John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello Forum,

I'm new here and I was doing research on acoustic panels to treat my new studio space. Now the room is very unique and unfortunately not idea for mixing for a number of reasons, however it's what I have, and I need to make it work. I'm looking to make the room as flat as possible and control some of the low end because I live in a condo and the neighbor are bothered by the bass. I normally produce deep house music which is bass heavy, I normally mix and produce at around a level 65db to 75db.

The room dimension is 16ft (4.87mm) x 6.5 ft (1.98mm) x 9ft 10" (3.01mm)

I am putting in 2- 4" panels on the front wall, 3 - 2" panels on the ceiling, and 2 - 2" panels on the wall behind the desk, bass traps in the corner all 4 walls.

Now my question are:

1) Would making portable panels to cover the opening to the living room and master bedroom help or cause more problems?
2) How would I control the 1st and 2nd refections points from left monitor since there is a window there and for the right monitor there is open space?

PLEASE HELP!! THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

whenever you convert feet into the metric system, its meant to be meters (m) not millimeters (m)

16ft (4.87m) x 6.5 ft (1.98m) x 9ft 10" (3.01m)

My first thought would be to place the desk at the "bottom" wall in the picture, to create a more symmetrical room.
But I am really just an amateur, so you're probably better off waiting for some advice of the guys who know what they're doing here.

THB wrote:whenever you convert feet into the metric system, its meant to be meters (m) not millimeters (m)

16ft (4.87m) x 6.5 ft (1.98m) x 9ft 10" (3.01m)

My first thought would be to place the desk at the "bottom" wall in the picture, to create a more symmetrical room.
But I am really just an amateur, so you're probably better off waiting for some advice of the guys who know what they're doing here.

Thanks Mate! hahaha Thanks for pointing that out!

Great Idea! I'm actually going to go with that and put thick curtains in the open areas. But I'm still open minded.

My first thought would be to place the desk at the "bottom" wall in the picture, to create a more symmetrical room.

I would only do that if the room were a bigger. Much bigger. It is only 6' 6" wide: if you turn the orientation facing down, then the desk will be in the middle of the room, and the mix position would be very close to the back wall. The ideal situation is to have at least ten feet between your head and the back wall, and hopefully more. 10 feet means the return trip for a sound wave is 20ms, which is the Haas time. You want that delay so that your ears and brain can properly process the direct sound before they hear any copies of it coming in from different directions. And you also want to have absorption in the rear wall, so that the level of any reflections coming off it back to your ears, are at least 20 dB lower than the direct sound.

So the only real option for rooms this size, is to have the layout oriented the long way, with the speakers firing down the longest dimension of the room.

You'll also need bass traps in those rear corners. Big one. I would suggest Superchunk style bass traps.

and control some of the low end because I live in a condo and the neighbor are bothered by the bass.

Sad to say, that cannot be accomplished with anything you put inside the room: Treatment does not isolate, and isolation. does not treat. Isolation and treatment are two entirely different and unrelated aspects of acoustics. Unfortunately, in popular myth the are both muddled together and called "soundproofing", which is a terrible word, as there is no such thing! In reality, it is impossible to "soundproof" something, since any sufficiently loud sound will penetrate any conceivable barrier: Even the best isolated studio on the planet only gets 100 dB of isolation, but you'd still clearly hear a hand grenade explosion through those walls.

Anyway, isolation (what you want to do to stop the bass annoying your neighbors) is all about stopping sound from leaving the room, and can only be accomplished with very heavy, massive, rigid materials, and only if they are sealed absolutely air-tight. No holes, gaps or even tiny cracks. If air can get through, then so can sound. So isolating your room sufficiently that the sound doesn't bother the neighbors is going to require some tear-down and re-building of your room. Are you prepared to do that?

I normally mix and produce at around a level 65db to 75db

You mix way down at only 65 dB, and the neighbors are complaining about the bass? Ooops: You have some pretty serious problems with your isolation, then. A typical house wall should get you 30-something dB of isolation, meaning that your 65 dB sound on the other side of the wall should be below 35 dB, which is practically inaudible. If they can hear it, then I would suspect that either there are large gaps in the sealing of your room, or there are major flanking paths between you and them. Either way, that's not easy to fix without doing some building work, and investing some money. What type of budget did you have in mind?

1) Would making portable panels to cover the opening to the living room and master bedroom help or cause more problems?

Help with what? With isolation, or with treatment? They would very likely help with treatment, to make your room sound better, but they would only help with isolation if they are very massive (And therefore not very portable), and only if you could seal them in place with air-tight seals all around the perimeter

2) How would I control the 1st and 2nd refections points from left monitor since there is a window there and for the right monitor there is open space?.

For the window, just put a 4" thick panel of OC-703 over it, preferably with an air gap behind. For the opening to the other room, you'll need to make a hard backed panel that sits inside the opening, and also has a 4" thick panel of OC-703 over it, preferably also with an air gap behind.

and put thick curtains in the open areas.

Curtains would be pretty useless, actually. They certainly won't to anything for isolation, and would only have a minimal effect on treatment, since they will absorb mostly only high frequencies (which aren't a problem anyway), while doing nothing at all about the mids and lows.


- Stuart -