Auralex

This is a pad that can isolate a guitar amp from vibrating throughout the room. There are other ways of doing this, like using chairs and stuff, but those are still technically flawed. Isolating the amp so that it rings throughout the room without touching the floor is an ideal way to get a good sound. Vibrations in the floor can limit the tone significantly and really muddy up the low end of your signal. Therefore it is good to have some sort of separation from the floor so that you can prevent this from happening. I think that this is one of the cooler things you can buy to help get a better sound. It's really cheap and it'll do a lot to prevent uncessesary loss of signal. Listening with this will give your sound more low end clarity and less unnatural resonance, both of which are beneficial to sound. Another good thing about it is it opens up new spots in the room to put an amplifier. It'll allow you to get closer to spots that would vibrate when the amp is placed on the floor, places that were thus unavailable before. This opens up room micing opportunities a lot. I would say that it's functionality is pretty limited, but it's also a pretty cheap piece of material. If you don't have a good sounding room already, you're probably not going to benefit much from this piece of gear. However, if you own a studio and you want to get better sounds out of your amplifiers, I think that this would probably be a fine choice and it wouldn't be too enormous of a purchase. It's one of those things that you wouldn't necessarily need but can definitely improve your sound.

I bought some Auralex DST 112's to cut down on room reflections in my control room. My studio control room is an odd, long shape. In such situations, it would be ideal to have the mixer and monitors at one end of the long room, but my room is not conducive to this because it is too narrow. The studio glass, in order to see the recording room, is on the back wall of one of the long ends, meaning that the other wall is not far behind my chair. I've used Auralex DST 112's in conjunction with other studio foam on the wall behind my monitors but also on the wall behind where I sit. I think it has made a big improvement on cutting down on room reflections, as I played a bunch of different material before I hanged the foam and then shortly thereafter (it was a day long project). Generally, studio foam should be placed here and there to cut down on reflections, but in this case the wall behind me is nearly completely covered with the foam going in varying directions to cut down on the room reflections. To this regard, it does a decent job, but keep in mind that studio foam does nothing in the way of sound proofing. Some people claim that cheaper stuff will work just as well. I've never tried the "cheaper stuff" but I am satisfied with the difference this makes in my control room. The Auralex DST 112, in conjunction with some of the other Auralex studio foam products, should make a difference in taming the room reflections of your own studio environment.

I don't own a set of Auralex Mopads as I currently mix on headphones. However, I made my way over to a friend's home studio (he studies music production) where he owns a pair of KRK Rokit8's. This was before I even understood the concept of proper acoustic treatment for anything at all, so when I saw those brilliant yellow monitors sitting on four pieces of foam, I only had a vague idea of what it was supposed to be for. So he showed me. He was working on a project that I had come over to listen to. When I asked about the silly pieces of foam his monitors were sitting on, he just had to prove it to me. We listened to his mix (it was a heavy rock mix) originally with the KRK's sitting on the Mopads and I, not understanding the difference, didn't really get what was so special about it. Then, he removed the Mopads and we listened to it again. WOW. I was blown away at how spoiled the Mopads made me. The mix sounded comparatively terrible! It wasn't that they were actually bad, but the difference was noticeable. If I recall correctly, his desk was made of a cheap wood, so perhaps this further exacerbated the comparatively poor sound that resulted. The clear result of using the Mopads was clearly an increase in precision, an unmuddying, and unrattling of the sound. It made the sound a lot more crisp and clean, and it prevented the distracting and metallic rings that plagued the mix without them. If I ever make the switch the using monitors (when I find a permanent room to treat; I'm always moving around), I will certainly invest in the Auralex Mopads! They may not appear to be cheap, but I assure you, they are well worth it, as I learned that day.

The Auralex Max Wall is a unique sound proofing device that is perfect for use in home studios where perhaps the acoustics might not be the best for recording in. The Max Wall can be used in a variety of different ways, as it is adjustable to be used in a few different ways. The main thing that I have experience using it for is as an isolation booth. You can however, also stretch it out and use it as a go-bo (go between), or even as a back drop behind your monitors. The Max Wall definitely has a lot of versatility, which is why I believe it is such a powerful thing to have for home studio owners. While a professional studio could benefit for something like this too, most pro studios already have enough sound proofing and/or isolation booths to make something like this not really necessary. However, it should certainly be taken on a case by base basis. The Auralex Max Wall generally feel pretty sturdy, as goes for the stands that it sits, which is a crucial thing as you of course need it to stay in place at all times. It also has a small window on it so you can see through it if you want to make contact with someone on the outside of vice versa. While I'm sure you could build something like this yourself, buying the Max Wall offers up convenience and top notch craftsmanship, as Auralex is very well known for making high quality sound proofing foam and other equipment. The price is perhaps a bit much for this, but when you consider that you're getting a pretty good iso booth at this price, it doesn't seem as bad. I'd absolutely recommend the Auralex Max Wall for any home studio owner in need of some isolation.