Sound Recording Room / Foley Room - Sound Absorption

NOTE: This is for recording DRY sound effect source material and it's NOT for recording music (if that is what you want to do, you should not treat the entire room like I have =)

While building my sound recording room I made some sound recording tests for all the various steps of treating the room to absorb sound reflection. This video goes through what I did and compares the sound result by demonstrating speech and hand claps.

In order not to make the speech volume way too low I used fast limiter and increased the audio gain by 20 dB because the hand clap peaks are extremely loud compared to the speech. I also increased gain of the speech segments by another 6 dB.

At 17:25 in the video you can find a quick comparison between the different stages.

The purpose of this room is to record dry source material with no echo or reverb (at least very little of it) and also isolating from disturbing sounds. I've built this room in my detached garage so it's a separate room within the garage. It does totally remove the sounds of trucks or lorries driving past right outside the garage and I also have to be aware of airplanes when recording very silent sounds like pen / paper etc.

Still, I'm happy with the performance of this room as it is now and I am creating many sounds for libraries and sound design in this room at the moment.

The pyramid foam I used for the final layer is t.akustik SA-P80 (http://www.thomann.de/se/the_takustik...)

Microphone in video: Rode NT2-A
Recorder: Sound Devices 633

http://www.universalsoundfx.com

Length: 3.5m, Width: 2.6m, Height 2.3m (interior with foam. will vary somewhat since the 80mm foam is pyramid shape so it'll be +- 1dm or so.

COST BREAKDOWN:
Remember, this is in Sweden where everything is expensive! Roughly broken down in categories in USD $:

Wood Studs: $416
Plaster Boards: $138
Insulation (120mm): $426
Glue+Screw+Hinges+etc: $140
Lights & Electrical: $137
Thomann t.akustik SA-P80 Pyramid Foam 1000x1000x80 x 40pcs: $669
Thomann t.akustik CBT-37 Corner Bass Trap 370x370x600 x 16pcs: $388
Stairville Acoustic Studio Curtain 3 x 3m x 4pcs: $471
Stairville Acoustic Studio Curtain 4 x 3m x 6pcs: $1020
Carpet: $157

TOTAL: US $3967
(and then -25% VAT since I am a business, the actual total comes to US $3173)

I needed to sell 80 copies of my Universal Sound FX bundle to break even =)