My long, one-car garage studio, construction phase

[Soundman2020]

won't that reduce the airflow from the port?

As long as the fabric is "breathable", that's fine. There isn't much airflow through there: just convection flow, due to the warm air rising from the rear of the speaker. Of course, if that where an HVAC vent, you would not want to cover it with cloth! But for a soffit vent, there shouldn't be an issue if the cloth is breathable.

Is the port in the soffit meant for the airflow required to keep the self powered speaker from overheating,

Right! That's the main purpose of those vents. There is an air inlet under the rear edge of the speaker, and a sort of "chimney" up through the damping insulation inside the soffit box, leading to the vent port at the top. Convection takes care of moving the air: there is normally no fan, although you could put one in if you wanted to.

or are they intended to allow acousticail movement, such as the subfrequencies to be absorbed by the superchunk/hangers?

I guess you could go to all the trouble of tuning that port, but there's really no need for that, since the baffle itself takes care of extending the bass range, and eliminating the power imbalance: That vent is also rather far away from the speaker itself, in a box with a very large volume of air, and well damped, so I doubt there is enough energy to do much tuning with a port that size. But that's an interesting question: I'll look into it one day, and see if it would make sense to actually try to tune that.... Hmmm...


- Stuart -

[Bigsby]

Hello--I've been a bit busy with work, so haven't had any time to think about my desk, much less do anything about it!

Thank you for your reply, Ryan. I did the mirror test, and found that, yes, I can see the reflection of the speakers when I move the mirror on the surface of the "wings" of the desk. I haven't had time to just play music and compare how things sound with and without the desk top, but I will try that, as well. My solution may end up being to cut the wings of the desk off, and mount them lower, out of the way of first reflections. We'll see….

And Kevin, Stuart is right, the fabric is "breathable" (I actually made sure I could breathe through it before I put it up there). So far, I haven't had any overheating issues while running the speakers, although I haven't had them on for hours on end yet. I'm pretty confident in the design, though, especially since it's been repeated so many times on this site by better men (and women) than me!

Thanks, everyone, for reading my thread!

Mark

[amac2673]

Hi Mark,

My build necessitated cutting my silencer return vent in half to go through both of my leafs because of space concerns. Can you tell me what kind of Neoprene you used to wrap the gap on yours, ie; density, thickness, whatever specs you used. There seems to be many options out there and I do not want to make the wrong purchase, such as foamy vs a more dense version.

Thanks so much,
Allen

[Bigsby]

Hi Allen--
I just used neoprene from an old scuba wetsuit, about 5/8" thick. I think that it would have been more proper to use solid neoprene from a roll (or however you're able to buy it), but I wasn't able to locate any at the time. I later saw some in a store that was about 1/8" thick--it seems like you could just wrap that several times around your duct to get the desired thickness. I don't have any density specs, but I can say that my approach was quite effective. I'm guessing that Stuart and the other experts here would encourage you to buy some new neoprene, though; I assume it would work even better.

Sorry for the unscientific response--I guess I wasn't very scientific about this detail

Mark

[Bigsby]

Hi Everyone--

I've finally gotten around to doing REW tests with and without my desk in place--the concern being that the desk is so close to the speakers that first reflections off the desktop are unavoidable. The tests can be found here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m9ihuip6mbc9c ... 0desk.mdat

"speaker tweaks" is the last measurement I took before "completing" my room treatment. The rest of the descriptions are self-explanatory. One thing to note: the test mic position may be slightly different from when I did "speaker tweaks" because I used tape on the floor back then to mark the mic stand position and I have since finished the floor. However, the mic position for the "with desk" and "without desk" measurements is the same, and that's what's important right now as I'm hoping to get advice on any possible eq tweaks, etc. to compensate for the desk reflections.

As a reminder, this is what the desk looks like:

desk 1.jpg

This is what my testing setup looked like without the desk in place. The rack on the right and cabinet on the left were there for both the with- and without desk tests:

Desk test.jpg

So, a couple questions:

1.To my uneducated eye, when I view the response in overlay mode, the measurement "both (speakers) with desk" actually seems to be a bit smoother than "no desk both." Am I looking at this correctly? If not, are there any eq tweaks you recommend to compensate?

2. Would a subwoofer be a good thing to acquire some time down the road, even in such a small room?

Thank you! I'm so close to being able to use the studio I can taste it!!

Mark

[Soundman2020]

It's looking pretty good, Mark. Better than I expected.

By the way, your "With desk left" measurement is all messed up: no use. something must have happened while that was running: maybe some sort of loud noise hit the room. so you should repeat that test, if you want to have a complete record.

However, you seem to have created some type of resonant "thing" with your desk, that is resonating at about 54 Hz: take a look at the waterfalls for the right speaker, with no desk, then with the desk:

rt-no-desk.jpg

rt-with-desk.jpg

And the same thing for "Both - no desk" and "both - with desk":

both-no-desk.jpg

both-with-desk.jpg

Something is ringing loud and long at 54 Hz. There's also some much quieter ringing at 78Hz and 163 Hz. I would suggest that you try to figure out what that is, and fix it.

The other issue (which was to be expected) is that you now have a slight dip around 1 kHz. That's typical with speakers placed on meter bridges, which is similar to what you are doing, basically, and is due to comb filtering from the desk surface. There's not much you can do about that, unfortunately, but it isn't all that big. Just be careful if you find yourself boosting 1k - 1.5k a lot in your mixes: it might not be necessary.

2. Would a subwoofer be a good thing to acquire some time down the road, even in such a small room?

Hell yes! Well, to my way of thinking, anyway. Some don't agree with that, and say that subs are not a good idea, but when you have small mains in a small room, I think you need the extra extension that the sub will give you. To accompany your A7's, I'd suggest a Sub-10.

- Stuart -

[Bigsby]

Thank you, Stuart! I'll try to figure out what is resonating on the desk and run more tests....

[Bigsby]

Well, here is a long, long, long, LONG overdue conclusion post. Sorry for the delay if any of you have wondered if I ever finished (Perhaps I've been long forgotten!)

Anyway, here are a few sub-par iPhone photos that capture as well as I am able what things look like. First, a few shots of the control room, which, despite its small size, is surprisingly comfortable, with a surprisingly wide stereo imaging:

Control Room 2.jpg

IMG_2220.jpg

Control Room Front.jpg

Rack.jpg

….And here are a couple live room shots. Again, despite its small size, I'm really happy with how it ended up. With three different wall finishes in there, there is a lot of flexibility to be had by moving around the room. My sax playing friend (shown below) was thrilled with the sound of the room and the resulting tracks we recorded for a job he had.

IMG_2243.jpg

Live Room.jpg

Amp.jpg

People say it again and again on this forum, but I think it bears repeating: Most of our projects begin with limitations of one kind or another. Mine were all related to the small size of my garage and what I had to work with. I really believe that if I didn't follow the advice of the generous experts on this site, and taken my time with planning the studio, a lot of my time building would have been wasted, with inferior (and expensive) results.

So, my humble, unsolicited, advice to those of you thinking about starting a project like this: take you time, do your homework, and be willing to listen and make modifications. You will not regret it!

Finally, and most importantly, I owe thanks to many people who have given me advice during this build: Early on, Glenn (Gulfo) and Brien (Xspace) were instrumental in getting me headed in the right direction. Later on, Stuart's tireless and generous input really made the studio into the best space it could possibly be. I can't thank you enough, Stuart! Others, like Simo, chimed in along the way with needed encouragement. Of course, without John, none of this would exist, so a thousand thank you's to you, John. I look back on all the entries in my build and feel nothing but gratitude.

This post is starting to sound a bit like some sort of weird award acceptance speech, so I'll stop now. I just want to say THANK YOU!

Bigsby

[Soundman2020]

Mark, I'm looking in the dictionary but not finding the right superlatives to cover what you have accomplished! "Amazing" and "Awesome" really don't quite go far enough...

Congratulations! That place looks just incredible. The workmanship is top-notch, and the attention to detail all along the way has clearly paid off, big time.

There's not much more to say about it, except to put you at the top of the list:


http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 923#p40923


If you'd like to do one more REW test, there's a little trick up the sleeve that MIGHT be applicable in your case, if the phase graphs pan out the way I'm hoping they do. ... It could improve the response even more, for your listening position... So if you feel like doing a REW test, then I'd love to look at it and see if this will work in your case.

But once again, CONGRATULATIONS on a job really, really well done.


- Stuart -

[Bigsby]

Stuart, I'm humbled by your kind words--thank you. As I said before, this build would have turned out much differently without your advice, and I'm eternally grateful.

As far as REW goes, i haven't done one of those for a long time; I'd have to refresh my memory to be sure I do it properly, but perhaps I will!

Thank you!
Mark

[burnham]

Awesome thread!!! I learned so much from this and it turned out so well. Thanks Mark.

[addr128]

Nice piece of working. Your garage studio is looking good.

[SamCalver]

Hey dude, Loved reading you're build process and I hope it is still serving you well?

I have just started my own and am freaking out as I don't want to mess anything up so thankfully have just found this forum!

I have a wooden unit similar to you're garage (5.5m X 4m X 3m) and I am just curious as to how you boarded up you're windows? I have a door and a window that I want to close up and make sound tight before building my interior walls but was worried that If i did this wrong I would unintentionally create a 3-leaf wall?

Any tips would be hugely grateful!

All the best,

Sam

[thedukewestern]

What a wonderful thread it looks amazing! Thank you for being so thorough in your posts here

[johnv]

A really inspiring journey Mark, it's the closest to what I think I am looking at myself and it has connected in many many ways. If only I have some semblance of your focus and patience... (much gloved applause!).

AND INDEED: a bump for more stories of how it's working!