Small Homestudio Mixing Room

hi Lukas, I'm not an expert but have definitely learned a lot on this forum so I might share some tricks. For starters you need to have good room symmetry, to avoid differences between left and right speaker response. So, the first drawing is definitely not ok. the others are ok, but the door is a problem and taking it out and leaving the space empty even worse. Solution could be placing the speakers against the longer wall (at the right). This way you get better symmetry, and the glass door and window can be easily treated with heavy curtains to avoid reflections (but i think they won't be very influent anyway) What you really should buy is a measurement microphone (behringer ecm8000 is cheap and works well) and download Room EQ Wizard software (freeware). By making measurements of the room frequency response, you can easy choose which the best position is, and then getting precise suggestions on which treatment to do. Good luck!

Welcome to the forum, Lukas. :) Giaco is the right about the basic issue with your room: Symmetry is very important. Can you close off either of those doors? They are both in the way of what you need to do. If there are alternate paths to whatever is on the other side of those doorways, then it would be really good to seal one of the off. That would allow you to orient your layout for best acoustics, and set up your speakers correctly. Another option might be to change the sense of the door on the left, so that it swings out of the room, instead of in. And one more might be to replace that with a sliding door or pocket door. As Giaco said: the option of just leaving an empty gap there is not good. That would not create an acoustically symmetrical environment. You do need to have something in there, and it needs to be hard, solid, rigid and massive.

This way the next room may act a bit like a diffusor, preventing the reflexions of coming back into my room.

Actually, it would probably act more like a perfect "Sabine" absorber, but with a tuned cavity on the other side: the next room.

The only problem i can think of is, that the speakers may sound completely differently.

Exactly. The response on the left and right speakers would be different. Maybe your easiest option is just to change the sense of that door. Take it out along with its frame, and put in a new pre-framed solid-core door that swings into the next room, instead of into your room. Then put thick absorption on it, the same as on the opposite wall, since it looks like that door will be at your first reflection point. That seems to be the fastest, least complicated way of doing it. - Stuart -

i put the desk on the longer wall and you were right: Things got much better.

Great! Glad that worked out for you. It's amazing what a difference it can make to just set up the geometry correctly.

both of my speakers are really close to the front wall. Do you think that good low-end absobtion panels right behind the speakers could do the trick?

Definitely! I would also move the speakers a bit further apart if you can, then put thick absorption in the front wall, right behind the speakers. 4" OC-703 should do the trick. Are the speakers on the desk or on stands? Do they have bass roll-off controls on the rear panel? If so, then set those to -4 dB or even -6 dB, what ever gives you flatter response.

And what about the ceiling? does it make sense to put absorbtion material right above the listening position?

Absolutely! That is called a "ceiling cloud", and you definitely do need one. A simple wood frame with 4" of OC-703 should do it. Hang it from chains or wire, at an angle (front lower, rear higher). After doing all that, measure the room response with REW to see what still needs to be done. In fact, measure BEFORE you do all that, then again afterwards, so yu can see the difference. - Stuart -