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As a musician, this may not be an essential skill that you need to learn. However, it will be an added advantage if you are looking forward to speak the same language with the audio engineer in your studio. As a recording engineer/acoustic consultant, this is somehow considered an essential knowledges to master in your career.

1.1. Acoustic Treatment = Soundproof?















A lot of people may often misunderstood the terms of "Acoustic Treatment" as Soundproofing. "Soundproof" may seem attractive enough for certain people when building up their studio. The truth is NO.  Soundproofing could be just a subset of Acoustic Treatment.

Theoretically, Acoustic Treatment is the process and methods of dealing with the acoustic problems in an untreated room/area. Acoustic problems could be background noise, over-colored room reverberation, excessive flutter echos, muddy low end, and many more.

*Notes: Depends on your application, a control room may have different design requirements and way of treatment when comparing to a vocal booth or recording room.

1.2. 3 Basic Subsets of Acoustic Treatment
To simplify this, we are categorizing the acoustic issues into 3 simple subsets (Isolating, Enhancing, Spreading). A mixture of these 3 subsets would eventually help your room sounds better.

Refer to image below.



















1. Soundproofing - Stop or isolate all the sound travelling from an enclosed space to another unenclosed space or vice versa.
2. Sound Absorption - Cutting out excessive echo/reverberation and also noise level within the enclosed space.
3. Sound Diffusion - Ability to scatter all the reflected sound to an intended directions or all direction within an enclosed space.

1.3. Materials
I believe many of you have seen, heard or used eggcrate box as an acoustic solution to call the soundproofing or absorption effect in your room. Let us find out now the mystery of eggcrate now.

In this case, lets find out the normal density of eggcrate box along with the materials which deem to be effective for soundproofing as well as sound absorption.

Normal Egg Carton Density : approximately 650 - 700 kg/m3
2" Industial Level Acoustic Foam Density: approximately 30 - 50 kg/m3
(source validated by Engineering Toolbox - http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/density-solids-d_1265.html)


*Notes: kg/m3 is the unit to measure the density of a solid.

Apparently, the density of normal egg carton is actually higher than the industrial level acoustic foam. Therefore, it is not considered as an effective material for sound absorption.

2. Windows vs Mac vs Linux

Do you still think we need super computer to start a quality yet simple recording?

3. DAW - Digital Audio Workstation

Once you have a PC, you need a DAW, which is also commonly called as "Digital Audio Workstation", "Recording Software", "Music Arrangement Software" by people. The digital audio workstation is a software which allow you to carry out your recording and also music arrangement task more efficiently.





















There are many DAW in the market regardless of paid or open source. You only need to pick the right one and put in some effort and time to learn them. However, we strongly suggest get a lifetime licence of paid DAW.

3.1. What are the common DAW used in the industry?
For Windows Users - Cubase/Nuendo, FL Studio, Mixcraft, Pro Tools, Ableton, Bitwig, Cakewalk, Studio One & etc.
For Mac Users - Garageband, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton, Logic Pro

3.2. Why Are Some DAWs So Expensive? Paid or Open Source (Free)?

There is no specific answer to this. The fact that you may need to know is the pricing of DAWs have been dropping to the extent of affordable for everyone who is serious in music production to use it.

Reasons?
First off, developers need to be paid for their time and knowledge, which are major expenses. Then they need to continue offering on-going support for the product, which isn't free. Just like you need to be paid by your client to produce the best content to them from time to time.