I've got a 36' x 36' pole barn, and just got the concrete floor poured earlier this week. Tomorrow we put up 48 feet of drywall (a full wall and 12 feet around a corner and slap some blue/green paint on it. The thing is, this space is one major echo box. With the dirt/conveyor-belt floor and a bunch of junk in the barn the echo was tolerable. Now I've got about a 2.5s tail.

I'll be moving some junk back into the barn, and that will help disperse things, but I really need to dampen the echos, and I need to keep the price down. I won't be ordering an acre of Auralex.

I'm thinking that I should look for blankets and quilts at the local thrift store. I can hang these a few inches from the exposed walls and use them as a ceiling over our "stage".

Some questions:

* Any idea if this will be effective enough?

* Any other low-cost ideas?

* What do the big guys (also with big rectangular buildings, hard greenscreens and concrete floors) do for sound treatment?

Note: I don't need sound proofing. (We're in a quiet area.) I need dispersion and damping.

Thanks!

The big guys order the acre of Auralex :-)

One trick is that they don't usually just paint the walls. The walls are treated acoustically, and the cycs are built a few feet away from the "real" wall. The cycs are not pure vertical, but are angled slightly and coved into the floor.

Other lower cost things to consider:
Home-made acoustic tiles built out of a wooden frame filled with Owens-Corning acoustic insulation and covered with fabric.
Thick (2" or more) sheets of styrofoam on the walls.
Convoluted packing foam. It doesn't give the control of Auralex foam, but it helps and is much cheaper.

Old, heavy moving blankets. Now sold as "acoustic treatment" but theyr'e the same thing.
Convoluted packing foam and bed foam is illegal in all 50 states if this is anything but your own private, family type shooting location. It's not fire retardant. Remember Rhode Island?

I have a couple articles on acoustic treatments on the VASST site, and there are some great articles on the soundproofingmyths website as well.