One place to start is to read the articles on the Real Traps site: Real Traps

Ethan Winer, one of the owners, is active on this forum and may see your post also.

There are DIY projects and ideas around as well. Just start Googling.

The cheapest way to get 80% of room treatment without spending any money is to put up bookshelves with books, soft furniture and rugs.

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Where to get started if you want to treat your room for acoustics.

Thanks to Elk for mentioning me and my company. Below is my canned answer, which in just a few words explains the basics.

--Ethan

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Room treatment is a deep subject, and a complete answer requires far more than will fit into a single reply here. So here's the short version which will get you 99 percent of the way there. All rooms need:

* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps straddling as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners. More bass traps on the rear wall behind helps even further. You simply cannot have too much bass trapping. Real bass trapping, that is - thin foam and thin fiberglass don't work to a low enough frequency.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.

* Some additional amount of mid/high absorption and/or diffusion on any large areas of bare parallel surfaces, such as opposing walls or the ceiling if the floor is reflective. Diffusion on the rear wall behind you is also useful in larger rooms.

For the complete story see my Acoustics FAQ.

There's a lot of additional non-sales technical information on my company's web site - articles, videos, test tones and other downloads, and much more.

--Ethan

ATS offers super affordable products, and might be a good match for you, especially considering that you're in a rental apartment. And best of all? They sell DIY acoustics material. A lot of people seem to report back with great results, although I'm sure Ethan's RealTraps would be in a different league...

http://www.atsacoustics.com/store

Also, on room treatment primers, I found this page useful:

http://www.rivesaudio.com/resources/links/frame.html

Good luck, Pra!

I would like to thank you all again...I think I have enough information...its gonna be fun for the next few months...

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* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps straddling as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners. More bass traps on the rear wall behind helps even further. You simply cannot have too much bass trapping. Real bass trapping, that is - thin foam and thin fiberglass don't work to a low enough frequency.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.
--Ethan

I am planning to build my own acoustic panels for room treatment. Does the broadband bass traps and mid/high frequency absorbers resemble same in construction (for eg: 4in thick owens corning 703, 2ftx4ft panels). Is it that when we place the panel in first reflection point it acts a mid/high absorber and when we place it in corners where two walls meets it acts as a broadband bass trap?...or are they different in construction?

a neat solution is found at readytraps.com. they sell these hypoalergenic bags to put the OC 703 or 705 in. the fiberglass does not escape the bags and contaminate the room. the bags are only $29 each and they will either sell you the insulation or you can buy it locally (i did that and saved some money) they also sell them assembled, but that is a good deal more money. once bagged up, you can either hang them or move them around your room to find the best location. the colors of the bags are nice, neutral colors and black, so they blend in pretty well. one box of panels has 6 2" panels, so i made two 2" units and 2 4" units. the 2" units are at 1st reflection and the 4" are in the rear corners for now. very large difference in low frequency resolution (plaster walls in my house). all totalled, it was about $200. a lot of bang for the buck.

tom

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Does the broadband bass traps and mid/high frequency absorbers resemble same in construction

They can either be the same made from plain rigid fiberglass, or you can use FRK rigid fiberglass (or add a cardboard face manually) to the bass traps. But this is only for corner bass traps. You need plain material for reflection points, and the rear wall behind you too if it's closer than about 10 feet.

--Ethan