ideas for treating my control room and studio.

[ckerian]

I saw a link for this site over at PSW and I love your guys place and feel an urge to post about by bbasment studio. I wish i saw this place a month ago.

for starters... here is a rough draft of it....


I have nothing for treatment in my control room yet. It's not that I dont think it needs it, it's just something I have been putting off and frankly.. the sound doesnt bother me.

the studio.. I did buy a Auralex "roominator" kit not knowing any better. all that treatment was applied to the tracking room. 4 bass tracks, 10? diffusers, and a 12 (or 10)? 2'x2' 2" "wedgies"

a few weeks ago I purchased 6 more leonard bass traps and two 2'x4' 2" sheets. I applied all of this in the tracking room as well.

The pictures here will give you an idea as to what my room is like but keep in mind that the images dont show the new treatment i added.
http://www.crystalclearrecording.com/about.htm

I didnt have anymore corners for the bass traps so i just put the 6 more traps up in the main area of the tracking room along with the two 2x4 sheets on the ceiling. I think it's sounds a lot better. I put the 6 bass traps up in the main area of the tracking room in different places at the points where the wall meets the ceilings but not in the corners as I already had traps up there where I could.

so thats a start. I'll post some picts and maybe you guys can give me some ideas on any more improvments I can do. I think it's probably OK. I record demos and decent productions for local bands and artists. rock, country, blues, and even some jazz and heavy metal.

moving on to the control room.....

I have a sub wolfer and ns-10's (w/a crown dc300a) for secondary monitors and mix mostly on Event 20/20's via a 600 watt carver amp.

I have been thinking about what i got to do about improving my monitoring situation. other than new speakers.. i feel I can improve the room first and that should be a priority before new speakers. looking at these pictures you see my monitors are a bit low. I have rememied that by raising my speaker stands. my new mixer was a tad higher than my old stands. thats fixed now though I do have my ns-10's sitting on top of my 20/20's. bad?

is my sub in the best postion it can be in?

the bookcase in the corner is probably good right?

shoudl I waste more money on broadbasnd absorbers or go the harder route of building wideband absorbers with the 703? thats one problem cause the wife is all about fung shway and would freak if anything was ugly. haha.

so.... what and how much do i need? I know I need to get some absorber behind my monitors right? and above me?

I have and have read an old book years ago called "building a recording studio from scratch" that has plans for a few different studios. it gives you the formulas for how much absorber in how many "sabines", etc... but I am just lazy and stupid. OK, need to break out the pencil now.

so basically if you have any good suggestions for me.. cool. if not... I'll be reading and gaining some knowledge. I guess I am just in denial that i even have to do anything to the control room.

oh yeah.... carpet floors and 8 foot basement ceilings.

[dymaxian]

Greetings and welcome!

That's a nice big space you have. It probably sounds ok un-treated, just because of the size. The proportions are a little weird, but that's not hard to deal with. Especially with the layout you have currently. I'll start with the easiest/cheapest things that'll do the most, and work toward total treatment/more complicated stuff as I go.

Auralex makes great stuff, but most of us around here are do-it-yourself'ers and if you're willing to put in the time and sweat, we can save you a lot of money and get you the same quality of acoustics. My recommendations are all DIY things.

If you installed some bass absorption in the corners, that'd do a lot. If you're handy with wood, you could build a group of Ethan Winer's panel traps, and put a pair in each corner. Those are pretty cheap. Or you could just lay 2" panels of rigid fiberglass across all the corners (wrap them in fabric of your wife's choosing... get her involved!)

The side walls (as you sit at the mix position) are pretty far away, but I'd still find the spots that send direct reflections at your ears when you're mixing, and hang 703 panels there, too.

The back wall, if it's untreated, will be sending reflections back at you while you mix. It's a ways behind you, so in your case it's not bad, but having diffusion or absorption back there would serve you well. Bookshelves make decent diffusors, but I don't know if you have enough of 'em to take up the majority of the back wall... If you do this, try to move the couch forward a bit (clients on the couch while you mix will get a smeared sound if they stand or sit too close to diffusors on the wall). If you go with absorption, John has wall units designed for the front and back walls on his "Wall Units" page. It's basically 4" rigid fiberglass spaced 4" out from the wall, all wrapped in fabric.

Speaking of the front wall, can you afford the floor space to pull your mixing desk and monitor setup out from the wall a foot or 2? If you can put some bass trapping behind there, it'd make the low-freq sound of the room much tighter. Even if you don't put anything behind your speakers, moving them out from the wall will even out their LF response; you may have accomodated this with EQ already, so it's down a ways on the list of priorities. Putting LF absorption behind your monitors will help a lot, because LF sound goes out of their backs, hits that wall and comes right back at you... putting something up to calm that down will make a big difference. Panel traps work very well here.

The next one is tough to place on this list... it's important, but complicated. I personally would make the ceiling absorptive and the floor reflective, but that'll take a bit more work. The ceiling isn't too bad; if you can hang a "cloud" of rigid fiberglass a few inches down off the ceiling, it'll help the LF of the room, and kill early reflections coming off the ceiling and creating a comb filter effect at the listening position. If you hear the high-end sound of your mixes change as you get up and walk around the room, this would be a big help. The floor is trickier- that means getting the carpet off the floor, and either painting the concrete beneath (looks like this is a basement studio, correct me if I'm wrong) or laying down a wood floor. I'd put this one at the end of the list...

BTW your kids are cute down there, jamming like that. I get my daughter on the drum set in my studio whenever I can- she's a riot.

Hope this helps.

Kase
www.minemusic.net

[ckerian]

Thanks Kase. That's a wealth of information.

I am gonna read all this again. i just wanted to thank you real quick. I'll post a decent response as soon as I can. I also took some more pictures last night that I will try to post soon but I think you may already have a good idea just by what i posted already.

Chris