Designing a new live / mixing room inside home

[madebyjuice]

Hi there!

First of all, I’m so happy I recently discovered this forum. There’s a lot of helpful information available which has motivated me to finally bite the bullet and put together a decent studio to create, record, do live sessions and mix music in. I’m a first-time poster and I was hoping to get some insight and advice on this project. I'm currently using a small bedroom studio which has served me well, but I feel motivated to "upgrade" so to speak.

The room is an odd shape as the back of it tapers off, I'm not sure how to exactly how to describe this, but you can see in the photos. It is currently a living room (a very messy one at that as you can see, so apologies for the clutter). I plan on moving out all furniture, painting the walls and possibly installing laminate flooring. The floor is currently tiled, the walls and ceiling are painted gyprock.

room 1 small.jpg

room 3 small.jpg

room 2 small.png

MEASUREMENTS
Length - 5520mm
Width - 5150mm
Height - 2400mm
Length of rear wall sections (where the large windows are)
1600mm

Second of all, I am starting humble. I'm not looking to partition the room up (as much as I'd like too) or anything too involved as this is a family home. I just want to create a treated space where I can do basic things as I've stated above. I'm open to virtually any modifications aside from that (eg installing panels, traps, placing insulation inside the window cavities, new flooring..etc)

I have rudimentary building skills (I have made 10 acoustic panels for my current bedroom studio) and understand the basics of acoustic treatment. I'm confident I can get the job done. I'm just after as much practical and technical information/advice as possible, in terms of the pros and cons of moving into a room this size and shape, mix desk/monitor placement, panel, cloud & trap specifications/placement..etc basically anything pertaining to making this room suitable for what I'd like to achieve.

I've attached some photos for reference.

Thanks in advance,
Jules

[Soundman2020]

Hi Jules. Welcome to the forum!

That's a strange shaped room, for sure... but it would probably be somewhat usable if you flip your planned orientation around, and instead of thinking about the bay window as the back of the room, make it the front of the room. Set up your speakers and desk towards that end, facing towards the flat wall at the opposite end of the room. In general, you don't want a room getting narrower towards the rear, and you do want plenty of free space at the rear for the bass trapping. If you did that with your current orientation, then you'd be covering over all of the bay windows with bass trapping...

However, that's just a first-guess based on the photos.... but it would be a lot better to have an accurate diagram of the room, showing the dimensions and the locations of the doors and windows, as well as other possible obstacles in the room.

Length - 5520mm
Width - 5150mm
Height - 2400mm

That's a nice size room for a control room. Commonly used specifications for control rooms state the minimum floor area as being 20 m2, and you have around 28m2. Another commonly quoted number is minimum room volume of 48m3, and in your case it would be 68m3, so your room bodes well for being a good control room... assuming we can figure out a good orientation and layout!

Second of all, I am starting humble. I'm not looking to partition the room up (as much as I'd like too) or anything too involved as this is a family home.

The normal process for designing a studio starts with a single number: isolation. How many decibels of isolation do you need? That implies both directions: How much sound do you need to stop from getting out, and also how much sound do you need to stop from getting in? It's simple to determine that number, with an ordinary hand-held sound level meter... and a trip to the web site of your local municipality, to find out what the legal limits are in the noise regulations...

With that number in hand, you can then decide what needs to be done to isolate your studio to make it acceptable to your family and neighbors.... and also to make it acceptable as a tracking space, where outside noises will not be getting picked up by your mics, nor annoying you or the musicians.

Once you have the isolation figured out, THEN you can think about the treatment. Isolation and treatment are two different and opposite aspects of acoustics. Isolating the room will make it sound worse inside, because whatever you do to stop sound getting out means that the sound will stay inside! So you won't really know what treatment you will need to make the room sound good, until you first know how bad it will be after isolation...

In addition, trying to isolate a room AFTER it has already been treated, pretty much always means tearing out all of the treatment first, because isolation happens at the level of the walls, floor, ceiling, windows and doors, and you can't get to those with the treatment covering them. In other words, if you treat your room and it sounds wonderful, but then the cops come knocking on your door to shut you down, then you basically have to re-do everything: first pull out all the treatment so you can isolate, then do an entirely different set of treatment, because it's a different room now...

So I'd suggest that you start by figuring out your isolation needs and how to deal with that, then afterwards move on to layout and treatment.

- Stuart -

[madebyjuice]

Hi Stuart, thanks for the quick response!

That's a strange shaped room, for sure... but it would probably be somewhat usable if you flip your planned orientation around, and instead of thinking about the bay window as the back of the room, make it the front of the room. Set up your speakers and desk towards that end, facing towards the flat wall at the opposite end of the room. In general, you don't want a room getting narrower towards the rear, and you do want plenty of free space at the rear for the bass trapping. If you did that with your current orientation, then you'd be covering over all of the bay windows with bass trapping...
However, that's just a first-guess based on the photos.... but it would be a lot better to have an accurate diagram of the room, showing the dimensions and the locations of the doors and windows, as well as other possible obstacles in the room.

That sounds like a great idea to me. I’ve put together a quick 3D render and have included measurements for everything with this desk setup in mind. Excuse the crudeness of these, it‘s the best I could do!

measurements 1.jpg

measurements 2.jpg

measurements 3.jpg

I was also considering purchasing some wooden blinds for the bay windows. I've heard that these can help diffuse sound? I'm not entirely sure if that's good or bad info, so I thought it might be worth mentioning. If so, is there a good dimension to go with to maximize diffusion?

The normal process for designing a studio starts with a single number: isolation. How many decibels of isolation do you need? That implies both directions: How much sound do you need to stop from getting out, and also how much sound do you need to stop from getting in? It's simple to determine that number, with an ordinary hand-held sound level meter... and a trip to the web site of your local municipality, to find out what the legal limits are in the noise regulations...

I checked out my local council's website regarding noise restrictions but couldn't find a specific decibel value so I'll give them a call when they're open tomorrow. I'll also need to purchase a sound level meter to give you a specific amount of decibel isolation I'll need. Upon checking out the SPL chart, I'd say I'd be after 35 - 50 dB. Does that sound reasonable for what info I've provided?

It's also worth noting that I live fairly remote, the room is located at the back of the house away from the street and I'm blessed with a supportive family who isn't too phased by noise as I'm considerate of them when recording & mixing, so I'm not so much concerned about noise traveling through the house as I am with noise getting in & out of it.

top view with kitchen 1.jpg

As you can see, the room also has an opening at the rear (2030mm x 1240mm) which leads into another room. I'm happy to leave this opening unsealed, for now, I may even hang a velvet curtain over it for aesthetic purposes. I know I haven't provided you with a specific isolation number, but is there anything I could do immediately to help with isolation? I assume that I'd be looking at proofing the windows and doors to reduce ambient noise? what kind of materials would I be looking at to do that?

Apologies in advance if I haven't given you enough information, I'll get more info to you shortly. Here are some more renders!

Front view 1.jpg

Back view 1.jpg

top view with desk 1.jpg

Thanks again for taking the time to give me advice, I'm excited to get started
Jules

[Soundman2020]

Great! That makes things a lot more clear. The dimensions and accurate layout making it a lot easier to understand! For example, form the initial description I did't realize that the room is actually coupled to another room at the rear, through a passage with no doors on it. That is potentially a problem, since your room will now have two distinct decay curves: one for itself, and a different one for the combined space of both rooms.

The room definitely has possibilities, but it's going to be complicated. As I mentioned before, its reasonably large room, and if it were rectangular, that would be fantastic. But the bay window introduces a bunch of issues that complicate things. Good in some senses, not so good in others. Good in the sense that it "smears" modal and SBIR issues to a certain extent, not so good in the sense that it messes up locations for your speakers and front wall treatment, as well as possibly creating unwanted reflections, due to the angles.

As you probably know, curved surfaces tend to focus sound at a specific point (much like a curved mirror focuses light, or a curved lens), and low frequency sound will see your front wall as a curve (even though it is really a series of flat surfaces). So finding a good location for the speakers and mix position is going to be a challenge. For rectangular rooms, here are simple "rules of thumb" and geometric formula for calculating that. But when you throw in a curved wall, none of that is useful any more. There's still a procedure for finding the best layout, but it's a bit more complex... and very boring! It involves making a very large number of acoustics measurements in your room, with the speakers and mix position in slightly different locations for each measurement, moved slightly from the previous in, in a fixed pattern, then analyzing the results to see which layouts are promising. Then repeat on a finer scale, until you get to the optimum layout. Tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating. This method produces mountains of data that will have you scratching your head and banging it against the wall, trying to understand that the hell is going on! It takes a while.... quite a while! But it does get results, and will lead you to the best layout. It is possible to cut some corners by first predicting what they likely layout will be, and starting from there, but even so it's a slow process.

So, I guess the question is this: How good do you want the room to be? If this is just a hobby studio, for fooling around with basic mixes, entertaining yourself and your family/friends, then its probably fine to just do a rough geometric layout based on theory and leave it at that. But if this is a more serious studio, where you will do work for paying clients, or for your own job, then its probably worth your while taking the time to do it right. In other words, if you will be using htis room to produce money, then its in your best interest to invest the money and time to make it as good as it can be. That's your call, of course, but that room is a nice size, and can be good!

OK, on to isolation: Once you have your sound level meter (get one that has both "A" and "C" scales, as well as "Fast" and "Slow" response settings), then do some tests to find out how loud you are and how quiet you need to be. Do a very rough setup of a typical session, a very loud typical session, with whatever instruments you plan to track in there, with a bunch of friendly musicians to make noise on them, and tell them to make a loud noise, as loud as they want, to their heart's content. Then measure that level inside the room, with the meter set to "C" and "Slow". While they are still playing the same song over and over, go out of the room, close the doors and windows, and measure the levels in various locations around the house, and various locations outside in the garden, and several spots right out to your property line (and beyond too, if you can). That will give you a good indication of how loud you are, and how much isolation you are getting at present, just from the existing walls/doors/windows. Then send everyone home (after feeding them pizza and beer, of course!), wait until the dead of night, when it's really silent outside, and measure the background ambient sound levels again at the exact same points as before (make notes on paper!). Compare those numbers to the original "loud" ones, and you now what target you would need to aim for, if you wanted to isolate your place well enough that your noise would only just be audible, faintly, compared to ambient. Finally, you need to check the other way too: Since you do plan to track in there, you need to be sure that exterior sounds won't be picked up by your mics, and trash your recording sessions. There's a huge bunch of possible sounds that could accomplish that: Thunder, rain, hail, wind. Traffic on nearby roads. Aircraft or helicopters flying over. Sirens from ambulances / police / fire engines. Nearby trains. Cars arriving / leaving / driving past. Dogs barking outside. Lawnmowers. Loud radios/TVs. Also things inside the building itself, such as water running in pipes, fans, pumps and other motors, people walking on floors, doors closing, people talking, vacuum cleaners, washing machine,phones ringing, furnace.... So here's what you do; have your trusty SLM (Sound Level Meter) on hand, and wait for those noises to happen, then measure inside the room! Once again, keep notes. Some of those are easy to arrange: getting family members to walk around the house, talking, opening(closing doors, flushing the toilet, running the vacuum cleaner, turning on the radio/TV, getting phones to ring: those are easy to stage. Not so easy is to persuade a helicopter to fly over, or an ambulance to drive past three blocks away with the siren on.... So you'll just have to wait for those.

Doing all that will give you a comprehensive picture of the isolation that you are getting, the levels, and the additional isolation you might need.

The thing with isolation is this: once the room is already treated, if you then discover that you need more isolation you will have to tear down all the treatment, do the isolating, then re-do all the treatment as well. And when I say "re-do", I don't mean just put the same stuff back again, because that won0t work. The simple fact of isolating the room will change the acoustic response of the room, so you'll need to go through the entire process again: find the new best layout for the speakers and mix position, and the new treatment, then re-build all the treatment, and re-tune the room. In other words, its smart to do the isolation first, so that you don't have to design and treat the room twice!

For example: the bay windows will very probably just pass through a lot of bass energy, that will escape and leave the room, never coming back in again, so you won't have to deal with the consequences of having that sound inside the room (your neighbors will have that pleasure instead, since they will get the full force of all the sound that escpaed!:) ). But if you then isolate the windows later, the bass will NOT escape, and you will be stuck with it, bouncing around inside the room..... where you will need extensive treatment to tame it. That changes the entire treatment plan, because bass trapping is large, takes up lots of space, and also tends to "suck out" too much of the mids and highs... so you'll need to compensate for that with LESS absorption in the highs, and maybe also so diffusion, or reflection for that. It's an entirely different situation if your windows are isolated, or not isolated.

Not trying to scare you here: just pointing out factors that you should take into account, and might not have cnsidered.

Upon checking out the SPL chart, I'd say I'd be after 35 - 50 dB. Does that sound reasonable for what info I've provided?

If the level outside in your garden after isolation is 35 dB, then you've done a pretty good job of isolating, and likely your neighbors won't ever even hear you. That would also bode will for those exterior sounds getting into your mics. But if you are getting 50 dB outside, that's not so good. Its not bad, for sure! Just less good that 35 dB. 50 dB outside your walls when you have a 110 dB tracking session going on inside is good isolation, for sure. That would be audible for a few dozen feet around. Probably still fine, since you have no close neighbors.

As you can see, the room also has an opening at the rear (2030mm x 1240mm) which leads into another room. I'm happy to leave this opening unsealed, for now,

As I mentioned above, that's a potential problem, since that other room will be acoustically coupled to yours, in bot directions. Your room will appear to have two different decay rates, which will be different for different frequencies. First, the initial decay at the mix position will be just the decay of the room itself, but when the level decreases enough, the decay of the other room will become noticeable. Or rather, the decay of the combined two rooms. That might or might not be an issue.

I may even hang a velvet curtain over it for aesthetic purposes

Fine for aesthetics, but it won't fool the sound waves! They will still figure out that there's another room back there, and still remain acoustically coupled to it...

I know I haven't provided you with a specific isolation number, but is there anything I could do immediately to help with isolation? I assume that I'd be looking at proofing the windows and doors to reduce ambient noise? what kind of materials would I be looking at to do that?

That depends on how much isolation you need, of course, but some options here are to simply seal the existing windows to be totally air tight (ie, caulk all the edges and gaps), adding a second window over each of the existing ones, completely replacing the windows with ones that have much thicker glass (laminated), and building plywood "plugs" to fit over the existing windows. There are options, but the one you choose will depend on the isolation level you need to achieve.

Apologies in advance if I haven't given you enough information, I'll get more info to you shortly.

Priorities here:

1) Define your isolation needs.

2) Decide how seriously good you need the room to be, acoustically, based on the function: just for fun, or serious business.

Once you define those two, then we can get down to details.

- Stuart -

[madebyjuice]

Holy cow! that is a whole lot of great information. I can’t thank you enough mate. I’m glad that I didn’t just dive into the room and fill it with the standard first reflection point treatment only to find out these underlying issues which are far more important in the grand scheme of things. It is a little daunting to be perfectly honest, but I want this room to sound great as I plan on making an income through it down the line. I’m willing to put in the work and spend the money to get there.

OK, on to isolation..

I’ll hopefully receive my SPL meter by Thursday. I’ll perform these measurements over the next week and begin experimenting.

That depends on how much isolation you need, of course, but some options here are to simply seal the existing windows to be totally air tight (ie, caulk all the edges and gaps), adding a second window over each of the existing ones, completely replacing the windows with ones that have much thicker glass (laminated), and building plywood "plugs" to fit over the existing windows. There are options, but the one you choose will depend on the isolation level you need to achieve.

I did a quick ear test in my backyard (directly outside the bay windows) by playing some of my mixes and found it's actually much quieter than I anticipated. However, I will do my due diligence with the SPL meter and go from there. I'm fairly certain that caulking the edges of the windows will suffice for my isolation needs but we’ll see. If I can get away with allowing a small amount of bass energy to escape that I don’t have to deal with in the room, I’ll take it.

There's still a procedure for finding the best layout, but it's a bit more complex... and very boring! It involves making a very large number of acoustics measurements in your room, with the speakers and mix position in slightly different locations for each measurement, moved slightly from the previous in, in a fixed pattern, then analyzing the results to see which layouts are promising. Then repeat on a finer scale, until you get to the optimum layout. Tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating. This method produces mountains of data that will have you scratching your head and banging it against the wall, trying to understand that the hell is going on! It takes a while.... quite a while! But it does get results, and will lead you to the best layout. It is possible to cut some corners by first predicting what they likely layout will be, and starting from there, but even so it's a slow process.

I have a few questions in regards to finding the best layout. What do you mean by moving in fixed pattern exactly?
When conducting these measurements, do you recommend starting with the mix position / speakers placed where you first recommended? (As i've shown in the 3D renders) and then move the mix position / speakers linearly and laterally around to different spots within the front of the room? Or should I make sure to keep the mix position / speakers centered and only move them linearly down the room away from the front wall? Just so I’m not wasting time on illogical spots. Where would you start if you were in my shoes?
Would I be correct in assuming that I should perform these measurements after isolation and before treatment?
Also, Is there any metric to judge how optimal a spot is? or should I just rely on my ears to tell me if it is good or not?
Apologies if I'm asking too much, I just want to put in the work and nail this.

As I mentioned above, that's a potential problem, since that other room will be acoustically coupled to yours, in both directions. Your room will appear to have two different decay rates, which will be different for different frequencies. First, the initial decay at the mix position will be just the decay of the room itself, but when the level decreases enough, the decay of the other room will become noticeable. Or rather, the decay of the combined two rooms. That might or might not be an issue.

In regards to the other room and that pesky unwanted decay!! hypothetically, If I were to build a large moveable acoustic panel (4 inches of 703 or rockwool??) to fit within that gap (or over it), would that be a viable option to kill off the decay? If not, what other options do I have aside from that?

Jules

[Soundman2020]

It is a little daunting to be perfectly honest,

It sure is! Studio design is a bit of an intimidating task: there's so much more that goes into it, that people don't really think about until the have to do it. Not trying to scare you! Just letting you know that it's not something you can do in five minutes on the back of a napkin...

but I want this room to sound great as I plan on making an income through it down the line. I’m willing to put in the work and spend the money to get there.

Ok, Cool! So you are setting your sights high. There's a document with the cryptic title "ITU BS.1116-3" that you can google and download. It shows the specifications you should be aiming for, to produce a "critical listening room". The document actually isn't about studio control rooms at all! It's for an entirely different purpose (creating a room that is good for subjectively evaluating audio systems), but the specifications actually turn out to be perfect for control rooms too. So you can skip the first few chapters in that document, and flip right to chapters 7 and 8. Those define what your room should be like, acoustically. There's some technical mumbo-jumbo in there, but it's pretty in general. I should warn you that it's REALLY hard to actually attain all of those specs in a real room, so your goal shouldn't really be to nail them all, but rather use them as good numbers to aim for. Here's a room that does meet all of them (and in fact exceeds most of them): thread about Studio Three Productions' studio . There's a bunch of acoustic response graphs in there that show the final results. Your room probably won't be exactly like that (it took a couple of years and a fairly large budget to do that), but it's a nice set of goals to aim for.

I have a few questions in regards to finding the best layout. What do you mean by moving in fixed pattern exactly?

I normally start with the theoretically optimal setup, or something close to that, by carefully positioning the speakers and mix position at the exact spots predicted by theory. That's rarely the REAL best spot, but it's a good starting point. By "mix position" I mean the spot where your head would be while mixing, but for the testing, it will be a mic at that spot, not your head. Your ears and brain are fantastic, but they don't have the needed precision and detail, so you'll use a mic instead. Then I do a series of measurements with the REW acoustic text software (it's free, and fantastic: better than some of the stuff you have to pay big money for) making small incremental moves of the mic before each new test, just a couple of inches for each step. Normally I "walk" the mic along the room center line, going a few feet forward (in small steps) and a few feet backwards from that initial spot. Then I look at all the REW data, and see which position was the best. Then I put the mic in that "best" spot again, and do the same process with the speakers: "walk" them a bit closer together in small steps, and a bit further apart in small steps, while also adjusting the toe-in angle appropriately to keep them aimed at the right spot (about 18" behind the mix position, usually). Once again, analyze all the data to see which spot was best for the speakers. Then with the speakers in that "best" spot, I go back to the mic once again, and move it in even smaller steps, maybe a foot either way, to check if there might be an even better spot.

That's the general process. As I said: boring.

If you don't already have REW, then I'd really suggest that you get it, and when you are ready to do this process, set it up and calibrate it, using this procedure: How to calibrate and use REW to test and tune your room acoustics

Would I be correct in assuming that I should perform these measurements after isolation and before treatment?

Yup! That's the first approximation: mostly empty room, before much treatment goes in. I normally repeat the process again after most of the treatment is in, since the treatment can drastically change the room response, and also because in an empty room there's so much modal stuff, flutter, reverence, resonance, reflections, and other nasty stuff, that it can hide the details that you need to see in the data. Once the treatment has cleaned up most of that junk, then you can see things more clearly in the graphs, and maybe find a better spot that was hidden before.

Also, Is there any metric to judge how optimal a spot is? or should I just rely on my ears to tell me if it is good or not?

There's a whole bunch of metrics! REW can show you the data in many different ways, and each of those gives you insight into a different aspect of the acoustic response. Many people assume that it's the frequency response you should be looking at, but that's not really the most important one: it's time-domain data, such as waterfall plots, decay times, and even the actual impulse response (ETC). Basically, you are looking for the location where all of those show the smoothest, most even response. In an empty room, all of the graphs will look like the mountains on some nasty alien planet, and that's fine: you are just looking for the LEAST ugly set of mountains. Flat response is the ultimate goal, of course, but that only comes after a huge amount of treatment. All of your initial tests will be jagged, massive, grotesque mountains, and you just want to find the least jagged and grotesque ones.

Here's some examples from a couple of rooms where I've done this with my clients:

First, the frequency response graphs from 40 different locations in the room, for the range 15Hz to 500 Hz:

REW-FR-sample-walking-mic--15-500.png

Then the phase plot for the same samples as above:

REW-PH-sample-walking-mic--15-500.png

You can see some pretty wild phase rotation for some spots, and much better, smoother phase rotation at other spots. Very revealing!


And the decay times, but for the entire spectrum (1/3 octave frequency bands from 40 Hz to 12 kHz):

REW-RT-sample-walking-mic--40-12k.png

You can see that there's a huge amount of variation in all of those, and some are clearly a lot smoother than others, even though the overall graphs are all over the place. It generally comes as a surprise to most people that there can be such a big difference between spots just a few inches from each other, but that's reality!

Here's a couple of graphs from an entirely different room:

Once again, the frequency response plots:

REW-FR-sample-walking-mic-2--15-500.png

And this time I did one waterfall plot, from just one of the above samples, so you can see what I mean about the mountains:

REW-WF-sample-walking-mic-2--15-500.png

In both cases, the rooms were partly treated at the point where we did these tests: your initial tests will look far worse! But once you get some treatment in, they'll start to look more like the above.


Your ears just don't have the necessary precision to do this: your ears can tell you that things sound "different" at spaced locations, but they can't tell you WHY they are different, or what the underlying issue is that is making them different. REW can do that, very easily, and very visually.

Apologies if I'm asking too much, I just want to put in the work and nail this.

No problem! That's what the forum is here for...

If I were to build a large moveable acoustic panel (4 inches of 703 or rockwool??) to fit within that gap (or over it), would that be a viable option to kill off the decay?

Unfortunately, not. 4" is plenty to kill off the highs and most of the mids, and even some of the lows when used as treatment inside the room, but it won't do much at all to stop sound getting between the rooms. It won't go nearly far enough to properly decouple the rooms.

An analogy I sometimes use to explain this, is that porous absorption (such as mineral wool or 703) is to sound what a kitchen sponge is to water: If you accidentally splashed some water on the walls, floor, or ceiling of your kitchen, then a simple sponge is a good way of mopping up the spilled water: a sponge is great for soaking up water that went some place you didn't want it. But if you turn on the tap then put that same sponge over the end of the spout, it does nothing at all to stop the water pouring through. Water goes through like the sponge wasn't even there. Same with porous absorption: it's great for "mopping up" sound that went some place inside your room that you didn't want it to go, but it does nothing at all to stop sound from getting into or out of your room.

The way you stop sound is the same way you stop the water gushing from a broken pipe: Stick a heavy, solid stopper of some in the end of the pipe! In other words, to stop sound from getting in/out, you need to "plug the hole" with something solid, massive, rigid, heavy, dense. Eg: thick plywood, OSB, MDY, drywall, fiber-cement board, etc. And just like water will still squirt out if your pipe plug isn't a good fit and doesn't seal, so too with your "hole-in-the-wall" plug: it has to be sealed air-tight to the hole around it, or sound will still get through. Eg: a door with rubber seals around the edge.

If not, what other options do I have aside from that?

I would consider a door of some type: sliding or hinged. Or a "plug" of some type, similar to a door.

But before deciding on what to do there, I'd do some basic initial REW tests (without moving the mic around! Just one fixed spot) to see how bad the issue is: you might get lucky and find that it isn't really too much of a problem... or you might not!


- Stuart -

[madebyjuice]

Studio design is a bit of an intimidating task

I'd say it's 2/3 intimidating and 1/3 incredibly exciting as I like to obsess over finicky details. I'm keen to get this right! I just hope I don't have to plug that damn gap...

Normally I "walk" the mic along the room center line, going a few feet forward (in small steps) and a few feet backwards from that initial spot. Then I look at all the REW data, and see which position was the best. Then I put the mic in that "best" spot again, and do the same process with the speakers: "walk" them a bit closer together in small steps, and a bit further apart in small steps, while also adjusting the toe-in angle appropriately to keep them aimed at the right spot (about 18" behind the mix position, usually). Once again, analyze all the data to see which spot was best for the speakers. Then with the speakers in that "best" spot, I go back to the mic once again and move it in even smaller steps, maybe a foot, either way, to check if there might be an even better spot.

Okay, awesome! all super technical acoustician terminology aside, I actually understand a lot more of this than I thought I would.
I've just downloaded REW and ordered a PRM-1. I'm going to do some reading, get stuck into isolating these windows/doors and running some tests. I'll report back and let you know how I went.

One more thing while I've got you, will wooden blinds installed in those bay windows help or hurt my cause? will it be drastic enough to consider them a defining factor or major liability to the room sound? I love how they look but I don't want to install them if it's going to compromise the room. I've heard a lot of conflicting information about this from many different sources and I'd love to get your opinion on it.

Jules