John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello all!

Nice to join you here.

I have a question concerning my control room. It is an existing room so not much can be done about the actual dimensions. The room is 3 meters wide by 7 long. I sit facing the 3 meter wall and mix on NS10s with a sub. On my right are two down-angled windows 900(wide) x 900 and 600 x 900 looking into the iso-booth and drum room. What worries me is the lack of symmetry and obvious possible reflections into my right ear off the windows (the left-side of the room has an absorber at ear-height). I have come up with the idea of creating an "acoustic shadow" over the widows by angling absorbtive panels inward towards the mixing position, parallel to the firing-line of the monitors, and I'll do that on both sides of the room to create symmetry. It still allows full visibility through the windows, but my thinking is that the panels will stop most high & mid reflections, while still giving me direct line of hearing from the NS10s. Does anyone know whether this will work or whether there might be a better solution?

Thanks so much for any advice you can offer.

Kind regards,

Ludwig

Drawings showing the locations, including the heights of all the acoustic components would help a lot. Without having that information, here are my thoughts.

Near field monitors are intended to be used so close to the monitor (meaning the important listener), that early reflections become unimportant. This means in practice that either the Early reflections are over 20 ms later, not true in this case, and or over 10 dB weaker in strength relative to the initial direct signal.

The latter criteria implies that in a worst case scenario that the first reflections be three times further in travel than the initial signal. Note this this is Lou Buroughs' famous three to one rule applied in reverse.

Does your current setup fulfill the second criteria?

Good luck!

OK, thanks for that, AVare.

I don't think my control room qualifies under the second point either. The Nearfields are right in the corner and about 30 cm away from both the front and side walls. I sit about 1,5meters back, so the distance is probably the same or closer to the sides than to the speakers. I'll mock up a drawing (what format?) and I'm sure that'll help you to help me!

Will get right onto it.

Rergards,

Ludwig

OK, so here's the control room laid out. As you may notice, it used to be two bedrooms, hence the two doors on the left. It was also the sum-total of my studio 'till I built the aditional rooms (almost finished).
Either door can become the entrance to the studio. The listening position is a bit fixed, due to visibility, but it can change by about half-a-meter this way or that, depending on what would be a better layout.

Any ideas whether my "acoustic shadow" idea might work? Any other changes / layout suggestions?

Thanks for the help!

Ludwig