Please help me fix my tiny studio

I turned a little storage room in my basement into a music room last year. Its only about 9'X10' and is comfortable for what I am doing. I use midi for drums, bass and keys and record guitars and vocals. I have been very happy with how my recordings sound in my studio through my Tannoy Reveals, but they do not translate well elsewhere - they stink. From what I have read here, my room is about as bad as it can be! Its small, square and has a very low ceiling. The ceiling is two levels because of a heat duct - its about 6'4 for 1/2 of the room and 7' for 1/2. I do have a closet to the right of my desk. Also, along that right wall is a 6' long set of louver doors covering my furnace and hw heater. On the back wall away from the desk is a door centered on the wall. On one side I have a recessed built in bookshelf. In the other corner next to the door I have a corner shelf which holds a JBL Eon that I use when I just want to sing and play loud.. I could box that in. Its at a 45 degree angle in the corner. Would that help? I dont expect to ever get pro mixes in my little studio, but I have to do something to improve my mixes. Like I said, they sound great (to me) in the room, but when I play them anywhere else, they sound completely different - bad. My concern is mixing - not soundproofing for tracking. I know the furnace is right there, but I have a kill switch on it for when I do vocals. Everything else is direct. Any simple suggestions? I dont want to gut the room and start all over if I can avoid it. Here is a spliced picture and an attached ppt drawing.

Another note.... I moved a few things around last night - the pc monitor, the angle of my speakers, etc and I noticed something strange. My left speaker which is essentially in the corner of the room, seemed to be projecting about twice as loud as the right speaker. I figured I had wiggled something loose when i was moving things around and maybe had a bad connection, but found no evidence of that. Now after reading here about placement and acoustics and such, I assume I must have placed it just right so that it was creating some kind of standing waves or something that made it sound so much louder?? Is the rule of thumb that I should have my desk flat against a wall and centered? Sorry for the elementary questions, but this is all a newfound revelation to me and I amnow anxious to try to fix my room sound if I can without major renovation. Thanks!!

Greetings! Just from looking at the photo, I can see a couple things... First of all, placement of the desk. That's what's causing the left speaker to be louder- it's getting reinforcement from that corner. How to fix this; try to get your desk, and especially your listening position, in a spot where the left and right walls are symmetrical. If it's not, you're going to have trouble with your stereo imaging. I see what looks like a door/opening to the right on that photo- if that's the case, then moving the desk to the center of that wall really won't do too much to help you out. If there's another way to make the room symmetrical (or you can install a door there somehow) it'd help a LOT. Second of all, your walls are all reflective. This means that sound coming out of your speakers are hitting the wall and coming back at your ears, just milliseconds behind the direct sound. This causes comb filtering the likes of which will make it really REALLY tough to mix in this room. How to fix this; hang rigid fiberglass insulation on the walls at the spots where sound would reflect directly from the speakers to your ears. This will absorb those reflections and prevent them from reaching your ears. Finding these spots is easy- sit in your listening position and have a friend or significant other hold a mirror flat against the wall. Have them move it around until you can see the speakers- those are the places that need absorption. Third (not able to see this from the photo) do you have any low-frequency absorption in the room? I'm guessing you don't, since you don't have anything to absorp hi-freq early reflections as mentioned in #2, and absorbing bass is trickier. If you don't have any low-freq control, your room is going to project way, way more low end than your mixes actually have. To test this theory, try this- play just a single, held-out low bass guitar note thru your speakers, get up and walk around. I'd be willing to bet a box of 703 that you'll hear the volume change as you walk around. Some spots will be louder, some quieter. If there's a quiet spot where you're mixing, you could be adding as much as 10db of low end to your mix at any given frequency! If the low end of your mixes have been tough to get right, this is the reason right here. How to fix it; depends on how far you're willing to go. Ethan Winer has 2 suggestions I'll relay to you. One is to strap 1" or 2" rigid fiberglass insulation (as mentioned above) across all the corners you can in the room. Low freq sound builds up in the corners, so that's the best place to put the stuff to absorb it. The other thing he recommends is building wood panel traps to hang against your walls. Go to http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html and you'll get a good grasp on both these ideas. If you're at all handy with a hammer, you can do this stuff yourself. This is just what I see from the photo. But these three things alone would make a huge difference to the sound of your room. It looks pretty much untreated at the moment. Hope this helps... Kase www.minemusic.net

Thanks very much for the reply! Yes, its all untreated right now. There is carpet over a concrete floor. This is a room built in my basement. Two walls are outside concrete walls with studs and sheetrock. Yes, there is an opening to a closet to the right of my desk. I do have folding louver doors installed there now, but I dont know if that helps? I will move my desk to the center of that wall. I could certainly do something in the corners. My entrance door is directly behind me when seated at the desk. The door opens in and if left open does create an angled wall behind me to my left. Am I better with that door open that way? If you can see the PPT file, there is an angled shelf in that corner that I could hang somthing from or build a bass trap of some kind?? Also on the other side of that entrance door is a recessed bookshelf that might be able to be made into some kind of trap.

if the desk in your drawing is to scale, you would have to reverse the swing of the door to make this work, but i think it would be a big improvement and cost less than $100.00.

So I would be better off turning the other way even though the distance front to back (depth) would be short that way? Its about 9' compared to 10'. The closet does have louver folding doors on it as does the 6' wall covering the furnace and water heater. That whole wall is louver doors, so I cant cover it with anything unless its movable. I did move my desk over to center tonight and the sound balance was better. That at least solved the problem of one speaker sounding louder than the other!

i was just trying to get symetrical monitor placement and use an existing cabinet as a bass trap. if you can acheive symetry on the 10' axis that would be fine. i would try to put some absorbtive material behind the louvered doors to use the space as a bass trap. if the monitors are in a symetrical space and a few feet away from the walls, you're in pretty good shape. the 703 panels on the walls and ceiling may be all you really need at that point. anything you can do to make the wall behind the mix position non-reflective would be nice.

I am ready to do whatever I can to make this work!! A couple of questions to clarify.. How far do my monitors need to be away from the wall? Right now, they are probably only a foot away. I cant really come back much farther without being right in the middle of the room and with it being so small, that would not be good. The make the corner wedge shaped boxes, should they go from floor to ceiling? Right now in the corner just to the left of the door, there is a shelf I built into the wall to hold a JBL Eon speaker. I will lose that if I have to. I have attached a picture of that corner so you can see what I am talking about. Would it be effective if I only boxed in below the shelf?

Also, as you can see in the above picture, my ceiling has a drop. I assume (and I am probably wrong..?) that since my monitors are shooting way underneath that, it isnt a big deal? Do I need to address that 90 degree ceiling drop? Do traps and absorbers have to go from floor to ceiling? I know I have seen wall absorbers hanging on a wall that are not full height. As I mentioned, I would rather not box in my corner shelf, but will if I have to. As you look at the above picture, just to the left of the door as you are looking at it is a small recessed bookshelf. Since that is already a built in recessed area, probably aprox 20" wide and 6" deep, could I use tat somehow by filling it with insulation and covering it with cloth or something? Again, would I have to do that floor to ceiling, or could I just do that to a portion of it? I want to address my acoustics problem, but of course with this tiny room, want to also be albe to use the corner shelf and/or bookshleves if I can. Here is a picture of that "bookshelf" area before it was finished. I built around that support post and pvc drain pipe to create a recessed area that I put shelves into.

How far do my monitors need to be away from the wall? Right now, they are probably only a foot away. I cant really come back much farther without being right in the middle of the room and with it being so small, that would not be good.

If you do some work on the rest of the room, having speakers close to the wall isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means you'll have to compensate for it. If your speakers consistently lack low end, then this might actually help you out a little. When you get your room treated, and have the desk about where it'll be, play back a commerical CD that you're really familiar with, and tweak the EQ on the speakers until the lows sound natural to you. Jdean has you on the right track, I think. I'd build 2 corner boxes for the back wall, just to make it symmetrical. If you can change out the louver doors for at least a solid panel, that'll help the front of the room. But if you hang a cloud over the mix position, the rear wall will be the next big thing to work on. Good luck! Kase www.minemusic.net

it would take some carpentry skill, but that drop in the ceiling would be a good place for a bass trap and wouldnt rob you of any useable space. if your not too tall, you could put a 703 drop ceiling in the front half of the room with hangers or some rolls of insulation above filling in the space below your self could work. not as effective as filling the whole coner, but better than nothing. same goes for the book shelf. go with dymaxian's suggestion. the room doesn't have to be perfect, just predictable enough that you can "learn" it and compensate where needed. if they fit your budget, ethan's "Minitraps" are a good choice for small spaces. http://www.realtraps.com

it would take some carpentry skill, but that drop in the ceiling would be a good place for a bass trap and wouldnt rob you of any useable space. if your not too tall, you could put a 703 drop ceiling in the front half of the room with hangers or some rolls of insulation above filling in the space below your self could work. not as effective as filling the whole coner, but better than nothing. same goes for the book shelf. go with dymaxian's suggestion. the room doesn't have to be perfect, just predictable enough that you can "learn" it and compensate where needed. if they fit your budget, ethan's "Minitraps" are a good choice for small spaces. http://www.realtraps.com

Could I put a wedged trap in that ceiling drop? There is a ceiling light right in the middle of the higher part and I dont want to have to move it. If I simply built a wedge type frame that would fit up in that drop and filled it with insulation and covered it with cloth, would that be effective? I will build a corner absorber in the space below my corner shelf and see how much that helps. After looking at Ethan's mini-traps, I am thinking I may be able to build a hanging panel to hang in the other corner where the bookshelves are? What about my door. It is directly behind me when seated at my desk. Can I hang an absorber panel on it also?

Someone pointed me to this story : http://www.wsdg.com/resources/resour.php?SL=ta&BL=1 He suggests that it might be better to have the shorter distance from front to back? In my 9'X10' room I have the desk on a 9' wall. Since one of the 10' walls is actually made up of folding louvered doors, I wonder if having the desk the other way with the monitors throwing sound towards those louvers might be better? The louvers are angled up and spaced and might deflect the waves up and allow some sound to pass through them - would that be good?

In my 9'X10' room I have the desk on a 9' wall. Since one of the 10' walls is actually made up of folding louvered doors, I wonder if having the desk the other way with the monitors throwing sound towards those louvers might be better? The louvers are angled up and spaced and might deflect the waves up and allow some sound to pass through them - would that be good?

I thought about that. It may or may not work out for you- my concern about it was the drop in the ceiling would be on your left, and not on your right. If your speaker setup doesn't place one of the speakers under or near this drop, it might not be so bad- and you'll have to put a lot of absorption on the ceiling either way... If you do, I would make the entire right wall (behind you as you mix) absorbent. If you can give up the space, I'd put 4" of rigid fiberglass spaced 4" off the wall. And for the louvered doors, you could attach a 1" or 2" panel to each of the door panels and turn the closet into a bass trap. I wouldn't try to use the angled louvers to really accomplish much... they won't really diffuse the sound, they'll just re-direct it. Either way, you'll have a much better room than you do now. Kase www.minemusic.net

if you can't put in the drop ceiling, the bass trap wedge would be the next best thing. placing rigid fiberglass(o.c. 703) across the face of the trap is more efective than stuffing the whole thing with loose insulation. i would put some clouds on either side of the light fixture as well. with the uneven ceiling, moving the desk to the side wall doesn't seem like a good idea. it might work if you could put up some sort of shelf even with the lower ceiling section and extending out to the light fixture. room symetry is very important from the speakers to the mix postion, less so behind that point. put some absorbtion above the shelf (maybe even a panel trap) to get some more bass traping. how much space is there arount the furnace and water heater? 703 panel on the walls of that closet along with the louvered doors could make for an effective bass trap that wouldn't use up any of your working space. using eq on monitors is a fairly common practice. lots of engineer's with much more experience than me do it. that said, i don't like the idea very much. most of my objection is philosophical, not practical. but, there aren't too many two chanel eqs on the market for under $400.00 that i would want to listen to everything through. that amount of money could be spent to greatly improve the acoustics of your room. with you mixing and tracking in the same place, room treatment seems like a more elegant solution and would help in both operations.

Actually, there are louver doors covering the furnace space. That whole wall is made up of louver doors! I have to have access to the furnace and water heater through those doors, so I cannot block it shut.

i meant that the 703 would go inside the furnace space (if there is enough clearance between the walls and appliances). the louvered doors are largely "transparent" to low frequencies. bass would go through the door and be absorbed inside the closet.