Help me treat my room!

[The Unavoidable]

Like I mentioned in another thread, I have moved to a bigger place which finally lets me have a dedicated mixing room. I'm really happy with the room, although it does look a bit dull atm. I'll get around to fixing the place up though, but for now I'm looking for basic treatment tips. I know next to nothing about that kind of stuff, so I need some guidance

So this is the room:


The desk:

To the right

To the left

And behind (The room is actually a bit larger than it appears here, perspective gets kind fudged)

The walls on either side of the desk are wood of some kind, and concrete in front and back. To my relatively inexperienced ears, my listening isn't drastically altered by the room but there are some nasty reflections going on in there, almost like a tiny bit of reverb. Thats pretty much only audible when you're just having a conversation, but I'm guessing that it's affecting my monitoring in ways I can't tell yet.

So, anyone got any tips for improving my monitoring situation? Like I said, I'm a super noob on this stuff, so explain carefully

 

[HeadCrusher]

Holy shit, you moved to a bigger room? :O

 

[The Unavoidable]

Well I moved to a bigger apartment, which gave to oppertunity to have a dedicated studio room, since my old one was just in the living room!

 

[HeadCrusher]

Ah, I see. So it's a step up after all. Still from the pictures the room looks like it's 2 x 2.5 meters at best.

 

[The Unavoidable]

After a quick measurment, it's about 2.2 x 3 meters. Plenty big for my purposes though

 

[HeadCrusher]

Ok so it is really bigger than it looks like in the pictures (well, a little bigger anyway ).

I don't know much about room treatment myself yet but here are some links that should help you out a bit:
http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html
http://realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/audio/pages/fullindex.htm

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Congrats for the new space!

Sorry for the OT, but I just wanted to let you know, the Mammoth song you did vocals way back got featured on a kung fu club's promo video of some sort. No money involved, but it's still nice recognition You can check out the video here:

 

[The Unavoidable]

Headchrusher: Yeah I know, I looked at the pictures again and for some reason the whole room looks A LOT smaller than irl. Whatever. And yes, I'm looking through some of those links, though like I said I feel rather clueless in all of this. Oh well, I'll dive in some more and try to learn something at least!

Jarkko: Tackar tackar! And that's pretty cool about that video, even though I don't feel 100% about those vocals now Cool though!

 

[Ermz]

Cool, your room looks similar in size and layout to my own, so I'll try to give you some pointers. I've recently raped this place with insulation, and have been reading up about acoustics for the last year or so trying to come to terms with what my limitations are.

-The first thing you want to do is bring your desk forward into the room. Separate the monitors from the back wall.
-Aim to have your mixing position around 38% of the length of the room. This is only a starting point - but it's a darned good one.
-Put your monitors on stands. You may not believe me, but good stands filled with shot or lead will piss on table-top mounting. You will gain image clarity and your low-mids should clear up.
-Cover your first reflection points. This is VITAL for image clarity.
-Trap every corner you possibly can with rigid insulation material.

The most important thing to do is get your placement right. So move your desk forward, and get your mixing position sorted. Make sure you are in the center of the room, width-ways, and 38% of the room length-ways. That's a good starting point, and will ensure image stability to start with.

The second most important thing is to cover your first reflection points.

Third most important thing I would advise is building superchunk traps in all of your 3 free corners ASAP. This is done by getting insulation panels and cutting them up into triangular pieces. You then stack the triangular pieces in the corner until you fill the entire thing up. Very easy to do, but can be a little costly. Way more than worth it though.

After you do this you will get a feel for what acoustic treatment does to a room, and you will be able to take the rest of it yourself.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Thanks alot for the tips Ermz! I'll be moving my desk out, and do some measurments to get close to the 38% position asap. I've been looking into getting monitor stands, though I'm having a hard time figuring out where they will fit, without getting to close to the walls. Also I'm worried about getting stands that can take the hugeness of those HS80s! Thomann seems to recommend these though for the HS80s: http://www.thomann.de/se/millenium_bs_500_set.htm

I was thinking of getting something like these though http://www.thomann.de/se/auralex_acoustics_mopad.htm , would I better off just getting proper stands right away?

Also, I googled around on first reflection points, thats the points on the wall directly to my monitoring positions right and left, right? What type of treatment would you recommend for those? I was also planning on getting some decent carpets in which I guess would soften the reflections of the floor, Yay or nay?

 

[HeadCrusher]

Afaik the listening position should actually be at 37,5% of the room lenght if you wanna get anal about it.

I'd put bass traps (search the forum for build tips) left and right of the listening position. You could use standard Acoustic foam here as well. Then add a cloud above your listening position (Basically a bass trap again). Two Bass traps in the front corners, none in the back since you have the door in the corner. I'd also cover the front wall with foam or some more bass traps.

Stands: I'd build my own, fill them with sand and put those Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers on top of it. Add a sofa and maybe some kind of diffusor in the back of the room and your ready to rock.

 

[ParsonsMatt]

This thread is great! I have a bigger room, so I will probably post pictures and ask for advice in a similar thread, but I really enjoy reading all the advice.

 

[Ermz]

37.5 or 38% it doesn't matter. His natural head motions while mixing negate those nuances. The amount of acoustic change in a room of that size by simply shifting your head a few millimeters is IMMENSE. As such any microcosmic measurements tend to fly out the window and you need to start thinking more broadly.

Do NOT use diffusion in a room of that size. Any natural ambiance in a rectangular/square space that small is undesirable, as you cannot get far enough from the diffuser to get the benefit from it.

Focus instead on deadening evenly at all frequencies. Your most paramount goals are to cover first reflection points and get as much bass trapping as humanly possible in there. The low-end in such small rooms is horrid, and needs to be controlled as much as possible. You cannot over-do bass trapping, so get as much as you can in there.

To define, first reflection points are the parts of the surfaces in the room where a speaker's reflections will bounce and head straight for your ears. The easiest way to find these on the side walls and ceiling is to get a friend to simply slide a mirror across that wall as you sit in your mix position, and wherever you can see the speakers in the mirror, treat there.

Read as many articles on www.realtraps.com as you can. Ethan frequently goes over these points and relates them to home studio owners.

 

[HeadCrusher]

I was just joking about the 37.5 / 38.

Didn't know that about the diffusion in small rooms...

Listen to Ermz mate, he knows more than I do. Although his views on bass traps may be a little extrem. Do you have a picture of the current status? Just curious what it looks like by now.

 

[Ermz]

Haha cool, sorry I missed the joke, which I guess he could have as well... which I guess wouldn't really matter for the aforementioned reasons anyway!

No pics as of yet actually. I've been waiting to get it ALL in here, closet and everything. I'm still trying to work out how to make the 2.4m x 2.4m frames needed to cover the entire walls with insulation.

The superchunks are working really well though and I'm reclaiming some of the lost bass in here. Seriously, mixing in rooms of this size is woeful and I don't wish it upon anybody trying to stay competitive in the professional world. Granted, at this point my room is probably sounding better than most twice its size.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Hah, I have no delusions in even attempting to find 38%, let alone 37.5%! (yet anyway!) I'll settle for 40%-ish

Yeah sofa and coffee table are coming in the back, soon as I find a comfy-but-cheap-as-hell one and a table thats actually practical, as oppossed to some of the slick-but-useless shit most furniture stores have.

Any opinions on those speaker stands there? My carpentry skills are not exactly up to par with some well known religious figures, so building my own would probably result in some sort of murder/suicide deal.

As for panels for first reflections, how would something like this work out? http://www.thomann.de/se/the_takustik_pyramidenschaum_5020_2er_set.htm

 

[GeertSamuel]

Get it some roses, buy it a meal, if you treat it that way, it'll be nice to you.

 

[Ermz]

I'd recommend avoiding the foam stuff as it is only effective in the mid and high frequencies. Good semi-rigid insulation of similar thickness is effective to much lower frequencies. I don't know what the going acoustic insulation is over there in Sweden, but you'd have to find out somehow. The US guys mostly use Owens Corning 703 and over here in Oz we mostly use Tontine Acoustisorb 3. Depending on the rigidity and density of the product you can get away with anything from 2 to 6" on the walls. If you are just straddling it across corners as your bass trapping then I would recommend 6". But above that I would recommend the superchunk method.

As far as stands go, those adjustable flimsy stands are near useless. You need to get hollow ones that are capable of being filled with sand or shot to increase their mass and damp their resonance. I use Ultimate Support monitor stands, - more recently Lasse got a pair and we are both very happy with how they cleared up our monitoring. Something like those or Sound Anchors are what you're after. Anything less and you may as well just use Recoil Stabilizers on the desk.

 

[TheUnknown]

How important is treating the wall behind the desk?

 

[Joematthews]

How important is treating the wall behind the desk?

Far behind bass trapping and first reflection points.

Ermz is absolutely owning this thread, and I wouldn't disagree with anything he's said so far. Very accurate, detailed and informed advice.

Joe