Acoustic treatment involves treating the rooms with sound absorbing materials

Acoustic Treatment
Acoustic treatment involves treating the rooms with sound absorbing materials. The sound absorbing materials help in reducing echo, reverberation, and standing waves. Absorbing materials like mineral wool and acoustic foam do not prevent sound from escaping from the room. For example, acoustic tiles will reduce the ‘liveness’ of the room and make it more appropriate for recording music, performing music, and even listening to music.
Acoustic isolation of the room from the world outside is soundproofing. Also, leakage of sound between rooms is reduced by it. For example, if there are two adjoining recording rooms soundproofing is needed for reducing Studio B affecting Studio A.
Room isolation will be improved by mineral wool and acoustic foam but to a very less extent only. A lot of work and cost are involved for being able to soundproof properly. A room inside a room needs to be built for gaining perfect sound isolation. This is very costly but some easy and cheap solutions are there that can lessen sound leakage and improve sound isolation. Firstly a good idea is to seal windows and doors completely, as sound transmission mostly occurs from this. After this is done installing a ventilation unit is needed. Turning the sound levels down is another solution.
Acoustic foam is needed for reducing reverberation time and to usually improve the room acoustics. Installation of products like bass traps and acoustic tiles makes recordings tight and defined instead of having a lot of color and an unmanageable room.
There is also a need for acoustic treatment in a room where mixing will be taking place. If there is a lot of echo and a reverberation time is very long in the room then mixes will not be in harmony and badly judged.
But there can be an installation of a lot of acoustic treatment. There will be unnatural recording due to this. The results will display an absence of color and it will be very difficult to work in the room created. This is why a room is never treated with acoustic foam totally. Work should be done on percentages. The start will be with the minimum and little by little has to be added until the perfect sound is got or the sound the client is striving to get. When some of the ceiling and walls are left bare still there are some reflective surfaces helping in keeping the room live a little bit. There is no similarity between rooms and a lot of planning and forethought are required for each and every room. The construction of a room, the proportion of its width to its height and length all have a bearing on the sounding of the room and the extent of acoustic treatment needed.