John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello guys,

Been a long time since I've visited here. Since having kids, studio time, etc is at an all time low! boooo!
I had a bit of free time yesterday and decided to run a few measurements of my control room with REW.
Ive never really been happy with the bottom end side of things in there and my gut its telling me that ive got way to much mid and high absorption going on, essentially making the bass even more louder than everything else.
I ran a test measurement at the listening position, ( I was not in the room) and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed, as you can see by the 2nd graph, from around 500hz down everything is much louder, not to mention the peaks and troughs in that region.

But then, I moved the measurement mic an arms length to my right (and a tad back) from the listening position, I stayed sat in my chair and did another test ( I was just messing around with preamp levels, etc) and when I ran the test I couldnt believe the result, the bottom end is almost completely flat from 500hz down to 40hz (see first graph). I am now thinking two things, is it possible that my body being in the room contributed to some sort of flattening of the bottom end in some way? and maybe where I had the mic is actually a better listening position for me to be sitting in. Unfortunately, I cant setup in that position so I'll have to tackle the bottom end issue with DIY bass traps. Anyone else experienced this?

cheers,

so I just went in there again to do a few more measurements.

My rear wall has five treatment panels, I removed three from the middle of the wall, performed a test at the listening position (red on graph) then I placed the panels back up on the wall and did another test (green on graph) to my surprise they're pretty much identical results.
However with the panels still up, I put the mic back in the "flatter" response position and sure enough, its definitely flatter overall (purple on graph).

I decided to play some music and sit in both positions with my eyes closed and just listen, and what I heard is confirmed by the test results. When I sit in the "flatter" response position the sound seems to be smoother, with less holes in the low mid and bass regions and overall more balanced, and more "together" if that makes sense.

very nice!

Nice indeed. I have often expressed the view that symmetry can be a false friend. For LF sitting at the centre of both width and height is bound to be troublesome. I could make a case for working standing up! Or offsetting the LP to 2/3 Width, or 38%......
HF and even MF symmetry is relatively easy. LF symmetry? Is there even such a thing?

The thing thats freaky is that I only discovered this because I just needed to move the mic out of the way so I could sit in my mix position, that "out of the way" location is much better. My next step now is to yank all acoustic treatment out of the room (cant do the ceiling as its a reverse ceiling and everything is built into and forms the ceiling itself), and perform tests again at both locations and see whats happening.

In an 'ideal' space we sit Mid Width. We have 8 foot ceilings here so we are listening at half height typically.
These are two very significant modal and BIR hotspots coinciding. What could possibly go wrong?