Becoming pissed off at my A7's.

[kev]

Recently discovered my mixes are sounding a hell of a lot better when tweaking on cans which is the complete reverse of how it used to be for me. I think i'm really bumping into the "having a shit room" syndrome these days. I'd hate to imagine what is going on in here nodewise!

May be moving into a new place next year, so before moving in maybe I need to have a serious think about equipment positioning, sound proofing and treatments available.

I was wondering if you guys have any particularly nice sites/resources to look at starting at a high level? I wouldnt mind planning out a complete scheme, the trouble is usually some of the lower level detail gets to me, and it gets a bit out of hand. Its likely to be a game of figuring out the best way to accomplish it with good value and without making the place look too ridiculous as it would be nice to have it double up as a livable environment, although I guess you cant have your cake and eat it. (so something of an average level mixing room I guess)

Anyway, just a ranty reminder that you can have whatever loudspeakers you want, but if your room is small and untreated you're going to be fucked haha.

 

[Uros]

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

You can learn all you need there, and even more.

 

[if6was9]

There's an episode of Pensado's Place on youtube with a top acoustician. Very, very worth watching. He comes out with tons of useful information and makes alot of sense. He claims 70% of the work with getting a rooom sounding right is speaker placement, 25% is room treatment and the last few percent are other things like EQ or room adjustment software type stuff. Breaks down how he goes about finding the right place for the speaker to go and how often the rules get thrown out the window when it comes to the real world.

In my experience alot of people start treating their rooms without even doing a measurement and doing some critical listening and just start building traps and sticking in superchunks.

 

[Nimvi]

This link is also very helpful: http://www.realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm
This should give you a "quickstart" guide into what you can do to improve your room. There are some other very useful links on that same site, so check out as much as you can. It was very enlightening to me.

The dilemma of adding treatment without making a room look like a bunker is a hard one to solve. You are right, it's pretty much impossible to have both at the same time without at least compromising in either direction. The rule of thumb seems to be "the more treatment, the better". However, it should also be said that sóme treatment is always going to be better than none at all (if done correctly ofcourse), so depending on your expectations, you could still get decent results with partial treatment I guess.

If I would want to keep it minimal, I think the first things I would look into is putting basstraps in the corners behind the speakers, and in the tri-corners (wall/wall/ceiling or wall/wall/floor) of the room, since as far as I understand, those will be the biggest troublemakers. If you can still go further than that, creating a reflection free zone should help for enhancing your stereo-image (in my current room, I actually struggle more with this than with bass buildup). But the cheapest and probably most effective start is, as if6was9 said, to find the best speakerplacement and listeningposition in your room, so absolutely check that out before you try anything else. Sitting in a corner with your speakers below earlevel is going to suck, no matter how much you treat your room.

I've started building my own basstraps a few days ago, and I'm using this method: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10297
So far the only trouble I've had was finding a material similar to the popular Owens-Corning insulation in the Netherlands without having to order a full pallet of that stuff...this might become a problem for you too in the UK. I ended up getting a decent deal from a local industrycomplex, so that won't help you, sadly. I got Rockwool 434 Rockfit (without protectionlayers) for the basstraps, since it has similar specs to Owens-Corning 703. I also got Rockwool 211, which has lower density, for the reflection free zone and some general absorption. I'm not done building all the traps and putting them in place yet, but their stability seems surprisingly rugged so far and they are a lot more affordable than commercial traps. As soon as I'm done putting everything in place, I will report about my experience

 

[TofNazareth]

Most helpful thread ever.

 

[vespiz]

+1 to all of the above.

Making broadband absorbers is not difficult nor expensive. And I thought fun as well. But I'm weird like that. Superchunks were even more easier.

 

[John_C]

Making broadband absorbers is not difficult nor expensive. And I thought fun

+1