I would like to get the bass more controlled in this room. I don't care for this space being completely dead but the bass...geez it's muddy and ugh.
Quick SketchUp here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/ ... tan-room-1
I can only modify one half of this room. The other side has identical windows but I left that side blank...the side with windows is the side I can use.
Dimensions:
Height 2.55m
Width 5.7m
Length 10M (5m usable by me)
I know the ceiling is unfortunately low. I will not be monitoring in this room forever but right now it's driving me crazy and I assume I can re-purpose materials down the road.
1) Listening position. Currently I sit facing the windows with the thought that firing length-wise down the room is the better idea but if you think otherwise...
2) The windows mean that corner trapping possibilities are limited. I could build traps right to the edge of the window, or even deviate from an equilateral triangle to get more coverage area? I assume due to the limited space, superchunk is the best idea for soaking up bass as I don't have enough room for a suitable air gap...? Again if you think otherwise please say.
I am also thinking of hanging a cloud over the mix position. Should I be doing some measurements to find out what frequencies are annoying me to decide how thick/how far off the ceiling it should be hung or is the ceiling so low that it's not worth doing that?
Any help and opinions are massively appreciated!
Cleaning up low end, difficult situation (SketchUp included)
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Teej
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Sat Dec 09, 2017 12:02 am
- Location: Berlin, Germany
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Soundman2020
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Re: Cleaning up low end, difficult situation (SketchUp inclu
Hi "Teej", and Welcome! 
You don't say what the purpose of the room is, but reading between the lines it seems that this is a control room, for tracking and mixing. Correct?
http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm
http://amroc.andymel.eu/
Both of those are very good. They give you tons of information that is really useful to understanding the dimensions, and the consequences.
It's a small room, so you don't have any options here: The speakers MUST go tight up against the front wall (windows), with only a 10cm gap between the rear corner of the speaker and the front wall. And this is the part you won't like, but here too you have no choice: In that 10cm gap, you MUST have a large panel of good acoustic porous absorber, such as OC-703 or something similar. The reasons for this first, CRITICAL setup, is simple: Speakers send out low frequencies in all directions equally. Mids and highs are focused forwards, towards you, but lows go out in all directions. The lows that go out towards the front of the room, WILL bounce back from that wall (windows, in your case), and the "bounced" version of the sound wave WILL interfere with the "unbounced" version that went out the other way, in your direction. So now you have two copies of the same wave heading towards you: the first is the direct sound, the other is the "bounced" version that reflected off the front wall, and is delayed by a certain amount! Those two copies interfere with each other at different frequencies: where the two waves are in phase, they add up, and are louder. where the two waves are out of phase, the cancel out, becoming very quiet, and leaving "holes" in the spectrum. The frequencies where the holes and peaks happen is related to only one thing: distance. To be more exact, it is related to the DIFFERENCE in distance traveled by the direct wave and the reflected wave. And considering that the location of your ears at the mix position is fixed, the only variable here is how far the speaker is away from the front wall. That's the key distance here. For every possible distance, there is a frequency where the first "hole" or "null" or "dip" will occur. That first dip has a huge influence on the entire acoustic response of your room. If you put your speakers away from the wall, that first dip will occur at a low frequency, in the range where the drums, bass, low end of the electric guitar, low end of the keyboard, and low percussion live. So your bass will be all over the place, muddy, loose, undefined, and ugly. In a large room, you can move your speakers (and the mix position) far away from the front wall, and that forces the first dip to happen at a frequency below the bottom end of the spectrum, where no musical instruments make any useful sound anyway. And that's fine, if you have a large room. But you don't. You need a distance of about 3 and a half meters between the rear of the speaker and the front wall to get that situation... At 3.5 meters, the first dip occurs at roughly 24 Hz, and the only instrument that goes that low is the church pipe organ... So probably, that would not be an issue! But in your room, that is not possible.
If your speaker is closer to the front wall than about 3 meters, you will have major dips and peaks in the response, and because the waves are so large at those low frequencies, it is almost impossible to treat that with most types of acoustic treatment. Large waves need large treatment, and once again in a small room, there's no space for large treatment, so this problem CANNOT be treated in a small room.
So, since only a very large room allows such a setup, and your room is small, the only other option you have is to put the speakers up directly against the front wall, which forces that first dip to occur at a much higher frequency, in the mid range, perhaps around 300 to 400 Hz... which CAN be treated! At that frequency, the waves are short enough that it is possible to have some control over them by using thick porous absorption. Even then it's hard to treat fully, but at least it is possible to control to a certain extent, due to the shorter wavelengths.
Therefore, the ONLY option you have is to put your speakers against the front wall, with a panel of thick porous absorption (at least 10cm) between the speaker and the wall. Except that in your case, the wall is a window... Which leads you to a major dilemma: Do you want to keep the window and have lousy sound with major bass issues and terrible frequency response, and large phase issues, including comb filtering down to very low frequencies? Or do you want to have decent, usable, acoustics, with tight, controlled, well defined bass, and reasonably good frequency response and phase response, at the expense of losing the view out the window?
That's the choice you have. If the view is more important than having a usable mix room, then keep the view. If mixing is more important than the the view, then put the panels in, treat the room, and get good acoustics.
Yes you should be doing some measurements, but "no", it is not to find out what frequencies "annoy" you: it is to find out what is wrong with your room in ALL aspects, where frequency response is only a small part of it. There is time domain response, and phase response, and reflections, and the reverberant field, and ambient noise, to consider as well. There's a set of specifications that a room should meet, acoustically, in order to be usable as a control room. The specs define all of the key parameters. You should try to get your room as close as possible to meeting those specs.
Here's a brief tutorial on how to do an acoustic test of your room: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122
- Stuart -
You don't say what the purpose of the room is, but reading between the lines it seems that this is a control room, for tracking and mixing. Correct?
Did you check those dimensions in a room mode calculator, to see how well they stack up? Is your ratio good, or not so good? That will also predict the frequencies where you will have problems. Try these:Height 2.55m
Width 5.7m
Length 10M
http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm
http://amroc.andymel.eu/
Both of those are very good. They give you tons of information that is really useful to understanding the dimensions, and the consequences.
Correct, but it's not just about the orientation of the room: It's also about the geometry: the location of the mix position in the room, and the location and angles of the speakers. Those are all important.1) Listening position. Currently I sit facing the windows with the thought that firing length-wise down the room is the better idea but if you think otherwise...
It's a small room, so you don't have any options here: The speakers MUST go tight up against the front wall (windows), with only a 10cm gap between the rear corner of the speaker and the front wall. And this is the part you won't like, but here too you have no choice: In that 10cm gap, you MUST have a large panel of good acoustic porous absorber, such as OC-703 or something similar. The reasons for this first, CRITICAL setup, is simple: Speakers send out low frequencies in all directions equally. Mids and highs are focused forwards, towards you, but lows go out in all directions. The lows that go out towards the front of the room, WILL bounce back from that wall (windows, in your case), and the "bounced" version of the sound wave WILL interfere with the "unbounced" version that went out the other way, in your direction. So now you have two copies of the same wave heading towards you: the first is the direct sound, the other is the "bounced" version that reflected off the front wall, and is delayed by a certain amount! Those two copies interfere with each other at different frequencies: where the two waves are in phase, they add up, and are louder. where the two waves are out of phase, the cancel out, becoming very quiet, and leaving "holes" in the spectrum. The frequencies where the holes and peaks happen is related to only one thing: distance. To be more exact, it is related to the DIFFERENCE in distance traveled by the direct wave and the reflected wave. And considering that the location of your ears at the mix position is fixed, the only variable here is how far the speaker is away from the front wall. That's the key distance here. For every possible distance, there is a frequency where the first "hole" or "null" or "dip" will occur. That first dip has a huge influence on the entire acoustic response of your room. If you put your speakers away from the wall, that first dip will occur at a low frequency, in the range where the drums, bass, low end of the electric guitar, low end of the keyboard, and low percussion live. So your bass will be all over the place, muddy, loose, undefined, and ugly. In a large room, you can move your speakers (and the mix position) far away from the front wall, and that forces the first dip to happen at a frequency below the bottom end of the spectrum, where no musical instruments make any useful sound anyway. And that's fine, if you have a large room. But you don't. You need a distance of about 3 and a half meters between the rear of the speaker and the front wall to get that situation... At 3.5 meters, the first dip occurs at roughly 24 Hz, and the only instrument that goes that low is the church pipe organ... So probably, that would not be an issue! But in your room, that is not possible.
If your speaker is closer to the front wall than about 3 meters, you will have major dips and peaks in the response, and because the waves are so large at those low frequencies, it is almost impossible to treat that with most types of acoustic treatment. Large waves need large treatment, and once again in a small room, there's no space for large treatment, so this problem CANNOT be treated in a small room.
So, since only a very large room allows such a setup, and your room is small, the only other option you have is to put the speakers up directly against the front wall, which forces that first dip to occur at a much higher frequency, in the mid range, perhaps around 300 to 400 Hz... which CAN be treated! At that frequency, the waves are short enough that it is possible to have some control over them by using thick porous absorption. Even then it's hard to treat fully, but at least it is possible to control to a certain extent, due to the shorter wavelengths.
Therefore, the ONLY option you have is to put your speakers against the front wall, with a panel of thick porous absorption (at least 10cm) between the speaker and the wall. Except that in your case, the wall is a window... Which leads you to a major dilemma: Do you want to keep the window and have lousy sound with major bass issues and terrible frequency response, and large phase issues, including comb filtering down to very low frequencies? Or do you want to have decent, usable, acoustics, with tight, controlled, well defined bass, and reasonably good frequency response and phase response, at the expense of losing the view out the window?
That's the choice you have. If the view is more important than having a usable mix room, then keep the view. If mixing is more important than the the view, then put the panels in, treat the room, and get good acoustics.
That's perfectly fine. Bass traps do NOT have to be based on equilateral triangles. That's a myth. From your SketchUp model, you seem to have about 65cm free between the corner and the edge of the window, so make your superchunks 65cm wide along that wall, and 90cm along the side walls. That will work well. You also have 23cm above the window, so make a horizontal superchunk across there, 20cm from the corner down, and the same 90cm back along the ceiling.2) The windows mean that corner trapping possibilities are limited. I could build traps right to the edge of the window, or even deviate from an equilateral triangle to get more coverage area?
Yes. Superchunks are pretty much always the best option, even if you do have space for an air gap. However superchunks don't just "soak up the bass". They soak up EVERYTHING, across the entire spectrum, so it's a good idea to partially cover some of the face with plastic, to help reflect the highs back into the room. If not, you'll end up with a very dead sounding room, that is unbalanced and unpleasant. You can sort of "tune" the response of the superchunk by using the right thickness of plastic to deal with the right frequency range, and adjsuting the percentage of coverage to get the right level.I assume due to the limited space, superchunk is the best idea for soaking up bass
Yes. Build a large, thick, angled, hard-backed cloud. That will help with many things at once. It will be heavy, so take care to mount it safely, using chains (not wire), and no open hooks: only closed-loop mountings and chains, that are securely attached, and have at least a ten-to-one load bearing ratio (in other words, if your cloud weighs 50 kg then the mounts must be capable of supporting at least 500 kg).I am also thinking of hanging a cloud over the mix position.
Yes but no!Should I be doing some measurements to find out what frequencies are annoying me
Yes you should be doing some measurements, but "no", it is not to find out what frequencies "annoy" you: it is to find out what is wrong with your room in ALL aspects, where frequency response is only a small part of it. There is time domain response, and phase response, and reflections, and the reverberant field, and ambient noise, to consider as well. There's a set of specifications that a room should meet, acoustically, in order to be usable as a control room. The specs define all of the key parameters. You should try to get your room as close as possible to meeting those specs.Here's a brief tutorial on how to do an acoustic test of your room: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122
- Stuart -
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Teej
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Sat Dec 09, 2017 12:02 am
- Location: Berlin, Germany
Re: Cleaning up low end, difficult situation (SketchUp inclu
Awesome, thanks for the detailed response Stuart! Need to grab a coffee and start absorbing all this information...