Hi Guys
Glad to see you playing with different ideas to shape the sound. my advice would be while doing this is to respect the signal and sound waves. It doesn't take much playing to see huge affects and if you don't see "huge" affects than you know you have too much dampening or signal blockage somewhere in your system.
As was mentioned earlier wool is very powerful, but it can also make you loose sound quickly. When using wool directly pay close attention to the halo around instruments cause they can vanish like that.
Here's a good and simple test that you can do while voicing your room. Talk directly into any product or material. If you hold a product up in front of you and you hear part of your voice disappear you are going to have the same problem with your sound. For this reason I do all most exclusively barricade tuning. Meaning the burning part of the material is facing the area you want to burn and not facing you the listener or the musical sound wave directly. If you are introducing direct absorption be prepared to always have part of the instruments seem slightly out of tune and with less around the instruments body.
Way before I ever became a designer I would walk in rooms and cover up what the acousticians did to the rooms. They made rooms and the music sound dead or phasey (not quite on pitch) and it would drive me crazy. Once you get use to barricade voicing it is hard to listen without it. Drapes will come down and carpet is minimized. Again walk directly up to the drapes and get a couple of inches from it and you will hear your voice get absorbed. The acoustics of your system never does recover from this loss unfortunately. So think about the waves going to the wall then as they come off the wall this is where you stop them instead of on their way to the wall. A big difference between the two types of voicing.
While I was taking my visible break from the audiophile industry I started doing a lot of tuning for instrument companies. This led me to doing lots of recital halls and smaller chamber rooms. Some of these rooms rang like a bell before treatment but after treated with absorbers took on another problem "pitch control". These rooms could not find pitch and the instruments often sounded out of tune.
If I can let me self promote a little and show you what I mean.
"Due to the acoustics of many practice and rehearsal room, from elementary to college music schools students are many times hampered by distracting reverberations while trying to practice.
However, there is a remedy for poor rehearsal room acoustics, which is also surprisingly easy on school budgets. RoomTune is a new line of unobtrusive acoustical treatment components by Michael Green Design. As an accomplished musician and sound engineer, Michael has assisted many professional, commercial, and residential facilities achieve enhanced listening environments. Michael green has turned his attention to schools and other institutions.
"According to Green, there are three most common acoustical problems which usually exist in practice studios and the rehearsal room: One, lack of localization - the inability to hear the source at its actual location in the room. Two, noise level - the volume of echo and reverberation. And three, sonic falsehood - the room adding to or dampening the sound of the instrument.
"RoomTune components are relatively small acoustic control devices that work by adjusting the way acoustical energy travels along walls and collects at ceiling and wall seams. Made of a pillow type material and encased in Mylar they attach to the wall and strategically attack acoustic problems.
"Green also notes that when properly installed, those components allow sound to develop fully without attempting to diffuse or absorb the crucial harmonic structures being created. The sound is neither dull nor sterile, but clean and true, enabling players to hear each other better and play in tune together. Also by more closely replicating the acoustics that instrumentalists will encounter on stage, the tuned rehearsal room provides musicians with a more predictable environment.
"Room Tune also localizes sound making it easy for the conductor to detect the exact location of problems such as intonation, balance and tonal inconsistencies - so problems can be corrected before they become bad habits.
"RoomTune has been found to be highly effective in prestigious music schools. A room known for its booming and uneven acoustics has been transformed into a superb multi purpose space, effective for a wide range of ensembles, including vocal, brass quartets, quintets and even octets, as well as for teaching and lecturing. James Undercoflerm Director of the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester New York, It is now a desirable space for rehearsals and small performances. Undercofler pointed out that various attempts to improve the acoustics of the 78 year old room had included the use of heavy draperies and acoustical wall tile, all with little effect.
"Students at Naples Central School, Naples, New York also were impressed when ROOMTUNE was installed in the band room. Said Director Scott Kickbush, " I never realized how distorted the sound was", said Kickbush, "it was almost as though the entire room was out tune, creating a ghost like third player producing a buzzing sound. The RoomTune components totally eliminated the echoes and reverberation building up along the walls and corners, and, above all in my ears. I can now easily identify and place sounds, and the whole assembly sound seems so much more harmonious."
