Am I making things worse?

I previously had all my recording gear set up in the drum booth, until my $ituation needed to be a bit more professional, opportunity knocked, and I departed my safe haven to move out into the larger room, which I have subsequently attempted to acoustically treat. I seem to have traded one problem for a new set of different problems, perhaps going in right direction, perhaps not. Thus, this post. Pursuant to reading the posting rules, I typcically play at a 70 db or so volume, dependent on how many beers I have had, and whether or not the wifey is asleep. I have alesis Monitor One Mk2 monitors powered by a Hafler DH200 (why did they stop making these wonders?). To supplement the low end, I have a Polk Audio 10 inch sub. I have a few pro-level mics. I use Sonar X1. I need to be able to come up with professional-sounding mixes, which I was amazingly able to come very close to back in the cozy drum booth which has a 18" drop ceiling filled with fibreglass sealed by sheets and framing, and decorative burlap overlay for appearance. Here's a sample of what I've been able to do in the booth: http://www.fflynet.net/greg_graves/index_files/Blue.mp3 Ignore the bad certificate warning if you get one (this ftp area was set up for me by my friend and neighbor who died a year ago and subsequently is not able to fix things much) Now I'm out of the booth and trying to set up in area depicted below. Also, here is the REW file if anyone wants to gander. http://www.fflynet.net/greg_graves/inde ... yroom.mdat

a few more pics that may explain my situation. So basically I am seeking advice, hopefully that what I have done has made things better sufficiently to go back to recording and leave this acoustic transformation nightmare behind me.

I found an mdat on the drum booth, that I subsequently vacated, and perhaps might have been better off remaining in. THAT !!! is the million dollar question here. I think.

Hi there "Timeking", and welcome to the forum! And a belated Merry Christmas to you, also! :)

I seem to have traded one problem for a new set of different problems,

Welcome to the world of studio design! :) That's what it is all about: trading off one set of acoustic issues for a (hopefully) better set.

I have alesis Monitor One Mk2 monitors powered by a Hafler DH200 (why did they stop making these wonders?). To supplement the low end, I have a Polk Audio 10 inch sub.

Is that the PSW-10? How do you handle the cross-over to the sub?

which I was amazingly able to come very close to back in the cozy drum booth which has a 18" drop ceiling filled with fibreglass sealed by sheets and framing, and decorative burlap overlay for appearance.

So you had a very effective bass trap across your entire ceiling... :) But you don't have the same in your new space...

Here's a sample of what I've been able to do in the booth:

Very nice! Sounds pretty darn good. Just a little heavy in the low bass for my preferences, but not bad at all. Perhaps the sub is a bit underpowered for the room, or you don't have it loud enough? Or maybe its response is not smooth enough? (BTW: I noticed a strange sort of "chirp" sound at around 02:12, sort of like a car tyre squealing... is that intentional, or did it slip by unnoticed? ) But the big question is: how does that very same song sound now, when you play it in your new space, as compared to how it sounds in the old space?

Now I'm out of the booth and trying to set up in area depicted below.

The first thing I noticed about that is the major lack of symmetry, which is critical for control rooms. You have a wall that seems to be fairly well positioned and angled to your left, but a huge, open, empty area of nothing to your right! That needs fixing...

this is the REW spl graphic after spending days moving speakers and absorbers all around everywhere.

SPL alone only tells you a very, very small part of the entire acoustic picture, and not even the most important part. The rest is in how the room behaves over time, not just in the frequency domain alone. Also, there's right way and a million wrong ways to set up a room: Trial and error from an unknown start usually leads to one of the million "wrongs", seldom to the "right"! :)

What is causing those cancellations!?!?!

Room modes. Plan and simple. Or rather, they are mostly room modes, but there are also some other issues mixed up in there, related to reflections, SBIR, comb filtering, and other stuff. By setting up your room correctly, you can eliminate or greatly reduce most of those non-modal issues, and proper treatment will deal with the modal issues (as far as possible) as well as most of the "other stuff" issues. By the way, you have a mains hum problem in your system somewhere: Just from looking at your REW data, I figured out that you live in the USA... :) The hum is pegged at 120Hz, and is only about 40 dB down from the peaks, so I'm surprised you haven't noticed it. That needs fixing too. You also need to bring up the level of your REW tests, and/or calibrate REW properly: You need a sound level meter to do that, and you should conduct your tests at a level of about 82 dBC for each speaker by itself, which should give you around 86 dBC for all three together. (And yes, the sub does seem to be underpowered.) It also seems that you greatly changed the position of the mic and speakers between the "before treatment" test and the later tests, so they cannot be compared at all, unfortunately. Also, the "before" test only runs from 40 Hz to 4 kHz, so it isn't much use at all. That's a shame, as it would have been really good to have a solid, valid, "baseline" test of the untreated room against which to compare the results of the treatment. Is there any way you can remove the treatment from the room easily, and repeat that "baseline" test? But don't do that until you get the geometry situation correct: there's no point in that. The speakers and mix position must be fixed in their final locations before you can do the baseline test, because the location of the mic CANNOT change between tests: moving the mic invalidates comparisons.

junk along wall right of desk that I have nowhere else to stack

.... which is adding to the gross problem with symmetry: Looking at REW, it's almost as though your left and right speakers are located in two different rooms....

this is the desk area

That is going to need a lot of work too. There's just so much stuff going on there, that it will be really hard to get decent acoustic response out of that.

this is the 2'x4'x8" bass trap

What other bass trapping do you have in that room?

consisting of two panels of Roxul SafeNSound separated by 1.5 inch air gap maintained by internal struts, and the whole thing is in an elaborate white-board cage what can absorb from the front, top, botton, sides and back.

You might want to take a look at the Superchunk type of bass trap: it's a lot easier to build than that, and very much more effective.

I found an mdat on the drum booth,

That's not the same data you added to the file that you posted above, labeled as "drum booth NOSUB" and "drum booth w/SUB"! Those are VERY different data sets: they only go up to 400 Hz, for starters... :)

and perhaps might have been better off remaining in. THAT !!! is the million dollar question here.

Probably not! That was a much smaller room, by the looks of your rough SketchUp. Small rooms almost never sound as good as large rooms, if done right. It would really help to know the dimensions of the rooms! Anyway, I would suggest that your plan should be to first resolve your symmetry issue: it is absolutely critical that the left and right halves of the room must be mirror-images of each other. When that is resolved, then you should get rid of all the "junk" in the room, and then carefully place ONLY the stuff that you absolutely need (meaning just the 2 main speakers, the sub, the desk, console, gear, and your chair) in the geometrically correct positions and orientations, then run the baseline REW test like that. THEN install the basic room treatment that that is always needed (bass traps, first reflections, cloud, etc.) and do another REW test, then based on the results of that test, see what still needs to be done. That's the usual way of approaching studio layout and treatment. Hope that helps! - Stuart -

The worst thing about truth is that it is true. I knew that I had a bass problem (i.e., controlling the bass in the mix) from being in the drum booth and that was, I learned, due the "small room effect". But, it was cozy and quiet in there and great for playing and writing. After considerable reading on my part, I came to the conclusion that the best approach for me was to tear down the drum booth. Plan A. That would have allowed me to construct a symmetrical room, with outwardly splayed walls from the front of the room 12 feet back, in a 22 foot long room. Besides giving me a shot at creating a good room, it would also be a helluva lot of work, and create other issues I'll not relate for brevity's sake. So I thought I would see if there was any future in taking the easy way out. Like most things in life, what you put into it is proportional to what you get out. I suppose. The upshot of your evaluation of my situation above, and thank you for that, is that I will have to rethink going back to plan A. As far as the 120 Hz ring, I did notice that and spent some time looking at my electronics, only to find that is due to the computer bouncing out from under the desk. If I actually implement Plan A, then I'm going to fix that too. thanks much