Mix studio in a 8 x 8 meter room

Hi all, I'm renting a 8 x 8 meter (about 26 x 26 feet) room. It's a class room on the first floor in an old school. The school was built around 1920 and is no longer used. It's in a small town in The Netherlands. The room with its high ceilings and big windows looks great but acoustically isn't optimal for mixing, which is what I'd like to do there. Since I'm renting the room I can't do any major structural changes, so I have to use things like absorber panels etc that are easy to add/remove. Sketchup model I just finished creating the room in Sketchup. I'm hoping the good people on this forum might have some advice on where to start. I attached it to this topic. Some notes: - The long table in the room can't be moved. The long thing sticking out of the table has cables running through them. I only need a small desk because I mix in the box exclusively. I don't have a big desk, just a laptop, an audio interface and two nearfields (Dynaudio BM6A's, which are on DIY pedestal-like stands that are filled with sand). - There's a lowered ceiling made of some kind of absorbing panels. Don't know the acoustical characteristics but will find that out soon. The room is about 430cm high, the lowered ceiling is at 360cm from the floor. - The white wall is made of plywood (I think). The room used to be bigger but they divided it this way. - The big white boxes are heating radiators. - I won't be recording here, just mixing, usually at moderate levels so soundproofing isn't needed. - My budget is between 500 and 1000 Euro's (650 - 1300 USD). So, my questions to you are: 1. What would be the best mixing position? 2. Where to put absorbers/diffusers/bass traps etc? 3. Any other suggestions to what I could do to make this room useful for mixing?

Made a panorama photo with my phone. It's not stitched up perfectely but it might give you a better idea of what the room is like. http://360.io/hhyhmz

How does it sound now? If it's pretty dry, and that could be because of the absorbing ceiling, it wouldn't surprise me if you would get a nice result with some speaker position - listening position tweaking and some reflection control. In such a big room standing waves will hardly be a problem, I guess.

I tried mixing there once, but I found that very hard because of a short reverb and a some standing wave problems (not huge dips and peaks but a bit too much). I think the big windows and bare walls reflect too much. Hanging drapes in front of the window should absorb high mids and highs I guess, but I guess that won't do much for the lows and low mids. I'd like to avoid making holes in the walls so I was thinking I could make some tall absorber panels, maybe 2 - 2,5 meters in length which I can line up against the walls, so they're leaning against them.

Here's one idea. It has curtains in front of the windows and show several panels leaning against the walls and bass traps in the corners (all absorbers/traps are orange). It also shows where I think the listening position should be. I'm open for suggestions though. I based the size of the panels on the size of these panels: http://www.isover.nl/producten/technisc ... liner-602/ Though later I saw these smaller panels on the same site: http://www.isover.nl/producten/afbouw/s ... sonepanel/ Which have higher absorption numbers. Bert, since you're from The Netherlands, do you know what panels sold here in NL would be best? Anyway, what do you think of this design?

You're adding corner absorbers. In a 8 x 8 meter room your fundamental standing wave is around 21 Hz, so I really should wait with these devices untill you are absolutely sure you need them. In such a big room, and see you using a near field setup, it doesn't matter much where you're located except for low frequencies and reflections. it is often wise to move to a wall and even baffle/soffit your speakers to prevent from low frequency diffraction, that is sound bending around the speaker and bouncing from boundaries, thus causing phase problems and poor low frequency rendering. For absorption you can use glass wool or rock wool. For an idea of what to use see for example here: http://www.geluidforum.nl/viewtopic.php?t=1397

So I should first add the curtains and the 10 absorber panels, and after testing decide if the corner absorbers are really needed? Thanks for the link!

I would put the speakers/desk at the wall without windows/doors, and treat the same wall with massive absorbers, at least 20 cm with a 20 cm void behaind 'm, at least 125 cm high and preferably larger.. Just to prevent reflections from the wall. Then listen/measure. Then do some position tweaking. Then decide if/what you need further. If it where a real control room with far field monitoring, it would be a different story, but first try a minimalistic approach. My 0,02 cents.

Like this? These are 120 x 240cm boxes, with 20cm rockwool and 20 cm dead air behind them. I can make these with hard backs. They should be airtight, right? EDIT: I see I could even put 5 next to each other, that would be even better I guess.

Nice! I wouldn't make the panels with hard backs. The sound should be able to flow through them, bounce off the wall and flow back trough the panel to enhance the ability to absorb longer sound waves.

But must I place the panels right up against the wall, and make that connection airtight? Or can I just make a simple open frame, put rockwool in it, wrap it in cloth and I'm done?

Yep, air tight isn't neccesary :D

Ok dankjewel Bert! 8)