Mixing in a VERY small room

Hi. I have a spare room in my appartment that I use for making, and hopefully mixing music (sequenced electronic music). The problem is, the room is VERY small only 2,65x1,95x2,50 m, around 5m2. The floor is wooden and walls/ceiling is massive concrete. I have no other option but to try to mix in this room mostly due to having a wife and two small children occupying most of the rest of appartment space. It's also a fact that my country (Iceland) is virtually bankrupt which affects my cashflow so any plans to build a garage, rent a space or buy some studio time is out of the window for now I'm afraid. I do have 4 broadband rockwool absorbers, only 2,5 inches /5cm thick, so they are virtually useless to absorb low-frequencies. I can afford to buy more rockwool for making traps/absorbers but any fancy accoustic treatment is out of the question I'm afraid. I would be grateful if anyone more enlightened than me would take a look of my room plan attached and tell me if there is some hope and maybe give me some tips on monitor placement, if basstraps would do something for me etc. (for example there is a massive boost around 108hz, do I have to fill the room with rockwool to absorb something around that area?). I have another question I'ld like to ask: I use some cheap monitors (M-audio BX5) that have far from acceptable low-end response. Anything below around 70khz is hard to work on. I could buy a sub-woofer to beef up the low-end but question is, would a subwoofer do anything useful in such a small room? Hoping someone can help me out here :) All the best, Johann, Reykjavik, Iceland.

first: read the sticky threats. second: spend some serious time @ this forum and read all the goods. It should really help you goin' without even asking. third: we love to answer any questions but you've gotta do some homework (see above), and why not by Rod's book. Your room is small, you already figured that. It's gonna be hard to get a transparent mix in that room. But, every room is possible to mix in. (unless the monitors won't fit. hah) Tiny rooms need lotsa basstrapping which will consume precious space. Make use of "unused" space (ceiling etc). Read, learn, design and then ask :)

Thank you for the reply and great advices Ro :) I have read lots of info on accoustic treatment, here and elsewhere. I even have a book about it. The thing is, I have never come across discussion/articles about such a miniature room (guess I have to search more). My main worries were if I could use the room at all. Rather not start some rockwool experiments and annoy the wife if there was no point because the room is useless :mrgreen: I'm sorry if I posted unprepared, but I thought I had done my homework to some degree at least. ... back to searching forums then :D All the best, -Johann

Hey Johann, 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 (click here). 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. Anyway, you sure do have a small room! But if that's all you have, then that's what it will have to be. As you'll read here quite often: "You have to live with what you've got". So if your choice is to either use that room for mixing, or to not mix at all, then I'd say use the room, and do the best you possibly can with it, while recognizing the limitations. The good news is that the room ratio is actually not too bad. You are pretty close to Sepmeyer's first ratio ( 1 :1.14 : 1.39 ) You'd be spot on if your dimensions were Height=2.19 m, Width=1.90 m, Length=2.65 m, but as it is with your dimensions of Height=2.50 m, Width=1.96 m, Length=2.65 m, your ratio is ( 1 : 1.27 : 1.35 ). Reasonable. At least your room isn't square! However, you do have glass at one end, and the door at the other. You'll have to do something about those. You did not mention isolation, but since you are on an extremely tight budget, and the room is so small any way, I'd say that isolation is out of the question. So you are basically stuck with just treating the room: your family and neighbors will just have to put up with the noise. And you'll have to put up with their noise! I'd say your basic layout should have the front of your room (where the speakers are) at the glass window, with the door at the rear of the room. So you'll be facing the glass while seated at the mix position. Theoretically your head should be somewhere around 1 m from the glass, which means that your speakers also need to be about 1 m apart and angled such that the acoustic axes meet at an angle of 60°. But that is too close. You'll need to "nudge" the geometry to make things work better for you. I'd try to get the speakers a bit further apart, say around 1.3 m, and your head around 1.15 m from the glass, but no further back than that. That will give an angle a bit greater than 60°, but that's not a problem. Your speakers should be set at a height where the acoustic axis is at the same height as your ears when seated at the mix position. Normally, that is around 1.2 m above the floor. You don't have space or a budget for soffits, just put your speakers on solid, massive stands. Maybe pile up some concrete blocks, or get large hollow metal stands and fill them with dry sand, or something like that. Then decouple the speakers from the stands with some kind of foam, rubber, neoprene or whatever. You can buy stuff that is specially designed for decoupling speakers. Your speakers will have to be right up against the front wall, which is glass! Not good. Is there any chance you can cover that glass with at least one layer of drywall (sheetrock, gypsum board, plaster board) on a simple wooden frame, then put 4 inches or so of mineral wool or fiberglass insulation on that, facing towards the room, with the speakers right in front of that? That would help a bit to deal with at least some of the comb filtering and reflections coming off the glass. It won't be a major solution, but it should at least do something. Basic rule of thumb: Small rooms need lots of treatment. Start with lots of bass trapping in the corners. The obvious best corners are the 4 vertical corners in a room, but it looks like you wont be able to do that for the rear corners, since your door is there, and does not appear to be centered. If the door really is centered, then build superchunk bass traps across the corners on each side of it, as big as you possibly can, from the corner right up to the door frame. Do the same for the front corners. But there are 12 corners in a room, not just four, so I'd go for all four wall/ceiling corners. It won't be pretty, but it will help. I'd also put a large, thick ceiling cloud right over the mix position and covering the first reflection point on the ceiling. And also some absorption on the side walls at the first reflection points there. That should at least get you in the ball park, so you can test your room and see if it needs anything else obvious. Regarding your question about a subwoofer: If you can afford it, then that would probably help, assuming that you mix the kind of music that has lots of bass content. Those speakers you are using don't have much bass response at all, and even though they'll be right up against the front wall and practically in the corners, which helps greatly to boost bass response, since they don't have much bass to start with, and what they do have isn't all that linear, I reckon a sub plus a good crossover should help a lot to take care of your low end. Put the sub on the floor, up against the front wall, between your feet. That's about the only place you CAN put it!

... if basstraps would do something for me etc. (for example there is a massive boost around 108hz, do I have to fill the room with rockwool to absorb something around that area?).

simple answer: YES!!!!!!! Small room = BIG bass trapping. However: that 108 Hz boost is actually two tangential modes that coincide almost perfectly. It is your 1,1,0 mode at 109.3 Hz, and your 0,1,1 mode at 111.6 Hz. You have another pair like that around 130 Hz. Those two are your worst offenders. Bass trapping won't eliminate those. Bass trapping does not actually get rid of any modes. They are all still there. But heavy bass trapping will help to reduce the reverb times for those modes, and that's what matters. So you need plenty of it. As much as you possibly can. But also take care not to kill your highs too much: That would make your room sound dull and dead. Unpleasant. Hope that helps! - Stuart -

Thank you so much Stuart, for taking the time to write such a thorough and informative reply! It's much appreciated :D I love this place already! :D

Hey again! After some discussion with the wife I now have an idea about what I CAN do with the room :mrgreen: The Idea is to build four 100mm thick basstraps/bb absorbers and place them as I show in the Sketchup mock-ups. I do now have four 50mm broadband absorbers that I indend to use to cover the window and control the early reflections of the side walls. You can also see the intended speaker/desk placement in the mock-ups. I know this is minimal treatment but I'm afraid I can't do much more drastic things at the moment. The question is, do you think this minimal treatment will do anything for my tiny room or should I not bother? Should I place the absorbers differently somehow? All the best, -Johann

Looks pretty good to me! It should at least do some good things for your room. The placement looks fine to me, too. The only thing I think I'd add is some absorption on the door itself, since that's a large, hard, flat reflective surface directly behind you (it might cause you some trouble with comb filtering or other issues), as well as some kind of ceiling "cloud", to deal with the first reflections on the ceiling. The cloud can be something like your side panels, hung from the ceiling more or less over the console / mix position. But apart from that, it looks like a plan that should work! It's not perfect, but for a very tight budget in a small room, its about as good as you can get it, IMHO. Don't forget to post pictures of the progress, and to let us know how it sounds when you are done! - Stuart -

Hi Johann, Do let us know how you get on with treating the room. I have a very similar room that I am about to treat, so I would like to learn of your progress! Kind wishes, Jimmy