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Jesco from Acoustics Insider helps us understand the ins and outs of acoustic treatment for our home studios.
Interviews about and for voice actors.
Mike DelGaudio: Couple of weeks ago, I put out a video where we reviewed some really, really thin acoustic panels. And we were trying to sort of create, uh, a spare bedroom into like a YouTube studio, a studio for webinars, for conferences, just trying to make a, a, a bedroom sound good for this kind of situation. And it turns out that the panels actually didn't work all that well, which we kind of expected, but I wanted to explore a bit more of why, why don't those panels work and what should we be considering when we try and treat our room like that?
Mike DelGaudio: And so I reached out to another YouTube channel. Yes, go over an acoustics insider to get his opinion and some information since he's an expert in setting up a home studio, especially from a music perspective and it kind of turned into. About an hour long masterclass of a conversation about what we think about when we are creating our home studio, please go over and subscribe to ESCO's channel.
Mike DelGaudio: If you, if you like what you see, uh, acoustics insider. And if you are looking to create your own bedroom studio, if you're looking to create your home studio, especially from a music perspective, he has a, a framework guide that's totally free where you can sort of learn his, his framework, his techniques for creating a home.
Mike DelGaudio: Have a link down there in the description below, it's a free guide. It's not an affiliate relationship. I don't get anything out of it, but I do wanna share that that's available to you. If you are interested in creating your own home studio now without further ado, let's go and go to the, the prerecorded conversation with the ESCO.
Mike DelGaudio: Enjoy. So, yes. Go, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate
Jesco: it. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks Mike. For inviting me, this is gonna be fun. I meant to I've I've meant to talk about like voice over acoustics for a while now. And it doesn't it's it's not entirely what I focus on, cuz obviously I do mainly like.
Jesco: Studio acoustics. And there's the kind of the treating a, a voiceover room is a bit as a, kind of a special subset of that. Um, so I haven't done that on my channel yet, but I've been meaning to for a while. And so thanks for inviting me because, uh, this gives me an opportunity to, to, to dive really deep into all of that as well.
Jesco: It's,
Mike DelGaudio: it's my pleasure. Uh, I, I reviewed some acoustic panels just the other day. O on my channel. Uh, the, the review was for the, for acoustic panels. We treated a, just a bedroom studio. It's just my, my spare bedroom that had no acoustic treatment. And, uh, I was given a bunch of panels that were very, very narrow.
Mike DelGaudio: I have one as a, as a prop here. So these really, really ultra thin, uh, acoustic panels. And it turns out that even though we covered sure, most of the walls, we covered a bunch of the ceiling with it. They didn't really do as much as we had hoped for. What could I do in a spare bedroom? What are the appropriate things to think about in a spare bedroom to make it so that it sounds good.
Jesco: Yeah. I mean the, the most fundamental thing to, to keep in mind to remember that makes the job a lot easier is that you are just treating for the part of the audible frequency spectrum that is occupied by the voice. And the part that you leave out the very, very low end of the audible spectrum, that's the part that actually makes acoustics the most, or is the most difficult part in treating rooms in acoustics.
Jesco: Right. And so with voice, we're talking down to maybe a hundred Hertz, very roughly speaking, a very deep speaker, uh, will maybe go just below that maybe down to 80 Hertz or something, but it's never gonna be much lower than that. And. Just as a, as a kind of a rough guideline, you can always assume that if you're just treating for voice, you are just treating upwards of a hundred Hertz and that makes your life a whole lot easier in terms of the tools that you use.
Jesco: A, as
Mike DelGaudio: we think about the, the frequency spectrum, we know, you know, we always hear that you should, we should be rolling off our voice below actually say like 80 Hertz. So, so right in there is, does that make sense for, is the right place to do. With a high pass on the mic. Do you do it in the EQ after? Does it, does it matter from a room treatment perspective where you might be high passing the, the microphone to begin with?
Mike DelGaudio: Is there a, is there a preference?
Jesco: No. It doesn't matter. I would definitely say, try and get it done as, as E as early in the chain in the single chain as possible. Mm-hmm yeah. So if you have a kind of a low cut on the microphone as well, um, definitely use that. Uh, obviously if it's just made just double check, make it, do a quick comparison to make sure it doesn't chop off the bottom bit of your voice.
Jesco: If you have a very deep voice mm-hmm . Um, but, uh, I would definitely say do it as early in the chain as possible. That's just gonna make your life.
Mike DelGaudio: Sure. So in your, just to we'll, we'll move on to the, to the real part of the frequency spectrum in, in, in just a second. So looking at yours, so that's a road N T one a I'm guessing the, the mic that you're speaking to.
Mike DelGaudio: Yeah. TPO , uh, well, but that. Yes, that's right. They're, they're good mics, but there's no switch on them. So you could, are you, are you, um, low cutting in your interface or would you low cut in your D a w where, where would you add that first low cut to, to manage the
Jesco: face? Yeah. So I've, I've got my low cut in my RME interface.
Jesco: Yeah. So since I don't have one on the microphone, uh, that's the kind of the next step in the chain. So that's where I'm low cutting. Um, but again, I mean, I. Super functional about this. I try to get it, just kind of get it right in the recording. Mm-hmm and so, um, make my life as easy as possible. And so that's where I'm, I'm low.
Jesco: Cutting. You might not do that just to get to, to like give yourself options afterwards, if you do do mixing stuff anyway. Right? Sure. But, uh, if it's, if it's just about getting that clean recording, Then that's fine as well. Yeah. Right. Cool.
Mike DelGaudio: Okay. So now, as we, as we move up into the, the point where our voice is reflecting the, the lower part of our, part of our voice.
Mike DelGaudio: So from call it a hundred Hertz to what is it? 250, 300 Hertz sort of that, that mid base of our, yeah. Of our voice mm-hmm is that mm-hmm I get the sense that that's part of the hardest. Uh, frequency range to, to treat because there's still quite a bit of energy in our voice there. Um, hard to absorb those.
Mike DelGaudio: Is it better to absorb, reflect? What, what should we, yeah. In terms of about
Jesco: the tools that we have available right. At its most, or like we have two fundamental tools, we have absorption and we have diffusion. Reflection, scattering, whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. But those are the, the two main tools, absorption and diff fusion.
Jesco: Right. Right. And to just kind of start off by or with, with a very kind of, um, a very fundamental, uh, Rule you might say, or just, um, uh, guideline, is that in very small rooms? Forget about diffusion.
Mike DelGaudio: good.
Jesco: Okay. And you can just stick to absorption. And the, the reason is that it actually takes. A certain distance from the diffusing surface.
Jesco: So if diffuser diffuser kind of sits here, takes a certain distance for that diffusion to kind of develop properly. I see. Yeah. And in very, very small rooms, you're usually very close to the surfaces that reflect that you would treat. With potentially diffusion. And so you would probably you'd be kind of solving some issues, but you might be causing some new ones.
Jesco: Yeah. And so in kind of very, very small rooms, if we're talking a typical, typical kind of small bedroom, so I don't know something like 12 by 14 feet or something like that, you know, there are even smaller rooms than that. I guess if you're working from a kind of a cupboard, sort of turning that into your, your kind of voiceover booth, if you will.
Jesco: Then you just wanna stick to diffusion, uh, sorry, just stick to absorption. Yeah, there are. There are exceptions to some extent. So what you see here behind me, this is a very simple type of diffuser. This is a binary amplitude diffuser. It is the simplest type of diffuser you can find. And it's combined with absorption.
Jesco: Yeah. So the diffusion part are the slats and then there's there's insulation material behind. So that it can pass through these gaps. And so that you get a combined absorber diffuser, and this thing is designed so that it really only works in the highest parts of the spectrum. So upwards of maybe two and a half, three kilohertz up to about seven kilohertz.
Jesco: And so, because it works so high in, in, in frequency, you can get a bit closer to these. These types of diffusers. Yeah. So that's why I kind of designed them the way they are so that you can use them in small rooms, but still you wanna have at least a foot of distance to one of these preferably more. Yeah.
Jesco: So if we're talking about treating surfaces around your microphone, let's say you just wanna stick to a pure absorption. You might have some of this in the back, but to be honest, this is just the icing on the cake. You don't need any. Yeah. So for, for, uh, for, for voice over work for treating a voice in a small room, it really makes sense to just stick to absorption, um, and just go with that and you'll, you'll be fine, right.
Jesco: Basically.
Mike DelGaudio: So I think that's, that's probably take away number one for the people who are trying to become like strictly voice actors. So many of, so many of us work out. A little closet mine six by six, and ACT's actually pretty generous for a home, a home booth. So many people have four by four, three and a half by four I'm in Imperial unit.
Mike DelGaudio: So, you know, a meter by, uh, maybe a, a meter and a third just over meter. Yeah. They're really small. Right. You know? Um, and, and so one, it's good to know that the diffusion would really have. It wouldn't
Jesco: work. That's right. Yeah. And so, especially in these, in, in such small spaces, so talking three by four feet.
Jesco: Yeah. Um, we, we, we get. These standing waves, these resonance that build up between parallel walls. Yeah. So it's the best way to imagine this is kind of the, maybe kind of a game children play on, like in the playground where two people like hold where you person, one person holds a rope at each end, and then you kind of get it to swing and you get, if you do it just right, you get this sign wave that just builds.
Jesco: In the middle, you know, uh, in between them. And that's, that's basically a standing wave. It's basically the, the, um, the, when the wavelength fits exactly between the two endpoints. Uh, where they get reflected. So that happens in any room. My
Mike DelGaudio: experiences in the small booths like that is that standing wave is often right.
Mike DelGaudio: In a prominent part of our, part of our voice. I, I think I forget what the different wavelengths are, but those, those, those standing frequencies can be right. Where at least where the male voice is, is that, do I have that right?
Jesco: Absolutely. Yeah. So probably even higher. Yeah. So just as a quick, uh, kind of a, a quick calculation.
Jesco: So as a, as a reference point, it's always good to take 100 Hert. Yeah. With 100 Hertz, the wavelength is pretty much 10 feet. So 200 Hertz will be about five feet. Yeah. Uh, 400 Hertz is gonna be about two and a half feet. Yeah. So we're looking at, when we're talking about a standing wave that builds. Between walls that are three or four feet apart, we're talking frequencies of 200 Hertz and up still, or like 200 to maybe 400 Hertz where you still get these resonances.
Jesco: Yeah. And that's, that's kind of the main issue with these very, very small rooms. Yeah. So that these standing waves go that high up in frequency. The, the basic thing is you have these two issues, standing waves, room modes. Reflections and in, in a very, very small space, those room modes and those reflections are all gonna sit in like the most important part of the spectrum for the voice, which is right that low, mid part between a hundred and kind of 500 Hertz.
Jesco: Yeah. Right. And that's where you get those extreme tonal differences from that you might, that people might experience, you know, or that, that washing out that. That boxing is, as you mentioned, one of the ways that
Mike DelGaudio: I I've certainly treated it in my own booths. Like when I had a whisper room that was, you know, 48 inches by 48 inches is I just had to add more and more, um, you know, mass, uh, my case I used, um, fiberglass.
Mike DelGaudio: But I just had to add more and more, cuz even the, the treatment that the, that the company provides when you buy the booth booth, it was really not enough for that. Yeah. So I ended up having, I think that's four inches worth. Yeah. Four inches worth to try and tame that, that.
Jesco: That, uh, I think you're spot on, uh, you are, you're absolutely spot on.
Jesco: Yeah. And maybe let's just look at the, the, the, the, the actual tool, the treatment, the absorption to see how do we get down to those frequencies? Yeah. Cause you showed me that super thin, uh, that super thin panel just before. Yeah. But let's just see what, what we need in order to actually absorb down to those low frequencies.
Jesco: Yeah. So I'm just gonna switch over. Let me see if I can get this done in a way that it makes sense. So here we go. So I just switched over to this porous, uh, absorber calculator, which people can find@acousticmodeling.com. It's totally free. And that allows us to do some, some simple modeled calculations on how.
Jesco: This, these types of, of insulation materials, these porous absorbers actually AB absorb sound. Yeah. So what we're looking at is a simple graph with frequency on the bottom. So 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz, and then we've got something called absorption coefficient here on the vertical, which basically just says go, oh, well it goes from zero to one.
Jesco: So it just tells us in percent, if you will, how well. That particular slab of material absorbs the sound that hits it. Okay. And so now we can enter some values up here to figure out just how well it, it actually absorbs that different frequencies. So this is a, a very poor example that I messed about with just, just before.
Jesco: Yeah. But just going with the, the, starting with the, the panel you just showed me, which I assume is about what is that? Uh, it's not even an inch. It was a quarter inch wasn. Yeah. Or, or let's, let's just start way up there. 10, cuz you can get these shallow things if you want to. Yeah. And so I'm gonna hit calculate.
Jesco: There are two parts of this, this, this calculator that we, that you still need to look at. One is flow resistivity. I'll talk about that in the second air gap is literally just the amount of air behind the panel. So, so if you put this panel in front of a wall, the slab of material and there's some air between the panel and the wall, that's the air.
Jesco: And we can use that to effectively make this thing absorb lower down as we'll see in a second. Yeah. This floor resistivity just describes the density of the material. If you will. And this in itself, isn't really something that we, uh, we mess with just for the purpose of messing with it. But what we want to do is we, we, as we'll see in a second, we'll pick an absorber thickness to.
Jesco: To uh, to determine how low down this thing is gonna absorb. And then we match the flow resistivity to give us the. uh, or the, the kind of the highest quality absorption at that depth. Yeah. So you pick depth first and then you, you match the flow resistivity to give you the best absorption, but let's just go through some examples here to see what happens.
Jesco: Yeah. So this is, this is that the, that, uh, half inch material that you just showed me, and we can see this doesn't even give us full absorption. You could probably mess with these, this floor resistivity a bit to see if something interesting happens. But I have my doubts that we can even get up to, uh, for full absorption.
Jesco: With a panel that like that. Yeah. Okay. So we need to need a very, very dense material to make this thing work properly. And that's why this thing is so hard that you got. Yeah,
Mike DelGaudio: that's a, it says PA S per meter squared. What is the, what is the PA referred to that's? So
Jesco: that's Pascal that's Pascal time, seconds.
Jesco: BI meter squared. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Okay. So this is a, is a as a measure of, of air pressure, right? So, or like in combination with air pressure. Yeah. But so let's imagine that this was sort of the panel that you. So we can see that it kind of almost reached maximum absorption at 10 kilohertz. Right?
Jesco: And then I always use kind of 50%, the 50% mark, which is around about here. I use that as kind of my, the lowest point where we still get useful absorption from an, from a panel. I just wanna ask one quick question
Mike DelGaudio: here. So when, when, sometimes you'll see that, uh, a manufacturer may claim that it's got a, a, a 0.9, five, um, coefficient rating.
Mike DelGaudio: They may be gaming it to just say, oh yeah, it's up at, you know, 9,500 Hertz or 10,000 Hertz is where you're getting that 0.9, five coefficient. Um, but really that's, it's, it's that's right. Not for much of the, the rest of the usable spectrum as
Jesco: so often. Data can be misleading. And if you want data to actually tell you something, it needs to include certain, uh, or it needs to include certain basic information.
Jesco: Yeah. So just absorption coefficient on its own. Doesn't tell you anything, cuz you need to know absorption coefficient at a certain frequency mm-hmm yeah. And then once you get really nerdy, you also have to look at how this data was captured as so often. If you really wanna be accurate. Yeah. The, this is, this is a very simplified model.
Jesco: That's I think that's, it's good. It's good that you ask that question, cuz it's important to understand that this is a very simplified model. So very generally speaking, this is the type of absorption you'll. Depending on particular circumstances, it might be a little bit better. It might even be a little bit worse, but very generally speaking, this is kind of what you're gonna get, right?
Jesco: Yeah. Um, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't look at this to be super, or I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't read off exact numbers from this. Yeah. This is just to get a, a ballpark idea and to get an understanding of how these, these materials. When you change certain fundamental aspects, like the depth or the Flore resistivity.
Jesco: Yeah. Cool. But, uh, just let's just continue on so I can, you can see what happens when I change when I mess with this. Yeah. So we got about 10 kilohertz, maximum absorption and maybe about three and a half kilohertz. 50% absorption. Yeah. So, so those are our two metrics. Now let's increase the depth. So this is half an inch taking this up to one inch.
Jesco: Well, one inch is more. Like that. Yeah. And so now boom, this sudden jumped to around about, uh, so three kilohertz is now maximum absorption and maybe what is this? Like six, seven? What is that? 800, 900 Hertz. 50%. Yeah. So we're, we're still not. even remotely covering the, the audible range. And definitely not that part of the spectrum where we said that we get those ugly resonances in those small spaces.
Jesco: Yeah. We need to cover this area right here. That's the part we need to cover. Right. Okay. So let's keep going. So this is one inch, so I'm going double this up. So now we're looking at two inches and we might, at that point also re reduce the actual density of the material. . Yeah. So now we're getting down to about 500 hearts.
Jesco: We're gonna keep going. So this was, what is it? What did I say? Two inches. So that's increased this to four inches. Yeah. And so now we're starting to get into the, the kind of a, a realm of potentially useful treatment. Yeah. So maximum absorption at around 900 Hertz, maybe 50% at 200, you probably want even more than.
Jesco: So let's take this up to, let's say one 50. So this is about six inches. Yeah. And so now we're starting to see that we're getting absorption that actually more or less covers the range, the, the frequency range that we need to cover. Okay, so let, let me just leave it at that for now and jump back to you.
Jesco: I'm sure you have a bunch of questions. Yeah.
Mike DelGaudio: So that, that actually that matches with my experience, cuz when I was making my, my booth here is I, I didn't have a sense of how much I would need. I just sort of committed that I'm gonna keep adding absorption until I could start to. Knock down that boxiness cuz my dimensionally, the room that I'm in my booth is almost a perfect cube.
Mike DelGaudio: It's six feet by six feet by just over six feet tall. Mm-hmm it's cause I'm in a low basement. Fantastic. It's really, really hard. And when I was in, when it was untreated, it was, it was unlistenable.
Mike DelGaudio: All right. Moment of truth time. You're gonna hear this the same time I am. I've set up a microphone. . And I'm in the untreated booth. And as we expected, it is a complete echo chamber in here for a couple of reasons. One it's got no treatment whatsoever and also. Dimensions of the room. It's the same distance this way as it is this way.
Mike DelGaudio: So I'm gonna probably standing right in the middle of a great big, uh, standing wave. And so I ended up with mm-hmm there's six inches of mineral wall on practically every wall I did end up adding a second round of insulation to this. And to this wall. So this wall over here is actually six inches thick with mineral and this wall is six inches thick.
Mike DelGaudio: So before you saw that it was, uh, there were studs this way. We'll add another set this way. So there's a stud here and a stud down here. And so that I could do insulation across. So I ended up adding another round of six more inches. So I've got three inches here, three inches on, uh, on the wall behind the camera and six inches everywhere else.
Mike DelGaudio: And on the floor. It's about an inch of padding, really? Just for, for an anti
Jesco: fatigue. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So now, now this is now we just defined how we can build the tool or what depth we need to, to get, and actually the actual frequency or to cover the frequency range we need. Yeah. So ideally six inches, if you can take it up to eight inches even better.
Jesco: Yeah. So now we have to think about where are we actually gonna put this stuff? Yeah. And so, and that's, and, and that's when we're talking about that, we have to once again, think about the two main problems that we're trying to deal with. So that standing wave problem and reflections, what you'll find is that most locations in a small space, like that will take care of both at the same time.
Jesco: Yeah. But it makes sense to think about them separately just for understanding purposes. Yeah. Yeah. So resonance, let's start with that first. So we've got our parallel wall. We've got that. We've got that wave, that sign wave in between them obviously. Yeah. That builds up. Not just left and right, but front to back floor to ceiling.
Jesco: Yeah. And so now we need to put that material on the kind of offending wall where that reflection happens. Yeah. In order to re reduce the reflection and thus that standing wave. So ideally obviously on both end. and you also have to think about the, the, the dimension of the wave to some extent. Yeah. So how much surface are we covering?
Jesco: Yeah, so with a, uh, we talked about, um, so 100 Hertz was about 10 feet. We doubled that to 200 Hertz was about, um, five feet. Am I getting that right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. And so there's a, a wave with a di with a circumference, if you will, of five feet. And you have to put something in its path to stop it. It has to be deep enough in order to absorb it, but it also has to be a big enough surface wise.
Jesco: So that, that wave doesn't just go, eh, yeah. And bend around it. If you put a panel that is this small, but six inches deep on the wall, that's not gonna do anything, right? Yeah. So we need to cover enough surface area. And as a rule of thumb, you probably want to cover at least half the kind of wave length.
Jesco: Of the wave that you're covering or that you're trying to attack that you're trying to deal with. Mm-hmm of surface area. Very roughly speaking. Yeah. You probably want, if you can do more than better in practice, what does that mean? While in a small room that is three by four feet. It just means cover the entire wall.
Jesco: right. Yeah. That's that's, that's how you that's, that's how it ends up being what it is. Yeah. And so you do that on each of the, each of the walls. So talking about parallel surfaces front back, Floor ceiling. You can't really do the floor, so you gotta do the ceiling. Yeah. And then left. Right. And you do that on all sides and you end up with just coverage everywhere.
Jesco: That's just how this works. Yeah.
Mike DelGaudio: As we're thinking about, um, advice for somebody who's creating their booth in a small closet it's is something that they really do have to think about that if their, if their booth is only this wide wall to wall to begin with. That if you're adding six inches of, of treatment that you might be shoulder to shoulder touching in that booth.
Mike DelGaudio: So there you can, you can make it so that the booth is just so small that you can't treat it well enough. To be, to actually fit inside it and still get, still get a good enough sound that you'll still get, you know, boxiness be just cuz dimensionally, you don't have enough space. You can too small is really a thing.
Jesco: Welcome to the reality of acoustics. yeah. And obviously, um, the, the, the, there's an ideal that we're chasing here and it's always the question. It's always a question of how close can you get to that in practice? and oftentimes you can't do everything that you should be doing because you don't have the space.
Jesco: It's inconvenient to have absorption in that spot. Cuz you need a door. You probably have maybe have a little window in there. Yeah. Um, just be like you said, maybe the space is so small that you, if you add six inches of absorption on each side, you're gonna be like sitting like this, between absorption.
Jesco: That's not practical as well, or that's just not a comfortable space to be. Yeah, so we have to kind of weigh or we have, we have to find the trade off. We have to weigh. What is, what is ideal against what is possible within our budgets, our space and what we feel comfortable with. Right. Well,
Mike DelGaudio: I was wondering, is, is this the, is this the time when, when we would think about that air gap and if this, if, if this is, if you wanna delay that for, uh, uh, a little bit later, we, we can, but w.
Mike DelGaudio: Six inches. Uh, I just remember from one of your video. So if I have a three inch panel, could I put an inch of air behind it to get a four or make a five inch panel? And would I get similar performance, better performance, worth, worse performance. I noticed that that, that diagram actually, or that chart, that tool, you actually could put an air gap behind it.
Mike DelGaudio: What sort of influence does the air gap have?
Jesco: Yeah, so unfortunately it doesn't save us any space. It does because we still need the, the overall depth of the absorber system, if you will, or the absorber structure needs to be the same, but you can get rid of some of the material that is closest to the wall.
Jesco: Yeah. So I'm just gonna show this with the second, the second calculator or the second part of this calculator. So I'm gonna do the exact same thing. So obviously this is gonna be the same and it's not because there's an air gap. There you go. . Yeah, so now they're sitting right on top of each other, but what I can do is just get rid of half the material that is closest to the wall and you end up with something that is rather similar.
Jesco: It's not exactly the same, but it is rather similar because the material that is away from the wall is what matters most. Yeah. And up to you, can, you can, you can kind of play this game up to the, the a point where the, the, the material or the, the air gap rather is the same depth of the material. You don't really want the air gap to get much bigger.
Jesco: Then the actual material, the absorption material. Yeah. But what counts is the combined depth and cuz it's the same as this one here. The absorption coefficient is gonna be roughly the same. It's not gonna be exactly the same, but very, very close. Well, I mean, think it makes sense to, to refine a bit further in terms of what, where and how we'd like to treat space, because for many people, if we'd stop here and I just said, cover all walls in six to eight inches of absorption, they're gonna go, I'm not gonna do that.
Jesco: So, uh, which is fair enough. Maybe not today, maybe tomorrow, but, um, So, if you don't wanna do that, where do you start? What, how can you reduce this comp or how can you reduce the amount of treatment that you do, but make making sure that you're focusing on the part that's that are the parts that are important.
Jesco: Yeah. And so what we're talking about now is basically just reducing the surface area and starting by covering less surface area, you should still do six inches of absorption. If you. As much as possible. So the depth, you always wanna maintain the depth. If you can go as deep as you can, up to six inches, maybe even eight beyond that doesn't make sense.
Jesco: But now let's talk about how much surface area to cover or what's the minimum that you wanna do. Yeah. And at that point where we really want to think about reflections. That's gonna tell us where we're gonna start with our placement of any of this, uh, this treatment. And there's, it's very simple, to be honest.
Jesco: I mean, this is just think, thinking about sound like a game of pool, like billiards or snooker if you're in the UK. Um, so it's, it's, it's thinking about sound like Ray of light. And so if sound, if you're speaking into the microphone, the microphone's right in front of you, there's gonna be a surface behind that.
Jesco: And the sound is gonna bounce back at the angle at which it hit the. Yeah, so right in front of you, it's just gonna about bounce straight back sound that enters or exits your, your mouth to the sides. It's gonna hit the, the, the side walls at a certain angle. It's gonna reflect in the, in, in the same, at the same angle that hit that wall, perhaps hit another wall and eventually come back to your microphone.
Jesco: And there's a whole bunch of different potential paths that sound is gonna take from your mouth. Over like reflecting off of surfaces and then back to the microphone and the worst offenders of those reflection paths are the ones that are the shortest, because the shorter, the reflection path. The cl the, the sooner after the direct sound that reflection's gonna hit the microphone and the short of the path, the louder, that reflection is in volume in relation to the direct sound.
Jesco: So the shortest paths are always the worst offenders. So just thinking about that, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this and you're you think you're looking at where your microphone is in relation to your, your, your voice or sorry, your mouth, uh, and then the, the walls think about which surfaces are the closest, and those are probably the ones you wanna start with.
Jesco: And then you wanna move along that, that idea what's the next furthest or next closest surface. Right. Always remembering that it's like a game of pool, so, uh, it's just geometry. So if the microphone is at the, the height of your mouth, all this is gonna happen on the plane of your mouth. Yeah. If your microphone is a bit lower, then you have to kind of cover that entire section.
Jesco: On the walls. Yeah. And, but, but that's, that's pretty much it. It's trying to reduce those early reflections as we call them because they are the worst offenders right now in a three by four foot room. You'll probably find they're all pretty offensive because we're so close. Right. And in practice, that's gonna mean, that's gonna mean we're gonna start with the surface probably behind the micro.
Jesco: Yeah, then probably on the sides probably. Yeah. And then behind. and then on the surface on the seating, mm-hmm, now that's probably the order in which you're gonna go through this, do you, and with each further step that you take, this is gonna get better. Right?
Mike DelGaudio: When I think about the, the cardio microphones that we're both on that sometimes that that closest reflection is probably the wall behind you, because the microphone's not hearing.
Mike DelGaudio: So. That first reflection that, that sound that's coming off the wall back towards us. The mic's not hearing it that well. So that's really making its second reflection over our shoulder or off the walls next to us. Is that true? Like are there the, the, the polar pattern of the microphone is also at play here?
Mike DelGaudio: Isn't it? To
Jesco: some extent yeah. In these very, very small rooms. Probably not that much. Uh, I mean it helps to have a, it, it probably helps to have a cardio microphone, even in the small room, but think about it, this. sound. If, if you're talking about a cardio microphone, like this one here sound in order to enter from this side, it has to, it has to, first of all, bounce off the surface behind the microphone, then bounce off either my chest or this, the wall behind me, and then get back to the, to the microphone.
Jesco: So the path there is definitely longer than something maybe from the sides. Yeah. Mm-hmm, also. If you stop that sound reflecting off of that front surface, it's never gonna come back to then hit my chest or the back wall and then enter the microphone, right? Yeah. That's why you get these reflection filters that I'm sure are still discussed heavily, whether they actually work or not.
Jesco: Right. It's is there one behind it? It's on the other side it's it's somewhere that you could probably see it in the picture somewhere. um, uh, they, they, why do they work? Because they stop the sound. Broadly speaking, they stop the sound before it even enters the room. Yeah. And so, in my opinion, it still makes sense to start with the surface behind the microphone first or rather the closest surface first.
Jesco: Yeah. Right. Because you're gonna stop that sound before it even starts bouncing around in your room. Huh? Right, right. Again, if you do this. You would do a recording. You'll probably find the one from the back is still offensive. Yeah. The problem is in these small rooms, like I mentioned before, they're probably gonna all be annoying.
Jesco: So it makes sense to right. Basically start with all of them right away. Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna do the sides and then you're gonna, we notice, ah, damn the, and then you're gonna do the front and you're gonna be, ah, and then you're gonna do them all anyway. Yeah. So might as well just, just, uh, um, just go ahead and do it all in one go,
Mike DelGaudio: right.
Mike DelGaudio: Right. The, uh, the reflection filters. They're not, uh, my experience is they're not, they're not great for voiceover because they're in the way of where your copy yeah. Often is. Uh, yeah. You know, you stop the problem know cause you, you can't put the copy in front of the microphone. So the copy is usually either right below or right behind the microphone and exactly where that reflection filter is.
Mike DelGaudio: And those can often be, you know, they can be really big. And so it's, it's hard to get your copy, whatever you're trying to read. So for. The, the cost to benefit for what they offer for the voice actor often. Isn't that great. So we end up just trying to treat the wall behind you. Yeah, because you do have to be my experiences.
Mike DelGaudio: You have to be really close to those, those reflection filters to try and catch your voice. Because if you're like the distance we are off them right now there, the angle of our voice really exceeds that reflection, filter. And it's just, you know, it's just creating just like a little tiny window. Not big enough.
Mike DelGaudio: It's
Jesco: definitely not a, yeah. I mean, first of all, totally get it. Yeah. Um, totally understand that that's not a solution for voiceover people in that sense. Yeah. Um, and, uh, even then always none of this, there is no one, one solution for everything. Yeah. If you do use one of these reflection filters, it will be a component, right.
Jesco: Of getting the sound, right. It won't, you can't expect to sit in a, in a, in a super Vern room and then put one of those up indeed and not to solve all your problems. It's gonna help quite a bit. Uh, but, um, but it's just one step acoustics is many little steps that you want to get. Right. And we haven't even talked about the microphone or we do, we have talked about cardio microphones.
Jesco: I'm sure you've talked about different types of microphones before, but. again, that's one step. So you wanna do a lot of little steps in the right direction and then your sound's gonna be great. It seems
Mike DelGaudio: to me that the, the answer is often, so very situation specific your room and my room are different dimensionally.
Mike DelGaudio: They've got different components. There are ideas that we can have. There are sort of guidelines, frameworks that we can follow, but there isn't necessarily like, this is the answer to everybody.
Jesco: Um, it's, it's. There, I think there's, there are certain aspects that generally work in all types of rooms. Yeah.
Jesco: Especially if we're, if we're kind of winging it yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously the more, the more detailed you go or the more specific you want to treat a certain space, uh, the, the, the stronger, the, the differences are gonna be in terms of what you do. Sure. Yeah. But certain basic aspects are never gonna change.
Jesco: So for example, the, the depth of the, the material, the absorption material, like I mentioned before, right? Two things that I
Mike DelGaudio: think I I'd like to at least explore. And you can tell me if they're, if they're the right right track. Um, besides, besides, uh, absorption. There we often hear about base traps, especially in the small room, um, for, for voice where our voice doesn't have a ton below say a hundred Hertz are base traps important.
Mike DelGaudio: So that's one thing. And then, um, does the mic placement within that space? Should we be right in the center? Should we be off to the side? Should we be closer to one wall than the other? Is there any benefit mm-hmm any benefit to that? So, those are kind of the, the last two questions that I had
Jesco: from a booth.
Jesco: So let's just talk base traps real quick, cuz I think it's a, it's a really, uh, con or it's a confusing term. Sure. It's because base trap the base, first of all, there is no device that traps base. Yeah, that doesn't exist. There is only that we call them base traps, but there are only absorbers and diffusers.
Jesco: There are different types of absorbers and depending on how you build it, it will, it might, uh, there are basically two types of absorption. There's broadband absorption, which is this insulation material stuff. And once you make that deep enough, it absorbs base frequencies and then people start calling them base traps.
Jesco: Yeah. Right. And then there are. Base specific absorbers. Those are resonance absorbers. Those definitely, you definitely don't need those in a, in a, in a voiceover, uh, scenario, but those could potentially be, actually be called base traps cuz they really focus only on the base frequencies. Um, but um, the, the point I'm trying to make is there are, there is no difference between a base trap and an absorber.
Jesco: A base trap is an absorber. At a certain depth. Right, right. That's all. That makes sense. That makes sense. Um, they, we, we, we love people talk. I love talking about base traps and I, I call them base traps as well, just cuz it's, it's ubiquitous that, that word, you know? Sure. So, um, but in a sense, once we're talking six inches of absorption, That is a base trap.
Mike DelGaudio: Yeah. And the graph bears that out, the graph that you showed before, it bears that out, that as that thickness gets as the, the thickness increases the lower, the frequency lower in the frequency spectrum that it absorbs. So if you just keep adding thickness, it's gonna get lower and lower and yeah, technically it will exactly trap exactly the base that's right.
Mike DelGaudio: Uh, Mike position. So within a space, does the, does where you are standing. Does where the microphone get placed. Does that have
Jesco: an impact? So I've just decided, disclaimer, I'm really my I'm, I'm a mixing engineer and an acoustics engineer recording. Isn't my expertise. That doesn't mean I don't know anything about it, but, uh, uh, the, the basic thing to understand is the more treatment you do, the less.
Jesco: You, uh, or the less you have to, uh, the freer you become in terms of your placement. Let's just say it like that, the less dependent you become on the actual space. Yeah. So sure. In a, in a small room that is three by four feet. Sure, sure. Go ahead and experiment. But I mean, your, your options of where you're gonna be standing are gonna be dependen.
Jesco: On other things than the sound, you know, it's like, I still have to open this door. That's gonna be like the consideration, you know, , uh, I still have to be able to get into my chair. Right. You know, that's, that's kind of the consideration there. And so, uh, I'm very much a pragmatic person at that point. And I'd say, look, you gotta be able to use this space.
Jesco: Yeah. So do what gives you good ergonomics? Do what makes allows you to use this space comfortably to get into your flow, to have a productive session, you know, and sound you can kind of mangle into place afterwards in that case at least. Yeah. Um, so does microphone position matter? Yes. Mm-hmm for the sound, is it the thing you need to pay attention to?
Jesco: If you're doing voice over work, eh, probably not that much. .
Mike DelGaudio: Um, is there any, are there any aspects that you think, uh, that we, that we didn't cover that you think are important?
Jesco: So there's, I think when we're talking about voice over work and booths in particular, I think this sound isolation question is somewhat interesting.
Jesco: It's definitely something that a lot of people worry about. Right. So I'm not sure time wise if you still wanna get into that. But I mean, I, I definitely still have time, so let's. I mean,
Mike DelGaudio: I, I think from, from a, from a voice work perspective, I, I always try and separate, you know, isolation, the soundproofing from the treatment and very good for, for, you know, other than a heavy door and turning off things that vibrate or hum um, there is there's, it it's becomes a very, very challenging, uh, problem to solve.
Mike DelGaudio: I know in my booth down here, I'm in all the walls are concrete. I'm below ground. And I've got, you know, heavy walls and I've got a, but I can still hear the lawnmower outside. Mm-hmm there you go. It's really, really extraordinarily difficult to do it. So if you've got any, if you've got any advice that somebody could follow to try and improve their isolation, we're all about listening all about listening.
Mike DelGaudio: Yeah. I
Jesco: mean, what you have to say, even if I don't have like the, the amazing tip, that's all gonna solve everybody's problem. I think it's important to understand. Or to get your expectations in, in order to understand what you can expect or what you can't expect rather. Yeah. So we're talking about a lawnmower.
Jesco: That's a great example. Yeah. Lawnmower is very loud. Yeah. And it also puts out a fair amount of low frequency energy and the lower down in frequency. The energy is that your start trying to keep out the harder it's gonna. Yeah. So if let's say you are, you are, you've got your, your little kind of studio with a vocal booth, or you're intending to put a vocal booth in your studio.
Jesco: And this is part of a bigger building. And there's some sort of, I dunno, some, some kind of factory work going on in the rest of the building and something travels through the structure. You're not going to get rid of. Unless you decouple the entire booth off of the floor, right? Yeah. Right. So just kind of getting expectations, right.
Jesco: If you're trying to isolate yourself from really low frequency noise, that is going to be hard and expensive and gonna take a lot of work. Yeah. There's no way around that. Yeah. Right. So just, if you, if that is the situation, one is in. Understand that you that's either you invest the money or you find a different space, different space.
Jesco: Yeah. Um, there's just no way around it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. So that's, so that's, I think a crucial thing to, to just understand the lower down or frequency the noise problem is the harder it is gonna get rid of it. If we're talking just about a computer hum. A computer fans. Yeah. Um, uh, maybe, maybe some, some, not too, like some, let's say some, some street noise further away, obviously street noise also has low frequencies, but kind of a, a more kind of a, a white noise type of thing happening, you know, some sort of hum some sort of noise that is obviously a lot easier.
Jesco: Reduce, but there are basically three main principles to isolation. There's the decoupling part that I talked about just before there's adding mass and there's making things airtight. Those are the three components to get isolation. And the more you do on each of those fronts, obviously once, once it's airtight, it's airtight, but let's just say the more you do on these other two fronts, the lower down in frequency.
Jesco: And the better that isolations is gonna be. Right? Yeah. And so we're talk, we, we, if we want to stop sound, we need to put a solid barrier in place for that sound not to, not to go through. And the heavier that barrier is the better it's gonna work. And so, uh, that, that's kind of the, the thing to understand, to keep in mind if you're building a vocal booth and you really want to isolate yourself, you are going to have to make really, really heavy walls.
Jesco: Yeah. The heavier you make them. The better in general. And then if you want to go, even beyond that, you're gonna have to think about this whole decoupling thing. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then obviously that means making things airtight, and then we have to think about ventilation and we have to think about light and all these things come into play.
Jesco: Yeah. So right. Making a really high quality isolating vocal booth is a challenge it certainly is. And so make sure. Make sure you get the circumstances under which you're trying to do this, uh, as best as
Mike DelGaudio: case and point. I don't know if you can hear it. There's somebody walking above me. You get base and there's, there's literally, you know, cuz I'm in the basement.
Mike DelGaudio: So there's somebody moving around upstairs and it's base that. I, I just stop and I start again when they're finished walking, cuz there's like, nothing I can do with that. It's like 40 hurts. There's almost nothing I can do. Uh, it it's, it's actually really good lesson cuz I, I actually had to learn that lesson firsthand and, and just with a.
Mike DelGaudio: Something really small. And it took me a little while to figure this out. But as someone who makes YouTube videos and, you know, we make a lot of content. I had a, I ran outta disc drive. So I said, I'm gonna buy a NAS without thinking the implications of what that would have on my studio. So I bought a little box, that's got a bunch, it spinning disc drives in it, Uhhuh.
Mike DelGaudio: And it started out in this room. Sorry. And because of. there's a fan that rotates, there are disc drives that rotates. So it started on my desk and it made the desk vibrate and the fans were really loud. And I was like, well, the fans are too loud. The mic hears it. So then I had to move it over. I moved it onto a bookshelf that was nearby, but the, the rotational frequency made the whole bookshelf itself.
Mike DelGaudio: Resonate. So not only it acted almost like an amplifier. I love it. And so the, the bookshelf was acting like an amplifier. So then what I ended up doing is I moved the bookshelf into the other room, but that base energy I got rid of the fan noise, but that the base energy of the actual bookshelf itself.
Mike DelGaudio: the walls vibrating. I could still see it in my spectrogram. So then I had to further go and get by isolating feet, you know, um, a rubber isolation to, to decouple the NAS from the bookshelf. And that's what finally did it. So I had to add. Distance. I had to add isolation and I had to manage that base. I mean, so little things like, you know, people that have a PC on their desk, those PCs have often multiple fans that can make the thing resonate in weird ways.
Mike DelGaudio: It can make your whole desk resonate, not just through the pot filter, but the whole desk itself can resonate. It can be, it can be really challenging to try and figure out what you're hearing and then how to mitigate. Really challenging. Yeah. Yeah.
Jesco: Really challenging. Yeah. It's it, it, it is. It is. And it just shows also that you kind of gotta, you gotta go do it step by step.
Jesco: Yeah. If, if people watching this are kind of like, oh, there's so much going on and it's, it's so overwhelming. Take it in small steps. One thing at a time solve one problem at a time, make sure you follow that rabbit hole until you figure that out and then focus on the next thing. Yeah, but it just, again, it also just shows instead of trying to build an isolating booth, that is perfect.
Jesco: See as best as possible. If you can get rid of the disturbances first. Yeah, because it's not gonna get any easier than that. Yeah. If your family members are allowed or if your neighbors are allowed or whatever. Yeah. See. Or if they're kind of above you, if you're in an apartment block or something, talk to them and ask them whether they can, maybe in a certain time period during the day, be quiet or walk quietly.
Jesco: Yeah. Uh, if they have a, if there's a, a dishwasher or a washing machine that's rumbling or whatever, you know, talk to them, ask them if they can put in and put them on some pads, all this stuff is definitely gonna be. Then trying to isolate your booth. Yeah. Right. For sure. Um, so focus, focus on the focus on the disturbance first, and then see if you can, if, if that, if you can't do that, then think about the actual isolation,
Mike DelGaudio: right?
Mike DelGaudio: Because even the commercial booths, even the things that you can buy, I, I had a whisper room, but the studio bricks, you know, there's so many different commercial booths. They only do so much when it comes to isolation. Isolation is really, really challenging. So. You know, a, a whisper room takes maybe a few decibels away, but lawnmowers and especially low frequency, it still comes.
Mike DelGaudio: It still comes right through because there's so much energy in the, in those low frequencies. Not much you can do. That's right.
Jesco: really challenging or it's, it's just also hard to stop, you know, we're talking about, about sound that gets transmitted through the structure. It doesn't gets transmitted through the air.
Jesco: It enters, it literally enters the concrete or the, the, the brick framework, right. The structure of the building. And then it just travels through that. And then it comes out the wall that, that is right next to you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And the only way to stop that is to somewhere break that trans. And that's what decoupling is for.
Jesco: Yeah. So that's why I mentioned if you're trying to get rid of that lawnmower completely, you literally have to suspend that entire booth on some sort of decoupling pucks or whatever. And then there are special, special bird built, uh, devices to do that. Right. But it needs to be calculated. It's. It's engineering.
Jesco: It's not crazy difficult, but it needs to be done properly in order to work.
Mike DelGaudio: Yeah. Not something that you can just wing you can't just make it up. You can't just make it up. Cause chances are, you're not gonna re you're not gonna remove the frequencies that you're looking for, unless you really know what you're looking for.
Mike DelGaudio: It can be. Super challenging. I
Jesco: mean, worst case it's not gonna work, you know? I mean, if people are up for this, uh, people are always afraid of acoustics and I'm just like, look, you're not gonna break anything. right. Nobody's gonna die if you do something wrong. Yeah. It's just not gonna work. Right. All that.
Jesco: Great. Yeah. So, uh, few, I do do experiment. You know, if you're up for it, do experiment, gain experience. There is no substitute for trying something and. Learning what it actually does in practice. You know, people always ask me how much diffusion do you I need. And I'm just like, Ugh, that's something you need to kind of figure out for yourself.
Jesco: How lively do you want the space? That's a, a personal question, you know? Right. And you need to figure that out for yourself. So just try it. And if it doesn't work, do something different.
Mike DelGaudio: absolutely experimentation is the key. You'll just make constant. If you can just make constant 1% improvements over time.
Mike DelGaudio: If you make something, everything just a little bit better, eventually you'll get to the point where you've got it. Hopefully largely solved. And if you don't have, if you don't have that solution, then you can call on, you can call. People, uh, if I'm not mistaken, you have. Yeah. Or if,
Jesco: if it's a particular, yeah, go ahead.
Jesco: Go ahead. Or if it's just, if it's a particular, if it's a particular difficult situation, you know? Yeah. But, uh, that, that you can't figure out on your own. Yeah. But do, do try, try. Sure. Start stuff, figure something out.
Mike DelGaudio: Does your, um, you have, and I, I want, I want you to, to promote it here, but you have a, a, a, a framework for creating a home studio.
Mike DelGaudio: I know it's probably more towards like a, a music studio, but I'm sure there's a lot that carries over into just the general principles that we would have for voice. Um, would these things. Would some of these questions be answered in, in your framework and how could people, if, if you wanna describe it and, and promote it, I I'd love for you to tell my audience about it.
Jesco: Sure. Thank you. I mean, it, this is, so this is my home studio treatment framework, um, which maybe if you could put that in the description, a link that that would be great. My, basically it's, it's my, my, my top level approach to treating studios. It is very much focused on or aimed at home studio owners.
Jesco: That do music work. Yeah. So that includes the entire lower section of the, the frequency spectrum, right. And a big focus for me and people, people who know me know I talk about this is a lot, is when we're talking about a, a mixing setup, a production setup is how to position that in a room, which is really, really crucial.
Jesco: And isn't really that relevant for, for a voiceover people. But it's basically my, my five steps to treating a. Very very top level, um, to understand what to focus on at each step of the way. Yeah, because it can be really tricky to understand what of all those things that you can potentially do all those little steps in which order to actually go through them.
Jesco: So that one builds on the one that comes before. So that you're not trying, not turning in circles. You don't have you do to do something. And then you've realized crap, I forgot to do this one thing. And now I have to undo everything I've done and start over. Yeah. Right, right. So in order to avoid that, I created this, this framework that people can follow in in order to figure out.
Jesco: What their next step might be, uh, for their studio, or even just, if they're starting from scratch to understand what it is to focus on and what are those or what to ignore also, like what, what, what, what things to ignore depending on where you are in the process, because they're just not relevant at that point yet.
Jesco: Yeah. So, um, so yeah, that's my, my, my home studio treatment framework. Five steps to treating a room and to getting into
Mike DelGaudio: trans excellent. Well, I will definitely have links down to the description. Thanks. And, uh, and, and I encourage everybody to, to go over and subscribe to acoustic insider. You've been so gracious with your time with your expertise.
Mike DelGaudio: I'm really, really grateful for it. And I know, I know that the, the fellow boot junkies who are, who are. In the process of building their home studios, building their booths, whether it's for voiceover, whether voiceover is a portion of it for music, you've just been so gracious with your, with your time and expertise.
Mike DelGaudio: I'm really grateful for it. Thank you so much. You're very, very welcome. Anything else that we, that we need to talk about? Is there a, a ton. But you need to, that you wanna promote
Jesco: anything else there there's a ton to talk about always, but maybe not today.
Mike DelGaudio: well, great. Well, maybe we'll maybe we'll have a chance to, to do this again. When we, when we come across other, other acoustic, uh, other acoustic considerations, I I'd love to have you back on to, to talk more about this. I just love geeking out over this stuff. And absolutely, like I said, I'm really grateful for your expertise.
Mike DelGaudio: Thank you, Mike. And thank you for sharing it all on YouTube. It's so, so very helpful. So very helpful. I appreciate that. yeah, that's I, I never know how to end these things, so I'll come up with some sort of end but that's that was, that was so I think that was fun. So wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mike DelGaudio: You're welcome so much. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, that was cool. That was cool.