Salvation for a square room?

Got a simple layout question for Steve, Wes, and John when you guys get a few minutes to think... I've heard you guys talk about having the mixing desk face into the corner of a room being a bad thing... I think the reason was that in order to get a symmetrical room around the corners you were forcing yourself to use a square. And using a square is bad. But take a look at the attached PDF and see what you think. I have my own mixing desk shown, which is basically just a box for my computer and the mixer beside it. The speakers are shows free-standing because I'm using Mackies- not sure how this would work for soffit-mounting, but it might... Anyway, the gist of it is that I'm showing a 2x4 wall built to cut off the corner that the desk faces. This could be either a solid wall or false wall to hide bass trapping in, but it has a front face of 7' on this drawing. The side walls are angled out by 6 degrees from where they meet that front wall, and the remaining 2 walls are left alone. If I build the 2 side walls with the inside-out theory and insulated the stud spaces, I could just put wood slats over fabric and the wall is done. The 2 rear walls would need some serious absorption here, and I'd probably cut off the back corner for bass trapping as well, but here the walls are splayed 78 degrees from each other, and it doesn't take up much of the floor space that I started with. With the 2 angled side walls, I think this design moves the room far enough out of square to help the modal response at least a little. This idea doesn't account for a ceiling at all, and like I said, the back 2 walls will need some luuvin', but for someone building a studio into their basement and starting off with a square room, this design might work. Or it might not. If it doesn't, let me know why so I don't recommend this to anyone ;) Thanks! Kase www.minemusic.net

Kase, I have a bedroom I was considering using for a "sanity control" while I tear out my old studio and build the new one (after first doing 5-6 OTHER major projects), and it's nearly square (but with an 8' closet where one of the walls would have been) - I scaled it and did some crude ray tracings using a DOS cad program, and reflection-wise I was able to control things with quite a bit of absorption (on paper, anyway) by absorbing everything behind the desk and to the sides by a couple feet, leaving the rest of the front corner walls untreated, and then absorbing ALL of the two rear walls (referenced to the desk) - This was setting up as you're asking, with a corner desk. I didn't take the time to calculate just how dead that would make the room including at least a 4x8 cloud over the desk, but it seemed like too much absorbent. One problem in a corner setup is that any sound above lower bass that goes into a 90 degree corner will be reflected back parallel to the source, no matter which direction the source is from. This makes for a lot of reflection problems. One other likely problem is if the ceiling dimension is an even or odd harmonic of the wall dimensions - then, you have three axial modes supporting each other. Lotsa luck... Basically, I'd stay away from this direction if there's any other way - it seems to me (again, no actual data yet, just gut feel) like you'd end up with a pretty dead room before you solved the problems... Steve

One problem in a corner setup is that any sound above lower bass that goes into a 90 degree corner will be reflected back parallel to the source, no matter which direction the source is from. This makes for a lot of reflection problems.

So that corner behind the desk is actually one of the best spots to put bass trapping... That makes sense, tho- without protecting that corner, there could be a lot of lows coming back at you. I'm planning on having a 4' wall face across that corner, and there's some room for hangers back there... I guess I was looking at the rest of the walls. Reflection paths around the remainder of the room look like they work out pretty well. And my ceiling is 7'6 in a 15'6x15'11 room, so I'm in a tough spot as it is. So the disclaimer for that shape is to beat up the front and rear corner with bass trapping as much as you can. Thanks! Kase www.minemusic.net

The simplest advice i could recommend for a square room is to cut all four corners off. make them bass trap areas. so then your room looks sort of like an octagon.