Need Advice for Treating Acoustics in My New Home Studio

Hey Mike, Looks great. I dont think your monitor is big enough :shock: :D What type of brackets did you use to mount your panels. It looks awesome Peace Tom

Thanks Tom, The L clamps that I used are from Lowe's. They are four inches which is perfect. You attach the clamp to the wall, allow three inches of space and then screw into one inch of the bass trap wood frame. Mike

Mike, Sometimes the simplest things work out the best. I have seen so many elaborate designs to hang the panels away from the wall but yours is truelly the easiest. And looks great Plus I just love the huge monitor. As I get older the reading glasses dont work as well as they used to. 8) Peace Tom

I'm back with an update and more pictures. We finished mounting the panels last night. Looking back now, from the beginning, I took my original SketchUp design of this studio and stuck to it and hung every single panel just like I had designed. Since checking in here last time, I only had the back wall and corners to go. Here they are... The empty space to the left of my V-Drums is for my Yamaha acoustic drumset.

...And now for some more acoustic measurements... Looks to me that I'm in the right ballpark acoustically. I'd be open to any observations by those around here who are more knowledgeable than me about these results. There is a HUGE difference between now and what I started with in this room. I notice that when I sit on the "sweet spot" I get an incredible separation in the stereo field and an amazingly clean sound from all speakers. I recently bought a new Sony receiver and I set it up to do a test (microphone included) which automatically sets the levels of all speakers so that they will be equal. Although the receiver has a number of different listening environments and eq settings, I left it at the "flat" setting.

So, I guess its finally time for some serious music making in here! Once again, I want to thank the many people who offered insight and advise, especially Stuart. I also want to thank Ethan Winer, although we never met or communicated, I used a lot of his advice on how to do this. ...Guess its time for me to pass the torch now to the next person... I hope that you end up with a great listening/working environment like I did. Peace to everyone Mike Myers mikemyersmusic.com

Nice Work Mike! (you can now update the photos on your web site to reflect this nice new space!)

great work, cool diary. hope it works out well!

I finally got my acoustic drums set up. Here's a picture...

how does it sound?

Glenn, It sounds wonderful! I recently upgraded my listening system. I bought five Mackie HR624 MKII speakers and a SVS PB13-Ultra subwoofer. These are powered by a Sony STR-DA5600ES receiver. After getting all the sound panels installed, I carefully measured 38% of the way back from the wall in front of me and then three inches to the left of center. The Sony receiver comes with a mic for adjusting the sound level of the speakers so they all match. I used their test to fine tune the sound after I had measured an equal distance to my listening sweet spot from all of the speakers. It worked great and the speakers all sound matched in volume. I keep the eq totally flat and I'm not using the receiver features like movie theater delay, etc. I notice a HUGE difference when I get my head in "the zone" which is marked with a small "x" on the floor. There is an amazing depth of speaker separation and a wonderful sonority of sound. I can tell a huge difference when I'm not in that spot. I guess this is a long winded answer to your question. And yes, it was worth all this time, money and work to establish this listening environment. Mike

keep in mind the 38% is the start position so while its working out well, it might not truly be the best position. if you can download Room EQ Wizard (free) and an omni-directional mic, you can make some room measurements and see if you have any frequency issues and any modes, reflections, etc which might be correctable and give you even better results.

Glenn, Is Room Wizard compatible with Macintosh? I have recently done several tests with Fuzz Measure (some of which were posted earlier in this thread). Is Room Wizard similar to Fuzz Measure? Mike

sorry, i missed the measurement posts - +/-5db is very good. congrats! some of the reverb times though seem a bit high on the low end and maybe sometime in the future some slats / panel traps / polys on the corners could absorb a bit more there.