Is this room too small to mix in?

I have a small bedroom in my appartement with concrete walls. Dimensions: (N-S, E-W, Floor-Ceiling) 3 x 2,70 x 2,60 = 21 cubic meter 9,8 x 8,8 x x 8,5 (ft) = 733 cubic feet I read that a room should be at least 1500 cubic feet for recording. Does the same apply for a room where I'm mixing in, alone? Is the room too small to fix the acoustical problems?

Mixing rooms are recommended to be that size (1500CF) to let low frequency sound develop better. This isn't required, though. You could mix in a broom closet once you got really, really used to your speakers and how the space sounded. Yes, there's hope for your room. Your mixes will most likely need to be double-checked in other rooms and on other systems, but that's a given for the top-dollar studios, too, so don't feel bad. You'll need to spend plenty of time getting used to how the room sounds before you mix in it, so make sure you set aside time to just hang out and listen to it. My advice for this size of room would be: make the ceiling as absorbent as you can- 4" rigid fiberglass, and if you don't mind the ceiling being 7'6 or so (that's how high mine is right now, and i've seen people work with much lower than that) space it down from the ceiling 4". Look at John Sayers' absorber page- that's pretty much what you'll want to do. Especially with a concrete box to work in... you'll need to make sure you control the low freq's. Hope this helps.

Here's the link to said absorber page - http://www.johnlsayers.com/HR/index1.htm Could you please update your profile to include a location? Makes it easier to recommend things based on availability in your part of the world... Steve

Hello! Sorry for the late reply! :) I'm in The Netherlands, Europe.

I mix in a room that is quite similar in size (8x8x7.5 ft). Like was previously mentioned you will want to make the room as dead as possible, then just learn how things translate to other systems (another room, a boombox, in the car, etc). It usually takes me 2 or 3 mix burns to find the right balance still (but that is an improvement from the 7 or 8 I started with!!). CD-R's are cheap so it is really just a time and convenience issue. As far as the sound in the room goes, I have found that bass and vocal ambeince are the most difficult to get the right balance. If I can clearly hear the bass, it will be way too loud in the mix elsewhere. Conversely, the vocal ambience (ie. reverb, delays) needs to be too prominent in the room to be balanced elsewhere. I haven't tried to figure out why these conditions exist or if there is anything I could do to fix it, I've just gotten used to it. Good luck, Darryl.....

Darryl, one reason may be that with that small a room you could be sitting in a center null in TWO axes, LR and Front/Rear - if you're also near center height wise, you'd be in a near VACUUM for the lowest bass notes. Are you using a sub? If so, where is it located? Steve

knightfly wrote:

Darryl, one reason may be that with that small a room you could be sitting in a center null in TWO axes, LR and Front/Rear - if you're also near center height wise, you'd be in a near VACUUM for the lowest bass notes. Are you using a sub? If so, where is it located? Steve

Do you think I will have the same problem in my design (See http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3156)?

The chair is very close to the center...

Running too late to do this right now, but "bump" this up and I'll calculate usable positions for speakers and your head in that specific room when I get some time... Steve

knightfly wrote:

Running too late to do this right now, but "bump" this up and I'll calculate usable positions for speakers and your head in that specific room when I get some time... Steve

:D! Great!

knightfly wrote:

Running too late to do this right now, but "bump" this up and I'll calculate usable positions for speakers and your head in that specific room when I get some time... Steve

*bump* John added a reply to my other topic about this room: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3156, to which I will reply later. I thought it'd be nice to mention that here.

This takes more time than I remembered; here is a link to the last time I explained it, along with all you need to do it for yourself - http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=18996 give it a try, if you're on a Mac I'm sorry. IF you have questions about the method, post back... Steve

Steve, Man, are you good. After reading your post, I went down and put the tape measure to my mix position, and lo and behold my head sits at 48" from the floor, 48" from the center point of all 4 walls. I could've sworn that my position was closer to the door corner than that but it isn't. Attached is an old layout drawing of my space. The room is not completely square, but rather has one corner chopped off for the door. The mix position is located across a corner to give me a wider work space (and for symmetry since I had to chop off that one corner due to a ceiling fan on the outside of the room). In the corner in front of the mix position I installed a cross-corner (variable depth) membrane-style bass trap. About 3 inches from the front surface of the bass trap I installed some pegboard to which I attached 2" Auralex foam (and a couple of diffusors mainly for aesthetics; I'll post pics later on). The 2 walls that are behind the mix position have bookcases and other hanging storage. The door is covered with 2" foam. All other wall surfaces and a good part of the ceiling have 1" rigid fiberglass installed. Most of the room was done 2.5 years ago before I really started learning from you guys. I added the rigid fiberglass after some input from John about trying to deaden the space, but for some reason I never thought about my being in a null (can't see the forest syndrome, I guess). OK, now with all that said, how do I get out of the vacuum? Thanks, Darryl.....

Wow, DDev, and I thought MY room was small!! :shock: ;)

After careful thought, I'm recommending Sennheiser HD280's :? Seriously, I've gotta hit the sack (12-hr graveyards, gotta love 'em) I'll try to get you something later this afternoon or tomorrow, but I'll warn you I pretty much gave up on corner desk for my own bedroom writing area, more later... Steve

knightfly wrote:

After careful thought, I'm recommending Sennheiser HD280's

Funny you should suggest that. Guess what I got for Christmas? Because of my lack of trust in my room I have started doing a lot more time with the headphones. They work well for getting tone and stereo imaging (and editing) but I still struggle with overall balance (especially drums and bass) and ambience (reverbs, delays). On the whole, though, the mixes I've done the last few weeks have definitely improved in overall quality, and I don't know if that is because of the HD280's or because I'm just more focused on the quality now and taking more time to work on it. Anyway, I hope you managed to get some sleep. I'm here at 3 am on Sunday because I couldn't sleep (and, of course, I have to be at church at 8 for rehearsal; experimenting with in-ear monitoring this weekend in addition to training a new sound tech). Should probably make the night productive and get downstairs to the studio..... Darryl.....

Yeah, getting LOTS of sleep; it's about 2:30 am Monday, and cool as I am :? I've STILL not learned to "sleep-type", although some would argue... If you take the image of your room and follow the technique I linked to ABOVE your room diagram, it will work the same as far as modes are concerned - you'll still see where to (and NOT to) put heads or speakers. Keep in mind that any modal measurements are to SOLID barriers, NOT absorbers - if you get stuck, holler and I'll help... Steve

Steve, Well, I gave it a shot. See if the attached drawing makes any sense. I overlayed the modes on the current studio layout for reference. It appears that my mix position is as good as any other location in the room, so now I'm wondering about other details, like how things are oriented in the room. I'm playing around with an arrangement that would place the speaker position firing from the wall on the top of this diagram. I would relocate the bass trap to be on the bottom wall to be symmetrical with the door location. I think this would allow me to soffit my speakers (if there is any benefit in this room). Anyway, I appreciate your input. This was a lot of work, so I see why you don't volunteer to do this for everyone!! Thanks, Darryl.....

Cool, Darryl; I should make MORE people do the stuff I do for them, oughta be worth at least a couple "attaboys" :lol: One thing that would make your layout easier to work with is to use only red lines for nulls, and only blue lines for peaks, and make ALL lines thinner - it's hard to be sure, but looks like your speakers are in 4th order null for right channel and close to 4th order null, 3rd order peak for the left channel, and real close to 4th order null on the left channel. Unfortunately, in that small a room it only takes an inch or two to make a noticeable difference, so making things as dead as you can was the right move so far. One thing that might help is a sub; if you put it in your CHAIR (raised up as close to ear height as possible) then crawl around the floor til you get the strongest/evenest bass, that spot will be the best place for the sub; at least that might bring down your bass in mixes. Another possibility; pull both speakers away from the wall just enough to put 4" 703 or rockwool spaced out from the wall by about 4", this would not only push your entire mix area closer to the door and your head further from the dead center of the room, more into that GREEN area - it would also smooth out the SBIR you're likely getting from the two walls behind the speakers. Sooo, do you step into that room to ditch your glasses and peel off your shirt, exposing your "big red S"?? :twisted:

Attaboy, Attaboy, Attaboy (enough?)!! Pasq - I hope you are not too bothered that I have hijacked your thread but I thought it would be more useful to both of us to keep it together. I unfilled the color as requested. I did it that way to make it simpler to identify the spaces for the "green". Anyway, attached is the revised (hopefully easier to view) version. I'm also attaching a real pic of the studio as you look in the door. I don't know if there is anything that can be done easily to improve things with the current layout or not, so please let me know what pops out as possibilities. I'm also going to attach a different layout that is a re-arrangement of the entire room. I placed the speakers in a "green spot" which is slightly further out from the wall than I had hoped for. If this arrangement would be easier to work with, please let me know. I have some questions about how to treat it, especially the side walls. I wanted to soffit the speakers but I cannot afford to give up enough space to get them into the "green" so I am open to suggestions. As always, your insight is greatly appreciated. Darryl.....

Sorry I forgot about this one; I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas for you on this one - small rooms are bad enough, but corner setups usually cause more problems than they solve - however, that chopped off corner at the door makes it impossible to get a totally symmetrical setup any other way. If you were to go "straight", you'd need to make sure the door has deep absorption on it to match as closely as possible the corner trap in the lower left; then, whether you change the orientation or not you should have as thick absorption as possible between your speakers and the walls behind them - 4" rockwool + 4" air space if possible, although I'm not sure how you can do that in this size. Can you post 3 more pix, one taken from each corner so I can see the rest of the room? If it's too difficult to shoot from behind the desk, the other two will probably do... Steve

No problem, Steve. You've got a lot of people asking for your advice these days and I have nothing but time and patience on my side. Anyway, as far as ideas go, don't be afraid to say there's nothing that can be done to significantly enhance my ability to trust my mixes in this room. I've already given up on it so this is my last ditch effort to see if anything is possible. I've been thinking about trying to find a way to move the speakers into the long green zone that is just off the corner of the existing shelf to see what affect that would have (I just have to find something to hold them in that location). Here are the other corner shots as requested. The stuff behind the burlap is 1" of rigid fiberglass. I have some 2x4x1 rigid fiberglass attached to pegboard panels that I occasionally place on the 2 shelving units in an attempt to deaden those spots (these panels double as spot treatment in my "vocal booth" hence they are not in the shots). Thanks for taking time to think about this. Maybe something will come out of this (even if it is a "see, you really cannot get away with soemthing this stupid" for others to learn from). Darryl.....

DDev wrote:

Pasq - I hope you are not too bothered that I have hijacked your thread but I thought it would be more useful to both of us to keep it together

No worries, it's all very usefull info for me too! BTW, I replied to the other thread about my mix room in the Studio Design forum. It's over here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 2843#22843 I tried finding the null/nice spots using the method used in this thread. Not sure I did it right though.