Room layout advice

mrleon83

hi all just wondering if anyone would be able to offer some advice on my set up...
im recording in a rectangular room, large window at one end and the door at the other.. i have the desk monitoring set up on the long wall .. it's a bit tight for space (has an electronic drum kit in a corner) this isn't the optimum position is it? .. I'll post some pics of the room later ...just realized, this post is useless without dimensions and pics

ill be back ..

mrleon83

mrleon83

To the left behind he is the gun (guitar) rack ...

mrleon83

Should also say in using this for tracking and mixing , I have some treatment on the walls the don't have windows/doors.. large high density foam .. will invest in bass traps at some point ...

Cabicular

what advice are you looking for?
Do you have any problems with it the way it is
Standard advice is some bass traps for the corners
Some diffusion between the speakers would be a good idea
whats on the back wall?

mrleon83

Cabicular said:

what advice are you looking for?
Do you have any problems with it the way it is
Standard advice is some bass traps for the corners
Some diffusion between the speakers would be a good idea
whats on the back wall?

Mainly the layout.. it works for me but from what I understand the speakers should be on the wall near the window? I don't have any problems per se but always looking to improve .. I normally use headphones for mixing and the monitors to double check and track ... back wall is a door and bit of wall with attenuation .. I'll take a 360 photo...

guitarfishbay

If you want a proper idea of what's going on then get a Dayton EMM6/other measurement mic (about £60 IIRC) and use Room EQ Wizard (donationware).

The free option is just run a slow sine wave while you sit in your listening position and check for frequencies that are too loud or too quiet. You'll almost certainly have several in that room. Your ears won't pick up tiny changes but you'll easily hear the big nulls and peaks. 

You can try the speakers firing down the length which is usually better but it's also about getting to the best compromise for how you need to use the room. Whenever you change positions re-test to see if there are improvements and make note so you can put them back in the best place.

You'd definitely benefit from bass trapping, but you should be able to get improvements from positioning to start with.

Bod

The recommendation is always to have the speakers firing down the length of the room to reduce the likelihood of standing waves.  I echo the advice about bass traps, but in my experience small rooms are difficult to get right, especially with rear- ported speakers and their likely proximity to the corners of the room.  The bass end is also not particularly easy to treat as any traps need to be fairly bulky and dense.

guitarfishbay

You won't get it perfect, but you won't make it any worse with bass trapping provided you use thick stuff.

I wouldn't bother spending any more on foam personally, especially in a room this small your main priority is going to be absorbing as much lower frequency as possible while still being able to use the room in a way that suits you.  

Typical foam panels hardly do anything for low end but are good at absorbing high end.  What you can end up with is the bass frequencies ringing out longer than the higher frequencies which skews your perception of what's going on.

Cabicular

The area above the laptop screen could use some diffusion. Depends what the back wall is like but you will get some reflection.
I would buy a canvas print I liked off Amazon and then cram the frame with rockwool

mrleon83

Cool... so bass traps filled.. speakers have front facing bass ports if that changes anything ... here's wall photos ! 

mrleon83

The panels were from studio spares (including the one with the dragon painted on..  so bass traps to buy or to build? 

Rocker

I agree with your layout picture above @mrleon83.  In our music room, placing the speakers on the 'long' wall and effectively listening near field.  I found that near field listening somehow removes a lot of the problems of parallel walls and rectangular rooms.  It might be that the speaker sound hits you before the reflected sound!  But even near field is affected negatively by an unbalanced room.  If all your amps, CDs, books etc. are to one side of the room, this affects the stereo image.  The traditional approach to problem sound in a room is to add bass traps.  These may or may not work, they look hideous anyway, but you are always advised to add sound deadening or other such things.  Far better to position your speakers AND your listening seat correctly.  This is a zero cost solution and is remarkably effective.

guitarfishbay

If you don't have a drill it's hard to go wrong with an IKEA shelf filled with insulation.  If you've got a drill then you're sorted and can make whatever size you want.

I built some using IKEA Besta (four of the 60 x 60 x 40cm deep ones to go on each side wall, 8 total), covered with IKEA bommul (cheap though if you're using for first reflection points it might not be the best for high frequencies... hard to be worse than bare wall though), filled with Knauf Omnifit slab as that's what I could get cheap from B&Q that seemed about right for the task...

I'm definitely no expert but searched a lot of posts on Gearslutz and made an educated guess... It has proved quite effective at dealing with the biggest null in my room, improving it by about 14db.  That was my goal as relative to the rest of everything I just couldn't hear it in a mix where I'm sat.

Here are some photos zoomed in on the problem area.  They're taken on different days, I've done my best to recreate the conditions (didn't change mic gain on that channel, took measurements of where to place the mic) and think it's pretty representative.

Before (you can't actually see the null in this photo so I highlighted where it is with the cursor)



After, general improvement in decay time around 50hz and the null is greatly improved.  Cursor is in the same spot so you can see how much that frequency improved with the deep traps.



Measure first then do some research, then buy/build.  You can follow basic principles but since there's always going to be a compromise you might as well figure what the best you can do with your time, space and budget is before spending money.  And even if you do nothing you might learn some problem areas for you to be aware of.

It's very easy to spend money on stuff that won't work for what you want it to as doing anything with deeper frequencies requires some very deep traps.  I wish I'd started measuring sooner as it'd have saved me money and time on smaller treatments that just didn't work for my issues.

mrleon83

@guitarfishbay  wow! That's some serious improvement !