Mike Whitla’s Blog

How to Dampen Reverb in a Room

Ok. I’m really lucky to have this problem. My old studio in my last house was a tiny carpeted room that had no noticeable reverb so this was not a problem for me. Now I have moved into this wonderful 1900 built triplex that has a new huge room for my control room. The problem:

Tooo Much Reeeeverrbbb. . . . This is because the walls reflect the sound and it bounces around the room. This gives the room an inherent built in and uncontrollable reverb.
Recording and mixing all have this reverb added automatically to what you are hearing and it makes all recording have this added and all listening becomes biased by it.
You can spend thousands on acoustic tiles or you can follow the instructions here . . .
Here is what you will need:

-Moving blankets (how many depends on the size of room)
-Grommet kit and extra grommets (9 per blanket)
-Leather punching tool (you will need this when the tool that comes with the grommet kit fails)
-Scissors (for when the leather tool fails)
-Hammer
-Drywall anchors (one per grommet)
- Ceiling hooks (one per grommet)
- Electric drill with bit to match the drywall anchors
- tape measure

Leather punching tool (left) Grommet Kit (right)

Ok here is my studio before the operation although the angled walls do help to cut down on sound bouncing the room has a quite noticeable sound to it.

Here is the most important supply the heavy duty moving blanket. These are the best to do as they are designed to absorb impact. This also makes them good at absorbing sound. First thing to do is to make it possible to mount these on the wall. This is done by installing grommets on all corners in the middle of each side and one in the centre. (use the grommet kit which should come with instructions)
I found that the hardest part is punching holes in the heavy duty blankets. I wore out the tool the kit came with after about 3 holes and then wore out one of the bits on the leather punching tool.
The installed grommets will look like this:

Next thing to do is to place drywall anchors on the walls or ceilings that match the grid you made on the blanket:

Then mount the ceiling hooks

Then hang up your blankets.

Here is how it looks with the blankets up. It is best to have them hanging a bit rather than being pulled flat as the curves will deflect the sound even more. Also the airspace in between the blanket and the wall will mean sound will pass though and bounce off the wall and have to go back thought the blanket again. I knew this process would I make a difference in the sound in the room but I was actually astounded at how much difference it makes. Coming under the blanketed area is like coming under a hood of silence. The sound is quite dead.

For extra silence in the studio keep noisy machines like computers should not be in the same room as you. I have mine in a closet and run cables out for my monitor, mouse and keyboard. I also installed a super-quiet fan that vents the extra heat from the closet into the attic.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under Music, Recording Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.