Advice needed on acoustic treatment of home studio

I am upgrading my home studio and it's time for some acoustic treatments. Below is the basic layout of my upstairs bedroom space. I know I have a standing bass waves problem as I mixed my first CD I had a hell of time getting the bass mix right - played back on a boom box or car stereo the bass was totally amped up. I learned the hard way. I don't have the time/money/resources for the super deluxe approach, but am looking to cover the basics and get the most bang for the buck. Starting out I believe I need bass traps for the four corners (numbered below). Corners 1, 3, and 4 are no problem, but what should I do with corner 2, as it would be right in front of the door? So after corner bass traps, what should I do for the most bang for the buck? Should it be covering the reflection points on both sides and ceiling of the listening spot? What's the best DIY treatment to put there? I have one complication in that on the right side of the listening spot is a window which I do not want to cover up permanently. How about curtains of heavy fabric. Ideas? If I have resources, should bass traps in the corners formed by wall a ceiling be a good idea? Any advice for the newbie here much appreciated. Paul

                                                                    2
                                                       ____________
  1        8'                                          |          /
    _______________                                    |         /  door
    |              |___________________________________|        /
    |                                   ^                         |
    ~              |                    |        ____             |
    w    Pitched                        |       | D  |            |
9'  i    Ceiling   |  8' high ceiling   8'      | E  |            |
    n    8'- 11'                        |       | S  |            |
    ~     high     |                    |       | k  |            |
    |                                   |       ______            |
    |___________________________________V_|     |_________________|
  4                               20'     window                   3

Floor is carpet, walls and ceiling are drywall.

Hi Paul, and welcome! There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to do to assure getting as many responses as possible. The announcement leads to this post. Actually, several people, who are experts on this forum, will not reply if you don't do what is written in that post. Many others who are very helpful, will not reply out of respect for the moderators' wishes. Also, I'd suggest you download "SketchUp" from Google (it's free!), and use that to create the plan of your room, since drawing it with dots and dashes makes it really hard to figure out. Anyway, to address the basics: Yes, you should start with bass traps in the corners. Make them big and deep. Use the "search" feature on this forum for terms like "bass trap" and "superchunk", and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know about the subject!

If I have resources, should bass traps in the corners formed by wall a ceiling be a good idea?

Yes! A bass trap close to one wall gains you 6 dB of absorption over the same trap in the middle of the room. If you put it in the corner where two walls meet, you get 12 dB boost. And if you put it in the corner where three walls meet ("tri-corner"), you get an 18 dB boost, so it is definitely a good idea to treat your tri-corners, if you can. You get more "bang for the buck" there. If you have to put a trap in front of your door, you could mount it on wheels so it can be move into place when you need it. Also, your room appears to not be symmetrical: this is probably another reason why your mix did not translate well. You might want to think about how you could make it symmetrical. Next, two of the dimensions of your room are the same: you have an 8 foot ceiling, and the room is 8 feet wide. This is bad, as it means the modes are identical for those two, so you will have huge dips and peaks in your response that is going to be hard to fix just with treatment. The third dimension is also a related multiple of the other two. Is there no other room that you could use instead of this one? If not, is there any way you can change these dimensions, maybe by moving a wall? Finally, you definitely do need to treat your first reflection points, including the window and the ceiling overhead. Once again, you could put your absorbers on wheels or stands, so that they can be moved into position when you need to do critical listening, and stored elsewhere at other times. - Stuart -

Stuart, Many thanks for your reply despite my newbie faux pas. Here's a more detailed post and graphics. Below is my newbie workup in Sketchup - not perfect but pretty close. Moving walls is not an option unfortunately. At this point since the basic height and width are so close and the ceiling on the one end irregular and sloping, is there much I can do with this space with a $500 DIY (I have advanced woodworking skills) budget? Are there enough workarounds to remedy the unsymmetrical shape to make it worth it? My other option is a another bedroom that is 9'-1"x11'-4" with a 7'-11" flat ceiling. It's a smaller space (100 ft. sq. ft.) which makes it a bit pinched to record 3 or 4 bluegrass musicians at a time. There's another bedroom about the same area but it's width and depth are nearly identical.