KNOWING your room VS. BUYING your room

[NSGUITAR]

Okay.. So the past few months I've been quite conflicted..

A few months ago I made a statement that "You don't need an elite monitoring system".. Which I still stand by. Some people agreed.. Some people got really pissed.

So, recently I've talked to a few different audio engineers/producers.. Some of them say that monitoring is NOT that important..

When I say monitoring, I speak of sound treatment, and nice monitors.. Dimensions of room all of that jazz.



There are two people on here that I'm going to bring up.. One, of course, is Joey Sturgis (Sorry people).. From what I've seen/heard he has absolutely no sound treatment done to his room that he mixes in.. His mixes are obviously stellar..

Ermz, has very nice monitoring and a great room! His mixes are just as stellar.


In my opinion, I still believe that you don't need a treated room to create really nice mixes.. I have absolutely no treatment, not very nice monitors and I mix in a room with 27 foot ceilings.. I think my mixes are good. I'm happy with them. So.. People who are advocates of treated rooms.. Are you saying that with a treated room, my mixes will be that much better?


I mean.. To me, and several people I've talked to, as long as you can adapt to your room and be completely used to it and use your EARS, I 100% honestly don't see the significance. And yes, I've mixed in nicely tread rooms, and it really didn't have an affect on my mixes..

What do you guys have to say?

 

[crillemannen]

It takes a bit more reference listening if you got an untreated room. I've done some great mixes when i still was mixing in my bedroom. Going from that to a perfectly treated room was'nt that big because i knew my monitors really good.

So i would say no even though i've spent about 20000$ on my 2 rooms

 

[NSGUITAR]

It takes a bit more reference listening if you got an untreated room. I've done some great mixes when i still was mixing in my bedroom. Going from that to a perfectly treated room was'nt that big because i knew my monitors really good.

So i would say no even though i've spent about 20000$ on my 2 rooms

Oh yeah man.

I mean I'd LOVE to have my own treated room and all of that nice gear. But honestly right now I don't see the need for one :b

 

[joelplagues]

My two cents....

Just get to know YOUR room plain and simple. I don't think a treated room makes your mixes better I think it's designed to help you distinguish a broader range of frequencies across the spectrum. helping you get rid of the nasties quicker.

I'm happy with how my room is and I enjoy mixing in here but I'll definatley look into treating my room once I have other, more desirable gear in my collection first.

 

[jimwilbourne]

I have always mixed in a horrible room.
fortunately I have 2 setups now. one for home and one for the studio.
the studio one is a nicely treated room, although not entirely optimal size.

honestly, I don't hear myself making amazing leaps of production quality because of it.

 

[egan.]

Of course it's possible to mix a great record on radioshack speakers in a tin can, but it's certainly a lot easier in a room and on monitors that aren't hiding things from you. Knowing your room is critical no matter what (treated or not). Honestly it sounds like you've already made up your mind however if you "don't see the significance" then you simply don't understand what you're talking about. I would suggest you do some reading on acoustics (in a book, not a forum) to get a better grasp on what you might be missing. If you don't know what RT60, nodes or quarter spacing are you simply aren't prepared to enter a conversation about the impact of acoustics.

I recently had a conversation with a forum titan about how I've noticed a trend towards mixes that sound good but completely lack any sense of depth or space and I believe that this is largely the result of mixing and listening in spaces (and on systems) that simply don't support such details. YMMV.

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

+1 to Egan, no one with even passable ears can deny the audible positive difference just throwing up a few bass traps can make, so why not do it?

 

[NSGUITAR]

Of course it's possible to mix a great record on radioshack speakers in a tin can, but it's certainly a lot easier in a room and on monitors that aren't hiding things from you. Knowing your room is critical no matter what (treated or not). Honestly it sounds like you've already made up your mind however if you "don't see the significance" then you simply don't understand what you're talking about. I would suggest you do some reading on acoustics (in a book, not a forum) to get a better grasp on what you might be missing. If you don't know what RT60, nodes or quarter spacing are you simply aren't prepared to enter a conversation about the impact of acoustics.

I recently had a conversation with a forum titan about how I've noticed a trend towards mixes that sound good but completely lack any sense of depth or space and I believe that this is largely the result of mixing and listening in spaces (and on systems) that simply don't support such details. YMMV.

I know the terms, and I've read the books (Okay a book), but PHYSICALLY it's not made that much of a difference to my mixing, personally.

 

[egan.]

I know the terms, and I've read the books (Okay a book), but PHYSICALLY it's not made that much of a difference to my mixing, personally.

If you have no treatment now and never have before how could it have possibly made a difference? The paddle shifting on a Lambo has never impacted the way I drive my Mazda.
Beyond that, if you already made up your mind why did you start a thread? If you're happy and set in your ways, what's to discuss?

 

[NSGUITAR]

If you have no treatment now and never have before how could it have possibly made a difference? The paddle shifting on a Lambo has never impacted the way I drive my Mazda.
Beyond that, if you already made up your mind why did you start a thread? If you're happy and set in your ways, what's to discuss?

I haven't made up my mind.. I'm saying that right now, I'm content. I do plan on upgrading in the future when I do this full time.. But right now this works for me.. I started the thread as a discussion basically and get other viewpoints.

 

[egan.]

I haven't made up my mind.. I'm saying that right now, I'm content. I do plan on upgrading in the future when I do this full time.. But right now this works for me.. I started the thread as a discussion basically and get other viewpoints.

You only answered the least important question though. It's impossible to know the value of treating your room w/o actually doing it. The bottom line is a great engineer is going to be great anywhere, but it's impossible to argue against the value of easily and clearly hearing the full range of an unobscured mix. "Need" is of course relative but the value is undeniable.

 

[NSGUITAR]

You only answered the least important question though. It's impossible to know the value of treating your room w/o actually doing it. The bottom line is a great engineer is going to be great anywhere, but it's impossible to argue against the value of easily and clearly hearing the full range of an unobscured mix. "Need" is of course relative but the value is undeniable.

Indeed. I don't think it's possible to treat my room right now though . Quite unfortunate because I'd like to try it out.

But the dimensions of my room are insane.

 

[paladin shredder]

I can say from experience that different monitors can make a HUGE difference in how we perceive our mixes.

A while back, I was mixing some tracks on my KRK Rokit5's. These are not high end monitors by any means, but while comparing monitors at guitar center, I felt these sounded a lot like ns10's with slightly better bass response. Anyways, I get done with a mix and take it to my friends house to check it out on his Alesis M1's, and also to show off how awesome these mixes were! I noticed two things; First, the high end sounded much more hyped on his monitors, second, my mix didn't seem to have very great dynamics.

Then we started comparing my mixes to other professional mixes. We played some songs off of Breaking Benjamin "Phobia" and 30 Sec to Mars "This is War" which were two albums that I was comparing my mixes to at my house. Now on my monitors, there is not a huge difference between these two albums. But on HIS monitors, there was a MASSIVE difference. The 30 Sec mixes sounded very 2 dimensional and compressed, while the BB mixes sounded 3 dimensional and every drum hit jumped out at you. This is when I realized that up until now, after 5 years of recording and mixing, I had absolutely no idea what dynamics were.

My main point, is that you never know what you are missing until you hear it for yourself.

 

[006]

I agree with you to an extent Nick, but after building my own stands (100lbs. each and full of sand), putting MoPads on them under my monitors, putting some treatment up to make it less live and have less shit coming back at me from above, sides and behind me... I noticed a big difference right away. I really want some bass traps in here because given my experience with what little I have done already I am sold on the value of treatment and I know it will make it that much easier to mix in. As it is right now I don't really get surprised any more when I reference my mixes on other systems, but I want bass traps to take it to that next level of quality in here, personally. You can't really debate if treatment will or will not help, it definitely will, unequivocally, help. It's one of those things you don't want to spend money on, but if/when you do you won't regret it, I promise.

 

[BLUElightCory]

You can learn the room and monitoring and get great results.

But ask yourself this - Who's going to be able to mix more easily?
A. Dr. Awesome Mix McGee mixing on M Audio BX8s in an untreated room that he is familiar with
B. Dr. Awesome Mix McGee mixing on Barefoot MM27s in a treated, accurate room that he is familiar with

Common sense says that, all other things being equal, the better monitoring and treated room will make for easier/better mixing, because there are less factors standing in the way of making good/accurate mix decisions. That's not to say you can't make good mixes in an untreated room with average monitoring, but it's always going to be EASIER in a treated room with great monitoring.

 

[fitzrangerhoodngarb]

All rooms are not made equal so I don't think you can generalise.

In a home with lightweight walls, where transmission loss is not a factor in the build, you can get away with less treatment for the low end because the boundaries don't have the mass component to be a limiting factor with respect to the low frequency modal behaviour. Even in small rooms with very poor dimensions. The lighterweight the walls, acoustically speaking, the bigger the room to the low frequency wavelengths (a simplification).

Often the walls can be almost totally transparent to the really low stuff and act like membrane absorbers higher up. But you have piss-weak transmission loss.

The more transmission loss is a factor in the build, or the thicker and heavier your boundaries are for other reasons (and therefore the lower and narrower the m-a-m resonance of the structure is), the more you start to be limited by the modal behaviour and the low frequency ringing of the room. This is the paradox of building a studio - the more money you spend on transmission loss in the build, the more money you spend on treatment at the end (another simplification).

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Good monitors + room with proper acoustic treatment = you hear shit well and clear.
Crap monitors + untreated room = you don't hear shit all that well, but when you get used to it, your subconscious will do a lot of the guessing work for you.

No matter how well you get to know your room, you really can't claim a 25dB null at 80-120Hz and all it's multiples won't make your job of listening quite a bit harder. Yes, there are people who work in sub-par environments. Madsen mixes on Behringer Truth's in a control room that looks to be an acoustic nightmare. He does turn out some really awesome work, but there are also some recent misses in his discography. I can only guess, but I'd say it wouldn't hurt even such a seasoned pro to improve his monitoring situation.

 

[AHChris]

A interesting thread... IMHO you should really really treat your room, but you don´t have to overdo it. It doesn´t matter if you don´t have the perfect room but you should get the worst peaks out and care for a reasonable reverberation time. You can and will adjust to the remaining small flaws of the room.

 

[dcb]

well i made a little tutrorial not that much people seem to care about,
but id recommend trying this for getting to know your room better:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/...torial-poor-mans-digital-room-correction.html

 

[Nebulous]

I recently had a conversation with a forum titan about how I've noticed a trend towards mixes that sound good but completely lack any sense of depth or space and I believe that this is largely the result of mixing and listening in spaces (and on systems) that simply don't support such details. YMMV.

+1 to this!
It is the very reason I can't wait to get my room set up with some treatment.

I know that my room has very unbalanced frequencies, I know that there is comb filtering all over the place and I know that it's really difficult for me to make a mix with depth in my room or to judge a basic verb in it.
I know all this, yet it doesn't get easier. It's all still guessing and referencing untill I'm happy across multiple systems.

A treated room is about the details being clear straight off the bat and allowing you to work quicker.

Even when a room is treated it won't be perfect (in most cases)- so in the end you still have to know your room.