Cathedral ceiling is side to side...

[Steve@ZooWest]

My studio is aprox. 14' x 14'. As I face the front, I am sitting about 2 feet left of center due to the access door being in the right front. The ceiling height of the wall to my left is 6' 1", and the ceiling height of the wall to my right is 10' 9" (shed roof design).

Additionally, there are other room considerations - an open closet to my right that is 32" deep and which extends almost halfway from the front to the back of the room, and a hutch in the back corner of the room behind me and to my left that extends from the top of a desk up to the 6' mark; it's about 5 1/2 feet wide.

I'm currently reading up on how to improve my room sonically - Until now it's been random 3" acoustical foam here and there.

My question is as follows: are there any special considerations for a room with a one-direction cathedral ceiling that runs side to side?

Thanks for your help...

[knightfly]

Steve, welcome; nice name, BTW

Sounds like you have several things that could use help - first, with a sloped ceiling by far the best position for mixing is with the low side in FRONT of you (where the speakers are) and sloping UP to the REAR. Second best (much worse) is the opposite, but will only work with a LOT of absorption on the ceiling. You need the ceiling to send early reflections to the rear, AWAY from you rather than right back to your ears.

Third and fourth choices are equally bad, and that's with the ceiling sloping up to either right or left; this puts uneven early reflections (more from one side) being bounced right back to your ears. Any reflected sound that travels less than about 20 feet FURTHER than the DIRECT sound in order to reach your ears, should be absorbed heavily so your brain doesn't integrate that short echo into the direct sound.

Maybe if you can do a basic sketch of your layout (even the Paint program can work for this, if you're on a Win-Doze machine) we could make other recommendations - also, a square room isn't ideal for best acoustics either, sorry... Steve

[Steve@ZooWest]

Steve, I've attached a studio sketch, such as it is.

There is a skylight 44" by 20" that begins above the right speaker and extends to within a foot or so of the ceiling height shelving on the right.

There is also an 18" diameter hexagonal window above the file cabinet in the right rear.

There are lighting tracks on the ceiling that I will need to work around or possibly move.

Door to outside, on the back right, is half wood, half plexiglass. Front door is solid wood, covered with carpet to cut leakage to overdub room.

Budget is somewhat flexible - I could spend upwards of $2,000 to treat the room. It would be problematic to change the setup of the room - can you even vaguely quantify how accurate the room might be with whatever extensive treatment you might reccommend? That will help me decide if I need to consider something more drastic.

Some important data not in the drawing - the room is 14' 1" front to back and 13' 10" side to side.

Thanks again for your time and help.

[knightfly]

It's always hard to tell (without doing it) just how much change you'll get with re-arranging, but the way your setup is ATM there is a LOT of room for improvement. As is, your speakers have no chance to give you the same response from both channels; there are different distances from left wall to speaker vs. right wall to speaker, different distances from left ceiling to speaker vs. right ceiling to speaker, different distances from your head to either sidewall, etc...

Speakers respond differently in different acoustic environments; besides room modes, which will affect how loud a speaker can get by whether certain lower frequencies are being driven adequately, you also get nulls/peaks due to distance between speakers and boundaries (wall,ceiling, floor) - this can make two identical speakers sound completely different in response. This is called SBIR, for Speaker Boundary Interference Response.

The differing ceiling height from left to right makes the early reflection pattern totally different from left to right, making it impossible to believe any stereo information you get at the mix position - the only two ways to fix this are either rotating the setup to a SYMMETRICAL (centered) position on the left (low ceiling) side, or adding several inches of rockwool to your ENTIRE ceiling over the mix area (minimum) supported at the 6 foot level, and PARALLEL to the floor, so the entire mix area ceiling is absorbed heavily at 6 feet high.

Even that method won't totally fix ALL the problems - you simply can't fix problems with symmetry by throwing "band-aids" at them.

The variables in your present setup make it nearly impossible (without completely filling the room with insulation of some sort) to get anywhere NEAR a balanced response from your speakers.

If you want a preview, move just your desk so it's centered on the left wall (your drawing) - set your speakers so the center of the cones are 4'6" from each sidewall, and 48" from center of woofer to floor; the woofer center should be either 32" away from the wall, or the cabinet should be AGAINST the wall; try both. With the against the wall setting, place your head centered between the two speakers and about 5'8" away from the wall. This will be close to an equilateral (60 degree) setup, and will keep speakers and your head out of serious nulls/peaks.

For the 32" distance from woofer cone to wall, try a head position that's 8'0" to 8'4" away from the wall (all distances are measured to the wall you see when you're at the mix position, BTW)

Before moving anything, listen to a few well-mixed commercial CD's in the present position - note any stereo imaging, whether one side sounds brighter or deeper than the other, etc -

Then move things, try to keep anything TALL from unbalancing the left-right symmetry as well.

What you hear in this test is the WORST your speakers will sound in the new position. Next will be fine-tuning of positions, then acoustic treatment to take care of "left-overs".

Since hearing is so subjective, I'm not aware of an easier way to show you the difference - you need to hear it for yourself so YOU can decide... Steve

[Steve@ZooWest]

It will be several days at least before I can get a second pair of ears in here to do the listening test with me, which is how I'm going to approach this. In the meantime, I'm wondering

1) Can the ceiling reflections can be adequately treated with say 4-6 inches of rigid fiberglass above the entire mixing area, without making the area parallel to the floor?

2) No matter how I end up configuring the room, there will be a limited number of wall to wall corners available for bass trapping - but another location for a bass trap that would be very unobtrusive would be where the high end of the ceiling meets the side wall...about an 8 foot span - how effective is bass trapping in that area?

Thanks for your help.

[knightfly]

1 - heavy absorption (not parallel) would help the mids/highs, but for lower frequency modal and SBIR problems not as much; however, it might be ENOUGH - a hard call without listening tests.

I'd looked at that high ceiling/wall joint and thought the same; maybe a framed large trap area across the eitire wall, covering everything above the 6-7 foot level, and angled so as to be perpendicular to direct sound from the speakers... Steve

[Steve@ZooWest]

I'd looked at that high ceiling/wall joint and thought the same; maybe a framed large trap area across the eitire wall, covering everything above the 6-7 foot level, and angled so as to be perpendicular to direct sound from the speakers...

Steve,

If I try to make the room work with the present configuration, the large bass trap in question across 8 feet of the high side wall would not be in a position to be 'perpendicular to direct sound' but rather at an odd angle of sorts.

Will this work farily effectively or not? Any thoughts on the best angle for said trap, if you think this is a viable location?

My guess is that making it at about a 45 degree angle to the ground could work well, leaving maximum space behind the 6 inches of unfaced 703, but that's only a guess...

Thanks again for all the help.

[knightfly]

If you don't use anything more dense than 703, then the angle isn't as important so it should help; but I'm serious when I say you owe it to yourself to try and rotate your situation... Steve