Picked up a few foam blocks from a warehouse earlier was wondering if they will do the job for a clearer sound in my room? They have no ridges like typical acoustic foam so not sure. They are also a bit denser than normal.

3 sizes of foam:
1. 14in x 10in x 2in thick
2. 12in x 10in x 2in thick
3. 14in x 10in x 4in thick

it was free so trying to take advantage of this, any ideas?

ps. considering making a little vocal box with these

 

Auralex tiles really works and is flame retardant. Hope I never need flame retardant, but can't hurt. They are expensive. But anything that breaks up flat hard surfaces will make a difference. Building a little room by hanging blankets off of stands or ladders looks like little kids playing, but that can work surprisingly well, too.

 

yeah heard they are the go-to business but these foam blocks i picked up were free, thanks again for the info!

 

Sounds like they are the sort of foam that will do a good job taming upper frequencies from bouncing off all the walls and revealing how crappy your room is, but most 'foam' won't help with the lower end/bass frequencies much.

In other words, it should work great for a little vocal booth area, but don't expect it to treat a whole mix room or something.

 

Keep as much foam out of the studio as you can! It makes the room sounds dull and lifeless! This foam is nice if you build speakers, to put it inside. But dont use it in the studio. Only amateurs, who have no idea what they are doing, use foam in the studio, they think it looks professional but its only for stupid. I recommend you build your absorber by yourself, its cheaper and way more effective. If you wanna know how to do it, contact me, i can teach you.

 

The foam will help .. make sure you get some foam / acoustical bass traps to go with them. Bass waves are generally very long, and the bass traps will help a lot with the "room" sound

addition to the above post ... Teletoby is correct ... you can "over" use foam or acoustical materials. Your should only use as much acoustical foam as is necessary to kill the natural reflections in the room. You do not want to room to sound dead, or lifeless, but you don't want any reverberation to occur either. Remember, reverberation is, simply put ... very very fast echo. So... it is those naturally occuring reflections that you want to stop buy using Auralex or some other material to absorb those reflections. In addition, don't forget the bass traps. Many bass waves will be longer than your room (specially in small project studios), and the bass traps will keep those waves from bouncing around your room. Hope this helps. You might want to go to Auralex's web site and read a little about this.

 

cork and cardboard boxes of eggs, should do the trick!
i dont know what a hell i'm talking about
sorry trying to do comedy here, and i know this is a musician forum, this is serious stuff, i actually want to know about this matter also. i read something about it few years ago, but each site/blog says different stuff of it

 

Foam works pretty good in vocal booths (as it takes care of mids and highs, not lows). Don't buy expensive Auralex. Get the thickest.

In control-rooms you might want to make DIY absorbers, diffusers (QRD, skyline, etc), basstraps, Helmholtz resonators. Cheaper and much better than any foam out there. :P

 

foam in any room : only for SPECIFIC troubles like putting it on wall behind bass reflex events (i don't care, mine are frontal ), on the opposite wall facing your monitors...but not as "do it all" solution.

And even then, diffusion is often better in the mids-highs freqs than absorption.
Absorption is very important for low-mid, bass freqs only with basstraps and such.

You can't absorb too much low-mid,bass freqs...but you can definitely kill your room with mids,highs freqs absorption
We are not foam ppl living in a foam anechoic world

As far as vocal booth, it should work, but only very good fiber panels will absorb some low-mids.

If you are worried about bass freqs, make a fabric booth more like fitting rooms/dressing rooms : low-mids, bass will pass through into your room (less troubles), and most mids-highs will be filtered. But of course, less isolation too...

PS : a lot of ppl still think egg boxes work because they look like acoustic panels...but not they create resonance under them, they kill some very limited freqs and so create uneven balance. Same applies to foam, in a less horrible way.

 

I just use the Auralex for a closet that is now a vocal booth, because the mid-rangy ambiance in my living room can build up in unpleasant ways on vocal tracks. (I like it on my drum kit) I also got some folding Shoji type screens at the discount store and attached some tiles to those. Then I move those around to kill certain nasties when I am doing mic placement for other instruments. Sometimes "baffling" not how much or what it is, but where you put it to block the reflections. And really, fire safety is something to keep in mind. Fill a room with something that burns fast and toxic, mix with electrical devices, and it's a mixture for tragedy has happened before.