Acoustic Treatment: Treating a room with Windows and Doors

Do you have a first reflection point on a window or a door on the back wall of your studio? This video will help you treat windows and doors with professional acoustic treatments.


GIK's Free Advice Form:
https://www.gikacoustics.com/acoustic-advice/



Free Standing Options:
https://www.gikacoustics.com/product-category/free-standing-products/

Sound Proofing vs Acoustic treatment:
https://youtu.be/nxiwWfvIdKY




"It’s easy to come up with an effective treatment strategy in a blank rectangular room, but the real rooms that we treat have windows and doors in them that can affect how we approach treatment.

Many people worry about the effect windows have on their room’s acoustics but windows are only slightly more reflective than drywall, so just having a window in your room isn’t a problem. It’s when we need to place treatment in front of that window where we run into trouble.

If we can arrange our speakers and listening position so that the window is on the front wall we face while listening, then we can avoid a majority of the reflections from hitting the window all together.

If we’re stuck with a window on a sidewall or first reflection point then we’ll need to place treatment in front of it to effectively deal with early reflections. Nailing hooks into glass isn’t the best strategy, but luckily we have a few options for using free standing panels to treat areas where we cannot permanently hang treatments.

GIK’s Metal Stands, Foot Kit, and boom stand brackets are all designed to transform our panels into free standing acoustic treatments. Other options like the free stand panel and bass trap or the PIB and screen panel, can be used in front of windows and doors and can be put away when they’re not needed.

GIK’s corner treatments, like the soffit and and tri trap are free standing and stackable and can also be used in front of windows and doors if needed.

Depending on the type of door you might be able to mount a panel directly onto the door. These can usually be a stock size, or some GIK products are available in custom sizes. Either way you can get a panel that’s small enough to fit on your door and still open and close normally.

Treating a window or door is as easy as just placing a free standing panel in front of it, but what if we want to keep sound from passing through some of these openings?

It’s important to note that soundproofing and acoustic treatment are very different problems to solve. Our panels can sometimes help muffle sound bleed a bit under some conditions, but to really stop sound we’ll have to do things like make sure the window has enough mass and an airtight seal around it.

Sound leaking through doors can sometimes be improved by using weather stripping to fill the cracks beneath and around the door. You may not think that the crack beneath your door is that substantial, but a 1% opening in a wall lets in 50% of the sound.

Effective soundproofing, especially at bass frequencies, is a result of many things done correctly at the design & construction stage, but these techniques can help improve things.

If you want to learn more about the differences between acoustic treatment and soundproofing, we've made an entire video on the subject which we'll include in a link below.

Remember, just having a window in the room isn’t going to cause problems with the acoustics, and GIK’s freestanding options make it easy to treat areas where mounting treatment to the wall isn’t an option. If you’re still wondering how best to treat your space, check out our free acoustic advice forum on the GIK website where you can find tons of useful tools, articles and videos."