Q: "How much should I cover my walls with Studiofoam?"

(For the answer to this Tech Tip, we defer to our friends at Auralex.)

A: Never 100%! Well, almost never. If you are building an anechoic chamber or a really tight vocal booth, we can talk about 100% coverage. Any other room usually falls in the 25% to 75% range for coverage. And this is only for walls and ceiling.

Some general guidelines we've come up with over the years include:

- Control Rooms for rock, pop, rap, hip-hop, r&b, country, techno, gospel, MIDI music, etc. usually benefit from 50% to 75% coverage and mostly absorption.

- Control Rooms for jazz, art (classical), choral, acoustic, world and other forms of ensemble music usually benefit from 35% to 50% coverage. The only catch is that the Control Room be a little more ''dead'' than the main recording or ''Live Room.'' Diffusion is usually used more generously in these types of Control Rooms.

- Control Rooms where ''anything goes,'' well, either a very ''neutral'' room, or even something variable to tailor the acoustics to the needs of users.

In the end, your best bet is to simply call Sweetwater and speak with one of our Sales Engineers. With the dimensions of your room, and a little input from you based on your typical genre of music production, we can design an acoustic treatment package that meets your room and budget needs.