can someone help with treating my room?

[bryan_kilco]

Ok, so I finally have a room to convert into a mixing room. This would be my first attempt at a "proper" room.

The room is roughly 15'x9'. I wanted to setup my desk along one of the 9' walls as to my understanding, it's better to have the audio travel a farther distance before being reflected/absorbed/diffused. I can't set up there, though, since there is a baseboard heater there. The opposite wall is a big closet with doors.

So, I'm pretty much stuck along one of the 15' walls.

I played some audio the other day and it was insanely bad.

What it comes down to is, I need treatment. I have to do it little by little since I just moved and don't have boat loads of $ right now.

Can anyone point me towards a decent and affordable site that offers bundles of absorption tiles, diffusers, etc? Or any advice on what I could possibly do to make my setup a little better?

I'll try to make a diagram of the room a little later when I get time.

 

[Studdy]

Very broad subject. Best simple advice is to treat all the corners with bass traps. A minimum 4 inches of OC703 or alike, 6 inches or Superchunk is even better. Then try some absorption at early reflection points. As soon as you have all the corners treated the room will instantly sound so much more controlled. This is by no means "scientific" this is just my own messing aorund with room sound. But I kind of look at it like treating the corners and getting the low end under control is first. Then once I have that looked after I can now actually hear the room sound and start to sculpt the "sound" of the room. Different materials/diffusion around the room can lead to dullness or liveliness. I think my mentality is that ideally i want a "balanced" sound for my mixing/control area. And for tracking most things. Sometimes a "brighter" more live sounding room can make instruments come alive (drums, live strings, etc.) Where budget is of utmost importance, a balanced room, fairly dead is what I would go for but everyone is different. I just know that I can achieve a better sound in my modest studio using reverbs, impulses with controlled decays and times as opposed to trying to have a world class sounding room. Hope this helps.

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

You're really going to want to face the short wall - but you don't need to push your desk right up against it either, so the baseboard heater shouldn't be too much of an impediment. In fact, the ideal listening position is about 38% the length of the room, so with (15')(.38), your ideal position is about 5'8" away from the wall. See here: http://realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm

The reason you don't want to set up along the long wall is that having a wall that close behind you is going to wreak havoc on your low end. If it's truly unavoidable, you're going to need to HEAVILY treat the back wall with thick absorbers and bass traps. It's doable, it's just not ideal.

AS far as treatment, you can DIY some fabric-covered insulation to make broadband absorbers; google "DIY Bass Traps" or such. Popular materials include Owens-Corning 703 fiberglass or any generic "rockwool" product. The important spots to treat are any corners (where bass builds up) and also the first reflection points. Have a buddy hold a mirror on the side walls while you sit in your listening position, and slide the mirror along the wall. Any spot where you can see your studio monitors in the mirror should be treated.

 

[bryan_kilco]

the ideal listening position is about 38% the length of the room, so with (15')(.38), your ideal position is about 5'8" away from the wall.

See I don't know much, if any, of the math behind this. Thanks for this. I figured I could pull it away from the heater a bit but 5'8" seems like I'd almost be wasting space. I understand for best results, I have to do what I have to do. I was also thinking of a way to separate my tower and place it farther away, but I'd need extensions for basically everything hooked up to it.

Would a pack of these be ideal? Seems decently priced. Not sure if I should go with 1", 2", or what....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-12-x-12...d=100005&prg=1088&rk=3&rkt=5&sd=310760085172&

I found some OC703 on eBay and (6) 48"x24"x2" comes to around $70. The 4" stuff is noticeably more expensive. I guess I need to figure out my permanent desk placement before worrying about treatment.....

 

[Studdy]

You need mass, those foam panels with leave you with a dead sounding boomy mess. They wont even do anything to the low mids i doubt. These might be okay for reflection points but start with bass trapping.

 

[schismatic]

Use something like OC703 and build bass traps. Treat the corners primarily. I made stripwood frames, laid slabs of Rockwool on top and then staple-gunned fabric around them and hung them on the walls (or placed upright in corners). DIY option by far the cheapest if you have the tools.

 

[bryan_kilco]

But would it be a completely horrible and idiotic move to leave my desk along the 15' wall?

 

[Studdy]

Once again not a scientific answer here, but I would have my desk positioned in the room long ways and I would try having your head/mix position about 30% back front wall. Just suggestions \m/

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

But would it be a completely horrible and idiotic move to leave my desk along the 15' wall?

Nah, it's just not an "ideal" position and will most likely require a lot more time and work to achieve a neutral-sounding monitoring environment. There are so many variables at work here - room shape, ceiling height, wall material, position of windows & doors, furniture and other stuff in the room, etc - that there's really no way to regard any advice as a hard & fast "rule". If you're happy with the way your mixes translate, no nerdy-ass poindexter with a physics degree can tell you that your setup is wrong regardless of what "rules" you're "breaking".

However, here's a few things that you will need to take into account that are working against you with the "facing long wall" position:

• There's not a lot of space between your listening position and the back wall. Direct sound from your monitors will be reflecting pretty heavily from behind you, which is going to create various peaks and nulls - particularly in the bass region. The importance of back wall treatment is second only to corners, at least in my estimation, and you're gonna need a lot of thick traps to tame reflections the closer you are to a back wall.
• The absolute worst listening position is at or close to the center of a room, and that applies to either the length, width, or height. Putting yourself between 9' parallel walls unfortunately moves your listening position very close to this halfway point where bass can be cancelled out quite a bit - if your desk is 2.5'-3' deep, you've got your monitors set up in the ideal equilateral triangle configuration, and your posture is decent then your ears are probably going to be quite close to this 4.5' halfway point.
• You're going to need a lot more treatment with this particular setup, which means more raw materials/time/work/$$$. I wholly recommend the DIY route in this case. Don't bother with auralex or foam; they're ok for high end and high mids but do nothing for bass, and your biggest problems are gonna be on the bass end. And remember that rooms don't have four corners; they have twelve (wall meets wall x4, wall meets ceiling x4, wall meets floor x4).

My advice though is to just set up your room however you feel makes you most comfortable with regards to your creative flow - who wants to work in an uncomfortable room? - and treat the trouble spots as you find them. If you've applied the proper treatment and are still not happy with how your mixes translate, then start thinking about moving shit around.

And good luck! Setting up a new mixing room is equal parts fun and full of suck. I gotta do the same thing in a few months when I move and I'll be dealing with an imperfect room as well.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Thanks everyone. Yes, I realized you are about 100% correct in that my listening position is almost the center of the room. Not sure what I want to do now.

I think I'll leave it the way it is until I actually have the $ for proper treatment as I haven't been doing much mixing the past few months anyway.

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

You need mass, those foam panels with leave you with a dead sounding boomy mess. They wont even do anything to the low mids i doubt. These might be okay for reflection points but start with bass trapping.

While you are partially correct, he doesn't need mass, he needs air flow resistivity which is a whole different game. Otherwise he could just fill his walls with sand and call it a day.

 

[Studdy]

good call, bad choice of words.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Well, I set back up along the 9' wall and temporarily hung crappy eggcrate foam at the first reflection points. The difference is totally noticeable even before treating the first reflection points.

Maybe I'll ask Santa for bass traps and absorbers/diffusers for Christmas.

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

Well, I set back up along the 9' wall and temporarily hung crappy eggcrate foam at the first reflection points. The difference is totally noticeable even before treating the first reflection points.

Maybe I'll ask Santa for bass traps and absorbers/diffusers for Christmas.

Well, according to physics, it's not gonna do jack shit, other than scatter some +3-5k'ish reflections in random ways. If you're lucky it might even scatter some of the waves back to your spot , even before they hit the back wall via the side wall. Basically doing the exactly opposite of what people are trying to achieve with reflection free zone's.

So yeah, it can do something.. Something useful is a different discussion. But one should not deem placebo-effects always as negative. If the eggcrates push your vibes up, good, stack em up. But considering sonics.. nah.

E: Missed the keyword 'foam'. Well the same still applies but backwards. You are basically doing nothing more than killing some of the high-high-end reflections. Which is off course nice if highs are a problem. Which they almost never are.

There isn't enough air flow resistivity in thin foam to do anything useful to low end and low mids. The foam is just dampening the highs, while letting the lows and mids fuck you up unharmed.

This goes in the IMO-gategory, but I think you are making things worse.. But as I said earlier, if it works for you, more power to you.

 

[smy1]

I do understand you have little money left, but you can treat a room like mine for $250 or less if you DIY

There's actually lots of absorbers that you don't see (over the mixing position and on the back walls - 13 overall) that are included in the price. And yes, the listening position is at 38% (there's also a heater and a window behind the desk) - the wideangle lens just distorts the room a lot.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Well, according to physics, it's not gonna do jack shit, other than scatter some +3-5k'ish reflections in random ways. If you're lucky it might even scatter some of the waves back to your spot , even before they hit the back wall via the side wall. Basically doing the exactly opposite of what people are trying to achieve with reflection free zone's.

So yeah, it can do something.. Something useful is a different discussion. But one should not deem placebo-effects always as negative. If the eggcrates push your vibes up, good, stack em up. But considering sonics.. nah.

E: Missed the keyword 'foam'. Well the same still applies but backwards. You are basically doing nothing more than killing some of the high-high-end reflections. Which is off course nice if highs are a problem. Which they almost never are.

There isn't enough air flow resistivity in thin foam to do anything useful to low end and low mids. The foam is just dampening the highs, while letting the lows and mids fuck you up unharmed.

This goes in the IMO-gategory, but I think you are making things worse.. But as I said earlier, if it works for you, more power to you.

Hmmm okay. Maybe I really just don't understand acoustics enough just yet then. I figured that anything is better than a hard flat surface, but I guess I'm completely wrong? Basically, I need to worry about THICK panels then at the reflection points?

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

Hmmm okay. Maybe I really just don't understand acoustics enough just yet then. I figured that anything is better than a hard flat surface, but I guess I'm completely wrong? Basically, I need to worry about THICK panels then at the reflection points?

While it's usually true that anything is better than bare wall, it's a matter of preference, do you like random shit or random shit with randomly muffled highs.

Check out some porous absorber calculators, that'll help you immensly to wrap your head around the whole absorbtion-thingy. The 101 would be that lower the density of the material (lower air flow resistance), the more depth you need for your panels. More or less isn't always better, it's a question of what do you want to accomplish. Naturally 1/4" slab of rock and 25" slab of wool will have extremely different acoustic properties.. Not to mention low-density-wool vs. high-density.

But in your case, the room and the budget are so small that it's quite impossible to do real damage control and deep bass trapping that would actually be beneficial. I'f I were you, I'd go the DIY-route. Four 4" panels to your sides and four 8" panels to the corners won't cost you more than 100-150€ (atleast not up here in the north), and that could be truly helpfull considering sonics. That won't totally kill your room, but will yield little control for resonances.

 

[jeid]

Go over to the John Sayers forum and read some threads, lots of good info there.