John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello!
I'm new to the forum, i have read the posting instructions and tried finding a subject with the info i need but haven't found one that answers all my questions.

So i'm a young live engineer with 3 years of experience and much time invested into theory and learning. I have about 60 shows behind me.
Other then live mixing i also do some studiowork in protools. Sometimes with live tracks, sometimes with studio tracks, sometimes post production for animated films or movies.

So far i have done most mixing on my beyerdynamic DT770's, which is quet a pain, they are a good pair of headphones but they lie... and they tire me after a long time.

So it's time to invest in a pair of monitors. The yamaha HS series fits perfectly within my budget and i have a focusrite 2i4 interface ready to get them hooked up.

The problem is this, this is going to be something like a bedroom monitor room. I'm 21 years old, when i move out in 2-3 years i will be thinking about treating my monitor room but right now i'm in the room that will stay the way it is.
No bass traps or apsorbing materials will be installed. And i will have to put my monitors 3cm away from the wall because i have no other option.

So, much less then ideal we could agree.

My room is 10.8 feet wide and 11.8 feet deep, 8.43 feet high.

That's not very big, the room mode calculator shows it won't have much response below 48hz, that should be the lowest axial resonating mode.


So considering these things, i'm in a dilemma between yamaha HS7's and HS8's, for now, withouth a sub!

I heard both, i really liked them both and noticed that HS8's definitley extend lower and have better representation of the lowest octaves.
Hovewer, they are huge for my desk while the HS7's are perfect. They will be standing next to the wall which will give me additional sub boost,
and some people told me that a smaller monitor might give me better sub response in a small untreated room.

I am familiar with the "room overpowering" and pressure buildup effect from running sound in clubs with no bass traps. So i was wondering if you had any suggestions on this topic.

Once i move out and move my monitors to a treated room i can allways add a yamaha SUB. Right now the goal is to but the best monitor for the room i'm in.

Also, adam AX series is out of budget.

I will include a picture of my working desk where the monitors will stand, in the subject. Thanks!

Hi there Eugen , and Welcome to the forum!

they are a good pair of headphones but they lie... and they tire me after a long time.

Right! Mixing on headphones is no fun, and not accurate anyway, even with the best headphones money can buy. Moving to speakers will be a great move for you... but it will be challenging, if you have been mixing mostly on headphones up until now.

No bass traps or apsorbing materials will be installed.

Why not? You can easily make simple and very effective treatment that will fit in your room, at low cost.

The simple truth is that using any monitors in an untreated room will produce lousy sound, and a poor environment for accurate mixing. Practically all rooms have acoustic problems. The smaller the room, the more problems it has. If you don't treat those problems then you are not hearing clean sound: you are hearing "colored" sound, that has been effected by the room before it reaches your ears, and also after it reaches your ears.

Treating your room is just as important as having good speakers. In fact, I'd say that treatment is even more important than having great speakers. Even modest speakers can perform very well in s properly treated room, but the best speakers in the world will still sound terrible in a room that has lousy acoustics.

And i will have to put my monitors 3cm away from the wall because i have no other option.

And that's perfect! That is actually the correct location for monitors in a small room: Right up against the front wall. Actually, you should leave a gap pf about 10cm so you can put in a simple absorption panel to help treat the SBIR problems created by having speakers in a room, as well as other acoustic issues.

My room is 10.8 feet wide and 11.8 feet deep, 8.43 feet high.

Then your speakers should be set up 36" from the side walls (meaning they will be 56" apart), and your mix position should be about 51" from the front wall. That's the position where your ears should be when you are seated normally while mixing. The speakers should both be angled such that they are both aiming at the same point, 67" from the front wall. Set up something vertically at that point, such as a mic stand (if you have one) or maybe that floor lamp with the thin pole that I see in the photo, next to your desk, then carefully aim the speakers so they are both pointing directly at that.

My room is 10.8 feet wide and 11.8 feet deep, 8.43 feet high.

That's not too bad. Small, of course, but usable, and the ratio is not good, but it is also not terrible. It is a usable room, but it will need some treatment.

i'm in a dilemma between yamaha HS7's and HS8's, for now, withouth a sub

There's a huge difference in low frequency response: an entire quarter octave! The HS7's go down to about 55 Hz, the HS8's go down to 47 Hz. So the basic answer to your question comes down to this: Do you mix music that has a lot of drums and bass guitar, low keyboards, growling electric guitar, low frequency sound effects for movies, etc.? If the answer is "yes", then go for the HS8, or HS7+sub. If the answer is "no" (for example, you mainly mix flutes, violins, and vocals), then the HS7 without a sub would be OK.

HS8's definitley extend lower and have better representation of the lowest octaves. However, they are huge for my desk while the HS7's are perfect.

This isn't about what looks nice on your desk: it is about what does the best job, acoustically.

Besides, your speakers should not even be on your desk! That's the worst possible place to put them. Rather, they should be on stands set up just behind your desk. The stands must be very massive (heavy). If you put the speakers on your desk, you will never get clean sound from them, no matter what speaker you use.

They will be standing next to the wall which will give me additional sub boost,

... which is why they have controls on the back for dealing with that! Just set the roll-off control to -4dB.

and some people told me that a smaller monitor might give me better sub response in a small untreated room.

Not necessarily true: No monitor will be accurate in a small untreated room. But either of the models you are looking at could be good if you treat the room.

I am familiar with the "room overpowering" and pressure buildup effect from running sound in clubs with no bass traps. So i was wondering if you had any suggestions on this topic.

My suggestion would be to install bass traps!

Both of those monitors will trigger modal issues in your room. Modes are a facts of life, and they are not very much related to the speakers. They are a room problem. If you don't treat them, then all monitors will sound bad in there.

So I would suggest the HS8, or the HS7+sub if you think the HS8s are too large, aesthetically, and I would also suggest putting at least basic treatment in your room, to deal with the biggest issues.


- Stuart -

Look, this is my bedroom, i have a closet in one corner, a bed in the other corner, a door in the third corner and a door for a balcony in the last corner, there is nowhere to put the bass trap. And no i can't move the closet or the bed. I will put apsorbing material between the monitor and the desk, and i will put something on the wall behind the monitors, but other then that i won't be treating the room, when i finish college and move out, then it will be a different situation.

Untill then, i'm trying to find the best monitor for the current situation, yes i know it won't be ideal but it's better then mixing on headphones.

I will be doing a lot of rock/metal/punk mixing, probably not much electronic music. I definitley would have a use from having better low end reproduciton.
That wasn't my question, my question was, considering i won't have any bass traps in the room, is it a better idea to get a
'7' with no sub, or is it still beter having an 8, because i have been told that big monitors capable of great low end reproduction can do more damage then good in a small, not treated room.

The main point of my question is that i won't be treating the room, so there is no point in telling me i should treat it, i know i should but i can't and now need to find a compromise.
If i had a room filled with bass traps i would go for the eights withouth asking anything.

Look, this is my bedroom, i have a closet in one corner, a bed in the other corner, a door in the third corner and a door for a balcony in the last corner,

What about the other EIGHT corners in the room? Rooms have TWELVE corners, not just four ... You seem to be ignoring 66% of the available corners... You are thinking only about the vertical corners in the room, but there are also horizontal corners where you can put bass traps: between the tops of the walls and the ceiling, as well as between the bottoms of the walls and the floor.

Untill then, i'm trying to find the best monitor for the current situation,

then let me give you a simple answer: there isn't any good monitor for your situation. If you refuse to treat the room with at least some bass trapping, then NO monitor is going to give you acceptable sound.

The problem is not the speakers. The problem is the room.

I will be doing a lot of rock/metal/punk mixing, probably not much electronic music. I definitley would have a use from having better low end reproduciton. That wasn't my question,

Yes it was. You just don't realize it yet!

When I design studios, I never start by looking at the empty room and deciding what speakers might be good or not good: that would be silly. Instead, I start with the question: "What speakers does the customer need for doing the job that he needs to do?" Based on the best speaker that will do the job, I then design the room around those speakers. Doing it any other way would be short-sighted.

Think about it this way: the basic thing that allows you to mix at all, is the speakers. That's the core, central, nucleus of everything you do when you mix. If your intention, your goal, is to produce the best mixes that you can possibly produce, then you NEED the best tools you can possibly get, and the number one most basic tool is the speakers. It's that simple. It doesn't matter very much what DAW you use, or what plugins you buy, or which cables you use, or the type of mouse, keyboard, video screen, which computer, what operating system, what interface, or anything else. Those are a little bit important, but a good engineer can still turn out good mixes with a lousy DAW, a lousy monitor, or even a lousy interface. But with lousy speakers, no engineer will be able to do his job.

The single most important item in the entire set of "things" that you will use while mixing, is the speakers. That's the reason why you even HAVE a room! So the speakers MUST be capable of doing the job. You say that you do mostly rock, metal, and punk music, and those are all very "bass heavy" genres. If your speakers do not have good bass response, your will never know what your mix actually sounds like, until you take it somewhere else.

So the answer to your question is not valid, because you are asking the wrong question. The question should not be "Which speakers will look nice in my room?", nor "Which speakers will fit the terrible acoustics of my room because I can't be bothered to treat it?". The question should be: Which speakers do I need so that I can produce my best work in the genres that I work with?". That's the real question here. That's the logical, rational, correct question to be asking.

my question was, considering i won't have any bass traps in the room,...

That's the wrong premise to start with, and it makes no sense logically. It is basically the same as if you were planning on buying a bicycle, and you ask a forum of bicycle experts: "What bicycle is best for me, considering that I won't have any tyres on the wheels?". The question itself is wrong. It's a question that makes no sense. Why would you bother buying a bicycle if you don't want to put tyres on it? Why would you buy studio reference monitors if you don't want to have treatment in the room?

because i have been told that big monitors capable of great low end reproduction can do more damage then good in a small, not treated room.

You have been told wrong. Room modes, SBIR, comb-filtering, edge-diffraction, and all the other problems that occur in an untreated room will be exactly the same, no matter what speaker you chose. Both of the speakers you mention are capable of triggering all of those problems in the room. They both have plenty of energy in the right frequency range to "wake up" all of those issues, and they will both sound equally bad in the room.

The main point of my question is that i won't be treating the room, so there is no point in telling me i should treat it,

You came to the forum because you trust the advice we give here, and because we seem to have a reputation for helping people create fantastic studios. You probably also came here because we have a reputation for "telling it like it is", not trying to soften the harsh answers, or be nice, or be politically correct. So let me do that for you as well, and give you the plain, simple, basic harsh truth: If you refuse to treat your room, then there is no point in buying good quality speakers. It is that simple. It makes no sense. Don't waste your money. I'll tell you exactly what will happen. You will set up your speakers in the room, turn them on, and think they sound absolutely awesome! You'll hear amazing deep bass, and that alone will be enough to convince you that your speakers in your untreated room are just crazy fantastic. Then you'll do your first few mixes, and they will sound incredible in your room, then you'll send those mixes out to other people... And they will say to you: "How come there's no bass?" And "Why does it sound so dull, and thin?" And "How come there's no clarity?" And "Why is everything in the middle?". And "How come you spent all that money on great speakers, but your mixes sound worse than when you did it on headphones?". So you will start to fiddle with the speaker controls, and EQ on the DAW, and plugins, and mixing techniques, and maybe other irrelevant stuff, to try to compensate for the bad room, but it won't work very well, your reputation will suffer...

I can predict this confidently, because I have seen it so many times. It is what always happens when people try to mix in lousy rooms with no treatment. The simple truth is that there is nothing that can be done electronically to "fix" the room. There is no plugin that can eliminate SBIR. There is no EQ setting that can make comb-filtering artifacts go away. There is no compressor that can eliminate first reflections. There is no effect that can cause modal ringing to disappear. There is no size, make, model, power rating or any other speaker characteristics that can correct the phase shift, or the floor bounce, or any other of the problems that always screw up the sound in small rooms. Those are the real problems that will kill your mixes and make them sound terrible, and there is NOTHING you can do about electronically, because the problem is not the electronics: the problem is the room. If you are not willing to fix the room, then you cannot fix the problems. It's that simple.

i know i should but i can't and now need to find a compromise.

There is no compromise, and you can put bass treatment in your room. There is space to do that, and it would only cost you a few dollars / euros.

You are not asking the right questions. You should be asking "Given the limitations of my room (dimensions, doors, bed, windows, closet, desk, etc.), what can I do to make it work with the speakers that I need, in order to do the job that I have to do?".

Once you recognize that the problem is the room, not the speakers, and start asking the right questions, then we can help you. There ARE things that you can do in your room to make it into a better mixing environment than it is right now. It won't be perfect, of course, but it can be usable. And everything you do acoustically can be made portable so that you can take it with you when you move to your own "real" studio. You would be able to use it again in the future.

But if you insist that the problem is the speakers, not the room, and that the only solution is to find speakers that will make an untreated room sound perfect, then you will never get anywhere, since there is no such speaker. It does not exist.

- Stuart -

I understand perfectly well that problems related to physics of mechanical waves can't be fixed electronicaly. It would be like saying you can fix comb filter dips with an EQ, no you can't, it's a phase related problem, that's perfectly clear to me.

What you don't seem to understand is that treating the room is out of option, i will have to wait a few years to finish college, move out, and then do whatever i want to my room.

So instead of explaning me the logical things i know you should tell me quiet simply that beyerdynamic dt770 > yamaha hs8 in an untreated room.
It's like explaining a crippled person there is no point in buying better crutches, he still can't run anyway, ha-ha.
I'd love to treat my room, but it's not my room and it's not my flat.

Now i have heard both HS8's and HS7's, both in untreated rooms, of course i understand that is far from flat considering the untreated rooms,
but still it seemed to me like they would give me a lot more info then a pair of good headphones.
Usually i solve the problem of an un-correct monitoring system by checking the mix on 5 different systems and a few pair of headphones. That's the best you can do withouth the right equipment.

You did however respond my main question. The myth that a big monitor is bad for a small room that doesn't have any low resonating modes makes no sense. A monitor with better sub response is allways going to give better sub response.
The problems that room has will allways remain the same.

I have another question, it's one of the things that i didn't understand well while reading handbook for sound engineers by Glen Ballou.
If the lowest resonating mode of the room is let's say 48hz, that means the room will have bas response under that frequency.

Now, what exactly does this mean, that the room will be less efficient under that frequency? Just like when you try pushing a bass reflex box under it's port resonance?

This makes no sense to me, because if it was true it would mean that frequencies under 48hz sound like if you were playing them in a football field with no reflective materials around. Good, but require more power for the same spl.
And that doesn't seem to be the case.

The entire theory about how the distribution of resonating modes affects how the rooms sound is not fully clear to me.
In theory (and i understand this is not possible) if you had an ideal, perfect room with almost perfectly equal mode distribution, then when putting a speaker in it VS putting a speaker in an open field with no reflections would sound exactly the same, but it would be louder in a reflective room.

I mean, this teory claims that a wave that reflected of a concrete wall, is still a perfectly identical picture of the wave that came from the speaker and hit the wall, But the way those two waves are going to collide affects the final picture that you hear.
And then the entire problem of how the room sounds depends on the deformations caused by summations of the direct and reflected waves.
The more diffused the reflected waves are, the less agressive the deformations are.

All of this is not 100% clear to me, i might need more literature? Mixing live shows and eq-ing PA systems learns me how things sound in practice, but doesn't explaing me physics.

So instead of explaning me the logical things i know you should tell me quiet simply that beyerdynamic dt770 > yamaha hs8 in an untreated room.

Actually, I'm not going to do that, because the question is invalid. It has no answer, because no speaker is good in an untreated room. I can't answer a question that has no answer. There might well be differences between how those speakers perform in a treated room, but in an untreated room they will both sound equally bad.

You seem to think that acoustic issues can be fixed electrically, but they cannot.

but still it seemed to me like they would give me a lot more info then a pair of good headphones.

In an untreated room that has bad acoustics, the headphones would be a better option, despite their limitations. A room with poor acoustics will "color" the sound unacceptably, changing the frequency, phase, and decay of the sound. Headphones do not do any of that. So headphones are a better option than speakers in a room that has bad acoustics.

Usually i solve the problem of an un-correct monitoring system by checking the mix on 5 different systems and a few pair of headphones. That's the best you can do withouth the right equipment.

That is the correct solution, if you are unwilling or unable to treat the room.

You keep on insisting that you cannot put any treatment at all in your room, but from the photo and description, that is not the case. You already have objects in there that are changing the acoustic response of the room, so there is no reason at all why could not add other objects that change it in useful ways. You are still making the wrong assumptions and asking the wrong questions. So I'll say it again; the question you should be asking "Given the limitations of my room (dimensions, doors, bed, windows, closet, desk, etc.), what can I do to the room it work with the speakers that I need to do the job I have to do?": You seem to thing that the answer is "NOTHING!!!!!!", but that simply is not true. Think about it. I'm not sure why you don't want to ask that question: it seems you are determined to buy speakers that won't solve the problem, and are determined to NOT do what is needed to really solve it.

Do a REW test in your room, using the existing speakers, and post the MDAT file here. I'll analyze it for you, and suggest what you could do to improve the acoustic response.

If the lowest resonating mode of the room is let's say 48hz, that means the room will have bas response under that frequency. Now, what exactly does this mean, that the room will be less efficient under that frequency? Just like when you try pushing a bass reflex box under it's port resonance?

It just means that there will be no modal support for notes lower than 48 Hz, that's all. Some people seem to think that "no modal support" is the same as "no bass" or "terrible bass" or "no sound at all". Not true. Think of it this way: the interior of a car is very, very small. The lowest mode is up in the hundreds of Hz. Can you still hear deep thumping bass in a car? Of course you can! The lack of modal support does not mean that the bass won't be there. It just means there are no modes to make it sound worse.

At the other extreme, if you set up a full range sound system out in the open air, far from any buildings, there will be no modes at all! Not a single one. Not in the lows, not in the mids, and not in the highs either. Can you still hear music clearly like that? Of course you can! The sound systems at large outdoor rock concerts can produce spectacular sound, very well balanced, very clean.

The lack of modal support just means that there are no modes. That's it.

Modes add unwanted coloration to the sound, that messes it up in many ways. But the lack of modes does not mean that there is a lack of sound. It just means that there is a lack of "messing up the sound".

There's another issue in small rooms: below the lowest mode, the room starts to act like a pressurized container, that "pumps" in and out with the sound, to a certain extent. That may or may not be a problem, depending on the power level, room size, construction materials, and other things, but it commonly is not a big problem.

In theory (and i understand this is not possible) if you had an ideal, perfect room with almost perfectly equal mode distribution, then when putting a speaker in it VS putting a speaker in an open field with no reflections would sound exactly the same, but it would be louder in a reflective room.

It would not necessarily be louder, and it would not "just" be louder: it would also be very different from the open air scenario, with no modes at all. The reverberant field is something that happens in addition to the direct sound: it interacts with the direct sound, adding to it in some ways, subtracting from it in other ways, and doing different things at different places in the room. There actually are such rooms: large concert halls with high ceilings and good diffusion do indeed provide modal support down to very low frequencies, well below the bottom end of the hum hearing range, and the modal distribution in such rooms can be very smooth and even. That's why large room acoustics is a rather different thing, compared to small rook acoustics.

I mean, this teory claims that a wave that reflected of a concrete wall, is still a perfectly identical picture of the wave that came from the speaker and hit the wall,

That is only true when the reflection is purely specular. In all other cases, the reflected wave will not be a perfect image of the original wave. There will always be differences.

The more diffused the reflected waves are, the less agressive the deformations are.

Diffusion does not change only the direction of a sound wave: it also changes the frequency spectrum of the reflected wave, and the timing, and the phase. It's a lot more complex than just changing the direction of travel.

i might need more literature?

Try "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest, and "Acoustic Absorbers and Diffusers: Theory, Design and Application" by Trevor Cox and Peter D'Antonio. Also, "
Room Acoustics" by Heinrich Kuttruff.


- Stuart -

Hi

U say Hs7's with a sub.

can u use Hs8's with a sub or is a sub not needed with Hs8's?

is it better to use a sub with smaller say 5" speakers rather sub with say Hs8's?

Thanks

sonicheavenstudios wrote:Hi

U say Hs7's with a sub.

can u use Hs8's with a sub or is a sub not needed with Hs8's?

is it better to use a sub with smaller say 5" speakers rather sub with say Hs8's?

Thanks

You can use a sub with pretty much any main speaker. There are several reasons why you might want to do that, but the most important one is to extend the overall frequency range to fully cover the sounds that you want to reproduce. For example, if you only record and listen to acapella vocals, there's no need at all for a sub, because there's no useful energy in that below around 100 Hz, or maybe 80 Hz, or some might even say 70 Hz for a very deep male baritone, but even a modest speaker can get down there without too much hassle, so no need for a sub, even with a 5" speaker. On the other hand, if you normally record most types of contemporary music, with bass guitar, keyboards, growling electric guitars, and of course drums and other types of percussion, there's a lot of low-end energy that you'd need to hear, so a sub would probably needed, even for a 7" main. And if your mixing is mostly for movies, with roof-rattling canon, room-rocking earthquakes, throbbing machinery, and suchlike, then you'll definitely need subs that go way down low, even if you have 10" mains.

So it's all depends on what your goals are for the studio. If your room will never need smooth energy or clarity in the low end, then you likely don't need subs at all, even with small speakers. And if you need very deep low end, down to frequencies that you feel in your body but don't really hear, then huge subs are needed.


- Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:The simple truth is that there is nothing that can be done electronically to "fix" the room. There is no plugin that can eliminate SBIR. There is no EQ setting that can make comb-filtering artifacts go away. There is no compressor that can eliminate first reflections. There is no effect that can cause modal ringing to disappear. There is no size, make, model, power rating or any other speaker characteristics that can correct the phase shift, or the floor bounce, or any other of the problems that always screw up the sound in small rooms. Those are the real problems that will kill your mixes and make them sound terrible, and there is NOTHING you can do about electronically, because the problem is not the electronics: the problem is the room. If you are not willing to fix the room, then you cannot fix the problems. It's that simple.

Stuart, with your permission I would like to print these words and nail them on the wall - just to remind me not to cut any corners.

I'm a short time lurker in here and will start building my own place of "friggin commotion" (quote from my wife) when I feel ready for it. So far I've done lots of reading and getting my head around acoustics. What I have learned is that I need to spend quite a lot more time planning what I want vs. what can/can't be done with space available. Thanks to your text above I know for a fact WHY I'm going to do all this.

Best regards


Tomi

Hi Tomi, and Welcome to the forum!

Stuart, with your permission I would like to print these words and nail them on the wall - just to remind me not to cut any corners

Sure! Feel free to do that.

I probably should add that, after the room has been fully treated acoustically, as well as it possibly can be, and all of the above issues have been tamed as much as is realistically feasible, it actually is possible to use what I call "digital tuning", which changes some aspect of the signal right before it reaches the speaker, to sort of "put the cherry on top" of the cake, if you wish. However, it ONLY works if certain acoustic properties of the room are met. You can't use it in an untreated room, since it will make matters worse, not better... Despite all the marketing hype you see from the manufacturers of "room correction" products! There is a very limited set of circumstances where digital tuning can be used. If you are interested, then stay tuned to this thread: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 68&start=0 We are in the process of doing the acoustic tuning first, and that room is already a candidate for digital tuning. So hopefully in a month or so, you'll be able to see how that works out. There's a couple of other rooms I'm working on at present (no threads on the forum, though) where that will also happen. And the results of a room that was actually tweaked like that in the end, can be seen here: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =2&t=20471

I'm a short time lurker in here and will start building my own place

I'm looking forward to seeing your thread, when you start it!

What I have learned is that I need to spend quite a lot more time planning what I want vs. what can/can't be done with space available.

Spot on! Print that on another piece of paper, and tape it up next to the first one!

- Stuart -

TPL wrote: [...]What I have learned is that I need to spend quite a lot more time planning what I want vs. what can/can't be done with space available.
[...]

Can you explain this some more? What exactly do you mean?
Buying/renting/building a place that suits your needs, versus trying to make an existing room work for you?
I'm in the process of working out how to do the latter.

tengo un grupo de arquitectos que quieren planear una carrera, para cuando la desean?

you should locate a university having acoustical architecture for formal study if this is part of a professional or legal practice

debe ubicar una universidad que tenga arquitectura acústica para estudios formales si esto es parte de una práctica profesional o legal

No entiendo la pregunta. Por favor, explique.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Handboo ... 0071603328

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Recording-Stud ... oks&sr=1-1