Sound dampening electronicly???

[Eclipse88]

I am a restaurant owner that is looking to dampen the sound in the bar without knocking out walls. I had heard of a piece of equipment that might help me out with that but am having a hard time tracking it down. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Matt
Matt@noshmodesto.com

[87PRS]

Hey Matt, truthfully I don't understand what you are talking about when you say you want to dampen the sound without knocking down walls??? Do you have bands playing in the room? Are you talking about played music, piped in music?? A system where you can talk over the music on inter-com....you'd have to be more specific for me to even give an educated guess.:confused:

[Audiodude]

Do you mean active noise cancellation?

There are devices like which "listen" for background noise and then generate an identical signal 180 degrees out of phase. Noise-cancelling headphones are the only commercially successful application of this. The result is is a significant drop in perceived noise - usually 20 dB or more.

Unfortunately, the practical lmitation of such devices is that they only work in one dimension. They only work if you are very close to the speaker driver itself. If you were to take the same technology and build it into a loudspeaker, there would indeed be a point at which the cancellation was excellent. But for all other points in the room, the speaker would actually ADD noise.

What sort of noise are you trying to eliminate? There are all sorts of methods to reduce ambient noise acoustically using ceiling and wall treatments without the need to break out the sledgehammer.

[Eclipse88]

Hey Matt, truthfully I don't understand what you are talking about when you say you want to dampen the sound without knocking down walls??? Do you have bands playing in the room? Are you talking about played music, piped in music?? A system where you can talk over the music on inter-com....you'd have to be more specific for me to even give an educated guess.:confused:

You are absolutely correct, that was a little vague. I have a bar that has cement floors, three large windows in the front, plaster ceiling and stucco walls. The echo that is happening in this bar is astounding. I am looking for a piece of electronic equipment that would break up some of the reverberation. If you have not heard of anything of this nature, thank you anyway. I hope this was more specific. Matt

[Gilligan8]

I really don't think this could be done electronically... aside from noise cancellation like audiodude was talking about and it's not at all easily implemented in open enviroments (I have read of it in office cubicles though. You need to fight physical reverberation with physical solutions.

[87PRS]

Hey Eclipse88 now I know exactly where you are coming from, the boomy, reverberated, echoing bar-room, been there done that many times. My suggestion is do not put anything on that cement floor except maybe some tile (people do dance-right?), since the walls have no sound dampening you need to put some material up there like audiodude sez; wood slats can be glued to the wall surface and really give the bar a nice look by using designs in the application, also just regular ceiling tiles can be applied (cheap stuff) and be very effective, the problem being hard reflective surfaces, even thick curtains can have a beneficial effect, plus anything installed to reduce the boominess can be done artistically to improve the looks of your establishment. The windows are main culprits in your problem, if you need to see out at least cover two of them, hope this helps out some.

[SEELEYJP]

hey..........I think what you need is "soft" objects in the room to absorb the sound being bounced around..........the electronic cancellation thing only works with headphones...........not practical in your situation..............think about getting maybe drapes or something to mount on walls that will look decent and not obvious to what they are for , acoustic drop ceiling tiles (mount directly to ceiling)........soft upholstered furniture.....if and where you can , some sort of carpet if and where you can..........oriental ?????.......plants or trees , fake or real located in corners to break up bass boom..........stuff like that , it is a start and will help make the club more livable.........if you still have problems , then look into additional "usually expensive" sound dampening techniques.........JON

[uncajesse]

Bass reflections can be dealt with somewhat, by using this nice lil toy
http://www.maxx.com//Content.aspx?id=174
i've been to many live events that could have used em, if only to lessen phase issues... but yeah, with higher frequencies, environmental issues can only be completely fixed in the environment (including the speaker design/positioning)

[Audiodude]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how they are using it, but that's not what the Maxxbass is designed to do. It's intended to maximize the perception of bass frequencies psycho-acoustically by enhancing the harmonics of bass notes in music. It lets you "feel" the bass even if your speakers or amps aren't really capable of handling it.

[87PRS]

right on Jeff, this club owner is having the typical reveberation-slap back problem often found in small acoustically un-treated clubs. Reminds me of all the clubs I walked in to play over the years and found concrete block walls and plaster ceilings with nothing on them to dampen any of the sound.

[jmail]

... but the environment makes for easy clean-up with a pressure-steam washer...

[uncajesse]

reguardless of what MaxxBass was "designed to do" it can be used for whatever it works for, right?

you should try it some time when you have troubles with low-end reverberation and pockets of bass collusion. it can really work wonders because it can remove the lowest (and hardest to get rid of) problem frequencies, without removing the perception of the sound.

one instance i was working recently an event as a video engineer and teching a Barco wall, and the video crew has a bunch of nice audio gear since they often run a full-channel tap off the audio matrix. the 'room' seats about 60,000. well during soundcheck i noticed the awfull ~8ft wide pockets of bass/no-bass. so i convinced sound (southern thunder sound) to patch a MaxxBCL onto FOH L/R. not only did it fix the problem, but it fixed bass problems they were having in the nose-bleed sections.

i doubt this is quite the same issues that Matt was having, which was probably an upper midrange issue i would guess, more of a direct surface problem, not a wave propigation/resonance problem... but eh, you wanted to know why i mentioned it. :)

[sabianq]

cant be done, you need to look at physical dampening solutions.

[uncajesse]

you're saying bass reflections (and other bass problems) can't be dealt with by almost completely removing the bass?

[Audiodude]

What I'm saying is that:

1) That's not what MaxxBass does. Actually the opposite. MaxxBass is a psychoacoustic bass enhancer. In increases the perception of bass frequencies by emphasizing their harmonics. And if you want to almost completely remove the bass, you can do that with an EQ filter.

2) There is no electronic solution to acoustical problems. The only way to fix the way a space sounds is to fix the space.

[uncajesse]

BCL has a filter in the MaxxBass section, here's a pic of it:
http://www.waves.com/objects/images/jpg/img/img_panel_LgMaxx_bcl.jpg
notice the HPF button.

What this does is remove the "real" bass, so you precieve low bass actually only generated by not-so-low bass.

The reality of it though is you are thinking like a mixer, and I'm thinking like an engineer. I'm done with this thread tho, no more peeps from me, even tho i know it works...

[TimmyP1955]

The answer is passive noise cancellation - you have to turn the unwanted noise into heat.

For unfinished or finished ceilings: http://www.internationalcellulose.com/home/products/k-13/

For finished ceilings and walls: http://www.primacoustic.com/index-broadway.htm