How should I control the low end of my room?

Started by Sodhivine on 25 May 2015. 2 replies.

Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 19986.

This is my first post! I want to tighten up the low end response in my room. I was thinking of building bass traps, but before I get into that, I want to know if they will even be worthwhile. I seem to have a huge dip around 110 hz in the room followed by a crazy spike, and its driving me crazy while mixing! I have a few light foam panels on the wall, but nothing intense to stop lower frequencies. I want to remove this dip and spike. I used Room EQ Wizard to get a graph of my frequency response. Frequency measurements give a good rough estimate on the graph, the mic was placed at the mixing position and I ran a full frequency sweep. Check out the photos of the room response in the attached files. ROOM DIMENSIONS AND SPEAKER PLACEMENT ALSO IN PHOTOS. Thanks!
Image not preserved: Screen Shot 2015-05-25 at 1.48.26 PM.png
Image not preserved: Screen Shot 2015-05-25 at 1.19.25 PM.png
Image not preserved: Screen Shot 2015-05-25 at 1.20.32 PM.png
Are the speakers on a table?
Hi there Sodhivine, and Welcome! :) It would help if you could provide more information about your room, such as photos and a diagram of how you have it set up, what type of speakers (make, model), how they are set up, furniture in the room, existing treatment, etc.
I used Room EQ Wizard to get a graph of my frequency response.
But ou only posted a single frequency response curve that covers the full spectrum! It is not possible to determine much about the room acoustics from that. Please post the actual MDAT file, and you'll also need to do three different tests without changing anything: one test for just the left speaker alone, one for just the right speaker, and the last one with both speakers.
I was thinking of building bass traps, but before I get into that, I want to know if they will even be worthwhile.
You will certainly need bass trapping, and lots of it! It's a small room, so it will need a large amount of deep, thick bass trapping. That will undoubtedly help to smooth out your low end. However, those dips and peaks might not all be due to modal issues: they might also be SBIR, or some other artifact that will need to be dealt with in other ways. - Stuart -