John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello,

I have a home basement studio and am seeking advice regarding the best arrangement. Primarily, I'm wondering where the best listening area would be. I have attached some SketchUp drawings of the room below. This was my first effort at using SketchUp, so please excuse my lack of proficiency.

All walls are dry wall. The floor is stained concrete. The ceiling is unfinished with exposed studs. I have placed 4 inch thick rigid fiberglass between the studs whereever there is space to do so. There are some pipes and ducts, but everywhere where they are not, I have placed the rigid fiberglass.

Isolation is not an issue and I have made no attempt to isolate the room.

The wall panels in the diagram are either GIK panels are homemade similar versions. It is about 50% of each. In the listening area, the corner treatments that you see are GIK Trip Traps. The yellow square at the far end of the space is where by drum kit is currently located. I have two GIK panels hung over the listening position and two more or the drum kit.

All measurements are in inches. Sorry to the metric folks. I could not figure out how to change this in SketchUp.

Now to the point. I don't feel like my listening position is the best place in the room. I perceive a lack of bass and lack of left/right differentiation in my current place.

After reading more about speaker placement, I am thinking that I should relocate my listening position to the other end of the room, with the listening position being 38% from the far wall where the drum kit is currently located. Before moving things, I would love to hear some advice from the experts.

Thanks so much.

Brad

One thing that I see that is not apparent from the images is that the ceiling is 8 feet (2.44 meters) high. Thanks.

Hi Brad, and welcome!

Sorry about the delayed response: your post "slipped through the cracks" so to speak, and I completely missed it, until now.

Anyway, "better late than never"!:

I have placed 4 inch thick rigid fiberglass between the studs whereever there is space to do so. There are some pipes and ducts, but everywhere where they are not, I have placed the rigid fiberglass.

For what purpose did you do that? By itself, that won't help with isolation at all. It will, however, help with the acoustics within the room, assuming it is useful density. Fiberglass in that applications should have a density of around 30 kg/m3, or maybe a but less. if it is significantly more dense than that, then it isn't performing optimally.

Isolation is not an issue and I have made no attempt to isolate the room.

Great! Because that ain't the way to isolate! So it looks like you have things straight in that sense, and are proceeding correctly: just treatment.

All measurements are in inches. Sorry to the metric folks. I could not figure out how to change this in SketchUp.

Open the "Model Info" menu. Select the "Units" option, and choose any one of a number of different ways of representing your dimensions, with varying degrees of precision.

Now to the point. I don't feel like my listening position is the best place in the room. I perceive a lack of bass and lack of left/right differentiation in my current place.

Yup. That's what I suspected as soon as I saw your layout. You don't have symmetry at all where you are right now, and geometric symmetry is critical for control rooms. It should be as near perfectly symmetrical as you can get, at least from the front wall to where your ears are located. Behind that it isn't quote as important, but sill desirable. I'd suggest flipping your layout completely: setting up your control room at the other end, where you can get a symmetrical layout, and moving your drums to the large and less symmetrical location where your desk is now, which will also be better for the drums. They'll sound much better with the non-symmetrical space, and also with the larger room volume back there, then compared to where you have them now on the yellow square, which is both small and symmetrical.

After reading more about speaker placement, I am thinking that I should relocate my listening position to the other end of the room,

Yup!

with the listening position being 38% from the far wall where the drum kit is currently located.

Forget the 38% "rule": it won't work in your case, since your room is very long compared to the width. Just set up your speakers so the are about 25% to 30% of the room width away from the side walls, and angled inwards at around 30° or so, then set your listening position about a foot or so in front of the imaginary point where the acoustic axes of the speakers intersect each other. in other words, the intersection will be about a foot or so behind your head. Start with things set up in that location, then move your listening position and speakers around in small increments, to see if there is a better arrangement. Make notes of how it sounds in each location, or better yet use the REW acoustic analysis software to document each change, and then take a look at the data to find the best location.

Then, treat the room accordingly, based on that setup. Rinse, repeat....

One final thing: since your room is so long, you might well need some type of partially reflective panel set a ways back behind you, so you can get some well-timed "kick" from behind, to help your brain "feel" the room better. I'd start with just a plywood panel with 4" of 703 in front of it, set up leaning against a sturdy support, and try out a few positions down the room: The idea is to get some energy back to your ears, beyond the Haas time, so your brain is aware of the rest of the room behind you. It's probably not a big deal, but can help to fill in what might seem to be missing. Fiddle around with that panel until you get some bass coming back at you, but without any SBIR or standing waves to mess up the response. Then fix it in place on a frame, or maybe just do it as a Gobo on wheels.

- Stuart -

Thanks, Stuart. That is very helpful. I ended up working with someone at GIK to revamp my room. We flipped things around and set it up just as you mentioned. Things are sounding much better. Thanks again.