Damn Brick walls

stevood

Hi,

We have moved practice space and we are in a room with painted cinder block walls. The problem is the feedback is constant.

We have access to a lot of polystyrene and cardboard etc but was wondering if any body had any tips/advise on what way to stop all the feedback from these open walls

Thanks

Ste

Seziertisch

By feedback I presume you mean reflections.

First up, get some baffling around the drums. Maybe something on the roof above them, and something to isolate them from the floor.

Secondly, possibly consider using smaller amps to rehearse. Everybody playing through stacks or half stacks in a smallish room with lots of parallel, hard, reflective surfaces will just lead to mush (as you have already noticed)

i57dwun4yb1pt8

even hanging some thick sheets on the walls would kill the high end reflections to save your hearing

studiorat

You could also try a brick wall limiter.

PaulBrewer

Or Parallel Compression?

PaulBrewer

How big is the room and how high is the ceiling?

stevood

Hi,

Thanks for the replies,

The room is about 10ft high and about 20 X 20.

PaulBrewer

stevood wrote: »

Hi,

Thanks for the replies,

The room is about 10ft high and about 20 X 20.

It's probably the case that it's a manky sounding room as every measurement is the same multiple of the height.

If it's totally untreated it's going to be very live and it's trying to cut through that which is causing the monitors/PA to be turned up , hence creating feedback.

Basically what you need to is deaden the room down in some way. Carpet or rugs on the floor is an obvious starting point.

Cover the walls in anything you can that's softish.

If you even deaden one wall and have that behind the band it may be enough to reduce reflections to make things controllable.

The room is quite big so if you could reduce the room size by suspending a drape or even a carpet from floor to ceiling (behind the band) that combined with floor covering might tame things.

This won't make the room sound good, but might make it workable.

Of course if you wanted to invest a bit of cash in a long term solution that could be done too.

teamdresch

Where are your microphones relative to the PA speakers?
If they are anywhere other than pointing away from the speakers, you're in feedback town.

PaulBrewer

teamdresch wrote: »

you're in feedback town.

The Town Square, Main Street, Feedback Town ...