The Score Magazine - Archive January 2017 issue! | Page 41

Sriram Ravishankar
TECH
Absorption and diffusion plays a very important role; say in
common terms, making the room dead or alive. Or achieving a
balance between these two extreme acoustic environments. and the desired results are very difficult to achieve, this is
mainly because of the cost of the materials, time and the skilled
labor required getting the job done.
More on soundproofing vs acoustic treatment? Materials generally used in addition to the mason wall are high
density board, medium density boards, special acoustic panels
etc. Advanced designs like a floating unit (a room within a
room concept) is highly recommended for controlling structural
vibrations and absolute isolation.
Sound proofing comes under acoustic treatment. People often
get confused with soundproofing and acoustic treatment inside
the room. Soundproofing help us control the level of sound that
travels in and out of a room. Sound Transmission Class (or STC)
is the rating of how well a partition attenuates airborne sound.
A combination of mass law, damping, decoupling and absorption
should help you achieve good results.
On the other hand, acoustic treatment helps us manage the
sound trapped inside the room by controlling their reflections.
This helps us design how well the energy is distributed within
the room by controlling the reverberation time, room modes,
imaging etc. Panels used for sound proofing with backing layer
also helps us control the extreme low frequencies inside the room
as the entire surface behaves like a panel absorber.
Which are best materials to use while soundproofing on a
shoestring budget?
Sound proofing on a shoe string budget is technically not possible
How is acoustic treatment done differently for control rooms
and live rooms?
The ratio between sound absorption and diffusion plays an
important role here. We plan and design a balance between
usage of bass traps, panel and porous absorbers, quadratic
residue diffusers, sound redirectors’ etc. to achieve this. The
fundamental thing to remember is increasing the absorption area
will help you make the room dead and adding more diffusion will
make the room bright. A small room whether live or console,
need to be made a little dead, for medium or bigger size rooms
you can achieve the required RT60 by varying the ratio between
absorption and diffusion. Movable acoustic panels are of great
use in bigger live rooms, this helps you vary the reverberation
time as required.
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