Any help on room treatment?

[dunbar]

Home studio, recently moved. This room has no treatment nor do I know what to do. Any insights? I make music, mostly for student short films and other small projects.






I know my speakers (M-Audio BX8a) are not the best possible, but can't afford new ones atm.

Budget for treatment: $500 or under

Thanks in advance!

[dunbar]

Realized my error #1; and moved the table to the center of the room. ie the center of the back wall.

[Soundman2020]

Hi Dunbar, and welcome!

We will need a lot more information to be able to help you, such as the dimensions of the room (length, width, height), the building materials (what the room is made of, floor, ceiling and walls), wha the purpose is, etc.

Please provide as much information as you can.

- Stuart -

[dunbar]

Thanks...Stuart

Okie dokie, Room specs:

Length: 33 feet
Width: 14 ft., but widening from the left rear (from sweet spot) to about 19 ft. where there's an opening to an alcove, then coming back to around 14 ft. where the bar table (with no bar stools stands and the kitchen begins
Height: 11.4 ft.

All floors are wooden, all walls and ceiling concrete.

Here's a shot from the listening position to the rear of the room - it's a funny shaped room.



Does this help?

edit: the purpose: some kind of room treatment to help in mixing & recording (MIDI only for now) for stuff like short films etc.

[Soundman2020]

There's a more or less "standard" way of setting up and treating rooms that should help considerably.

First, get your speakers off the desk and onto stands just behind the desk. In general it's a bad idea to have speakers on the desk, for many reasons that are rather complex to go into right now, but here are a couple: reflections off the desk surface, vibrations, and comb filtering.

Also, your speakers are too low: they should be at a height of 1.2m above the floor, but that refers to the acoustic axis of the speakers (not the top or bottom of the cabinet). So put them on stands that will get them to about that height. The stands must be massive (very heavy). Some people use concrete blocks, others use hollow metal stands filled with dry sand: The reason is to help isolate the speaker from the floor, to prevent sound being transmitted through the floor.

So now you have your speakers set up on massive heavy stands, with the acoustic axes at 1.2m above the floor. Now place those stands such that the speakers are as close as possible to the front wall (nearly touching it) and at roughly 30% and 70% of the room width (distance between the left wall and right wall where the speakers are). Now move your chair until it is at roughly 38% of the room depth (distance from front wall to back wall). Angle the speakers so that they are aiming directly at your ears when you are seated in the chair. Move the desk so you can use it comfortably when seated at the correct position. If you do that correctly, the distance between the speakers will be a bit greater than the distance from the speakers to your ears, and the speakers will be angled somewhere between 30° and 45°, with the imaginary axes intersecting at an angle of between 60° and 90°, a few cm, behind your head.

OK, so now you have the room geometry correct, you can start the basic treatment.

First, build large bass traps in all of the vertical corners of the room. Make them BIG.

Now place thick absorption panels at all of your first reflection points: both side walls and also the ceiling.

Next, also put large, thick absorption panels between the speakers and the front wall.

Finally, you should really cover the entire rear wall with thick absorption too, but in your case that is really hard to do! So you could probably build two gobos on wheels, and just roll them into position when you need to do critical listening.

One final thing: Your speakers should have controls on the back panel, called something like "bass roll-off" or "bass cut" or "bass trim" or "bass tilt", or something like that: set that control to -6 dB. You must do that, or else the power response will not be correct, as the speakers are right up against the front wall, and therefore no longer have a baffle step problem, so you have to correct the power balance with that control.

If you do all that correctly, you should get drastic improvement in the acoustics of that room, and your mixes will sound great and also translate well to other places.


- Stuart -