

···

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:59:02 AM UTC-6, Gretchen Bilbro wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Our main room is 2,000 sf with concrete floors, lots of windows, and 14’ ceilings. We have some acoustic “clouds” hanging from the ceiling, but it there were lots of echos when we started. Carpets, furniture, and bodies help.
The big problem we had was that it was too quiet and the first phone call or conversation of the day would fill the whole space. Once there were 2-3 conversations going it would be fine, but we couldn’t ensure that and prospective tenants couldn’t tell if they’d be comfortable making phone calls. We eventually bought a good white noise system: https://www.speechprivacysystems.com/. It cost about $2,000 and took 4 hours to install. It was hard to justify the expense, but it was totally worth it. People need to feel comfortable to make phone calls and talk to each other or it just becomes a library environment. We took a secondary smaller space (1,500 sf) that was carpeted and made that into a “quiet zone”.

We have some beautiful 60-year old pressed tin ceilings and almost 80 yr old wood floors. We love them, but our space was basically an echo chamber when we moved in.

  • Angel’s comments about area rugs and soft furniture and some canvas art on the walls is right on.
  • We’ve used Homasote for a couple of bulletin boards, too. We painted it and have not had much chipping, but we only cut and spread out 2 4x8 slabs, so we might not have had enough to notice the chipping yet.
  • The links people provided to the acoustic foam are helpful. I avoided them for awhile because I could not find them that cheap. Instead I used some carpet tiles…
  • Carpet tiles: Cheap! We used them for our phone rooms to cover drywall. A great trick that our carpenter discovered is to use a staple gun around the perimeter of each tile to staple to the drywall. Ignorant of such things, I had originally thought that we would have to use some noxious chemical to attach them to the drywall. We left the corners exposed to add acoustic foam when we found some on the cheap, but the sound improved so much that we have never done it.
···

On Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 4:20:53 PM UTC-4, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

Sound reflection is the hardest…I have a minor master’s degree in acoustics after setting up our shared rehearsal space: Cohere Bandwidth. Our use is for rock bands so the construction of our space is super specific and not at all helpful to what you need. However, these little guys come in fun colors and are super affordable. About $31 per 3’x4’ worth of tiles. http://www.amazon.com/2x12x12-CHARCOAL-Acoustic-Soundproofing-Studio/dp/B00ATPD9T0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1443557641&sr=8-4&keywords=acoustic+foam+panels

You’d be aiming for about 30% coverage total over all your walls/floors/ceilings. Giant area rugs are spectacular. Whatever you do–don’t paint acoustic sound panels. You destroy their effectiveness. Re: the shedding that Alex experienced, you’ll get that from “glass wool” or fiberglass panels and that stuff’s not fun to clean up and it can make you itchy.

I’d also check on a spray-on solution for your ceiling http://www.sonaspray.com/ this product would completely mitigate any sound reflection off your ceiling.

Angel

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:59:02 AM UTC-6, Gretchen Bilbro wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

Hi Gretchen.

I’ve got a guy up here in Nashville who makes relatively cheap sound paneling. He did some panels for us, and they worked quite well to muffle sound. Holler if you want a hookup.

···

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 9:59:02 AM UTC-5, Gretchen Bilbro wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

We want to add a podcast / recording room to our basement. Ideas welcome. we plan to drywall 3 walls leave one wall solid basement concrete. Then add carpet to the floor. We have an open ceiling and wonder what to do about that. it’s all wood above us and wood joists. Do we panel that?

I know directional (cardioid) microphones will help alot…but without going crazy…what can anyone suggest overall?

Thank you

···

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 9:59:02 AM UTC-5, Gretchen Bilbro wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?

I shared a bunch of specific equipment recommendations in this previous discussion thread. The microphones listed there make it so that unless your room is EXTREMELY echo-y, they sound great. These shows have are all recorded on this gear to get a sense of what they sound like:

**DIY environment recommendations: **

  • Carpet or carpet tiles on the floor are a definite must. That concrete wall is going to be pretty reflective too, so if you can’t cover it entirely I’d look at options to cover it with another rug or fabric or even homosote, which is pretty cheap and can have fabric stretched over it to look nice.

  • For the ceiling, this is a rare case where acoustic tiles (aka drop ceiling) does a really nice job. I still hate the way they look but they soak up a lot of echo.

None of this will be soundproof - but you don’t need an iso booth for podcasting. Just a comfortable room that doesn’t echo like crazy.

I’ve also learned that airflow is also pretty important - with 1-2 people talking in a room for 45mins+, it’s going to get hot and stuffy fast. I’ve recorded my shows in a closet (literally) with no fresh air. It’s not fun.

Overall recommendation: based on my experiences, I’d worry less about acoustic perfection for podcasts and making sure the space comfortable (including ariflow, lighting, etc) especially when those microphones I linked to will take care of 90% of the challenges in almost any space.

-Alex

···

The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

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At Your Desk, I built some custom acoustic panels that have worked really well…

As you can see we have an old pressed tin roof, so 4 discrete hanging points were the best way to minimise the impact to the building fabric.

Secondly, the panels were very cheap for us to build, consisting of light steel wall studs (used in commercial office plasterboard walls, called Rondo Track here in Australia) plastic coreflute backing, an eggshell patterned sheet of acoustic foam, some braided wire and some hooks on the panels and in the ceiling.

Finally, the panels gave us the opportunity to mount additional up lighting on them to highlight the pressed tin roof, and visually people look up and say “oh those acoustic panels work well”, regardless of the actual impact, they believe it to be the case.

Carl

Your Desk

···

On Friday, September 25, 2015 at 12:59:02 AM UTC+10, Gretchen Bilbro wrote:

We have a main room with a concrete floor and plaster walls with high ceilings. The echo is so bad when you get more than five people in the space. I know I have seen round 3D sound control ball type things that hang from the ceiling in some spaces but am having trouble finding it online. Any help?