Small Basement Room help

Hey guys, Been reading these forums for a while but I've always been a renter and never really had a good space of my own. Well, my wife and I just bought our first house and it has a great little basement room that I'll be using for both recording and mixing spaces. However the room comes with a few challenges. The main one being that it was an add on from the previous owner and was built around existing floor joists. So I've got 4 pillars in the room that present some challenges to room lay out. Right now I'm not looking at doing any construction or major changes to the room - just trying to get the best layout I can for my purposes. Attached are two pictures of the layout (1 without measurements and 1 with). I need help figuring out where to position the desk/console/mix location. I also need to make sure I have room for a drum set, guitar gear and vocals/general tracking area (no booth or iso stuff yet - someday...).

viewtopic.php?t=3231 When you read this I think you will add some more informations in you topic:)

Hi Gustin. Welcome!

The main one being that it was an add on from the previous owner and was built around existing floor joists. So I've got 4 pillars in the room that present some challenges to room lay out.

They sure are a problem! Have you considered moving them? With the help of a structural engineer, you likely could move some or all of them to better locations.

I need help figuring out where to position the desk/console/mix location.

Probably the only real possibility is at the left end, facing the wall that is labelled [ 10' 5" ]. There don't seem to be any other obvious places. There are no other places where you can get symmetry, and symmetry is critical. However, there are two pillars in that area, that make it unlikely you could fit things in properly... - Stuart -

Thanks for the replies, acuspace, I thought I had included everything from that - please let me know what else I'm missing. Stuart, yeah, I think you're right. Long term, I'll need to work with an engineer and see if they can be moved. Since we just bought the house, we'll have to hold off on any major work like that until a few years down the road :) . At this point it's more about getting things up and running in a way that's 'good enough' for a couple years and then looking at additional construction. Looking at it with some fresh eyes, I'm wondering if the best option would be to place the mix location somewhat in the middle of the room. It might help avoid some reflections off a back wall, and it seems to be one of the areas with the most open room right now.

I'm wondering if the best option would be to place the mix location somewhat in the middle of the room.

It might be possible: What speakers will you be using? Here's the thing: Speakers either have to be very far from walls, or right up against them. The issue is something called SBIR (among others), meaning "Speaker Boundary Interference Response", which is a fancy way of saying that sound waves coming from the speaker bounce of the walls and then interact with themselves, cancelling themselves out or reinforcing themselves. The frequencies that get cancelled (nulled) are directly related to one thing only: the distance from the wall. Usually, this is in reference to the front wall, but other walls also add to the effect. So if the speaker is far enough away from the wall, then the effect occurs at frequencies that are so low it doesn't matter. And if the speakers are right up against the walls, then the frequency is so high that it doesn't matter, since it can be treated. The problem is in that range between "right up against", and "far away from", which is about 1 foot to 4 feet. The normal recommendation is that you want your speaker at least 1.5 meters from the nearest wall (about 5 feet). If you set up your speakers so that you are 6 feet from the front wall, and the speaker is 18 inches away from it, then you have a major null at around 105-115Hz, and a couple of major peaks at around 85 and 130 Hz (about 6 dB difference). So the kick drum will boom, the toms will flub muddily, and the bass guitar will be all over the place! So you have two options: If you move things around so that you are 12 feet from the wall, and the speakers are 7 feet from the wall, the response is almost flat, with just minor 1 dB ripples. But it's hard to get that kind of distance in most rooms, so you have to go to the opposite extreme: With the speakers up against the front wall and a good thick panel of absorption in between speaker and wall, with you 5 feet from the front wall, once again the ripples are almost flat... Except for one thing: there is now a general bass boost, due to the proximity of the wall. The speaker is now radiating into half-space, not fill space, so the power balance is normalized, and the baffle step compensation circuitry built into the speaker is no longer needed: yo have to turn it off. That's why all good studio monitors have controls on the back, called something like "room response" or "bass roll-off" or "bass tilt", or some such. Turn that down about 4 dB or so, and you correct things perfectly. So that's where you stand: if you can get your speakers far away from all walls, then that's an option. If not, then you have to go tight up against a wall. If you wanted to try this, the I'd suggest that you use the long wall ad your front wall (marked 19'9"), and set yourself up in the middle of that, with the speakers either right against it, or 5 feet back, and you about 4 to 5 feet from the speakers, following the usual geometry for correct placement, and making the corresponding adjustments to the speaker controls for each location. My guess is that you'll find the "up against the wall" scenario is the best. Of course, that will only work if you put a good acoustic absorption panel in there, such as 4" of OC-703 or something similar. Without that, things will get rather ugly, with the comb filtering added to the SBIR... Once you figure out if that location works, then you can think about how to treat the rest of the room, to compensate for all the other issues. - Stuart -