John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi folks,
I'm brand new here, and from what I've read in the sticky and poking around a little, I guess I can just dive right in with my question! First-thanks for this amazing resource!

I use my studio mainly for personal project and making demos. I'm a professional musician, though, and I'd like to be able to get a better sound out of my mixes-of course with the idea that I could do more of my work at home instead of in a professional studio. The thing is, my room is also my office, and I really don't want to cover any of my windows with treatment.

I have passive 5" nearfield speakers that are front ported so supposedly that makes them ok to be so close to the walls...What got me here is I'm starting to work more with electronic music where I'm needing to better hear the bass, and I was thinking I need a sub and a friend suggested first looking into treating my room.

Money is an issue-I can't spend more than $200 right now, and I can slowly add to this over time-maybe $100 every couple months, etc.

I do have three go-bos that a friend gave me that are about 6' wide by 4' tall and have a slight curve if any of those would be helpful. They are about 8" thick.

Attached is a blueprint of my room. From what I'm reading, bass trapping is the most essential thing. I can fill that closet with whatever-it is empty. Also I have the 1' corners behind the desk that have some space. I'm also wondering if I should turn my desk 90 degrees counter-clockwise so I could treat the rear will a bit?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: the pic should say 8' ceiling, not 8"

Hi "mbirame". Welcome!

I have passive 5" nearfield speakers that are front ported so supposedly that makes them ok to be so close to the walls...

Not really: It makes them easier to soffit-mount, but doesn't much affect placing them close to walls or not: you'll get comb filtering, reflections and other artifacts from any speaker placed close to a wall, regardless of how good it is, if it is ported or not, and where the ports are: The problem is not the speaker: the problem is the wall. You show yours right up against the wall, which is good as those issues will be limited mostly to mid-highs and highs, plus you get a mild bass boost from the wall. As you move them away form the wall, all of those problems move to lower frequencies. There's a region where those artifacts become very objectionable, as they are right in the middle of the spectrum. But as you move the speakers further away, beyond about 2m or so, they fall to such low frequencies as to not be a problem any more. So either right against the wall or far from it is the best.

What got me here is I'm starting to work more with electronic music where I'm needing to better hear the bass, and I was thinking I need a sub and a friend suggested first looking into treating my room.

You are right. So is your friend! 5" speakers are not producing much bass to start with (even though putting them against the walls helps to extend the bass a bit), and no matter how much you treat the room, that won't make your speakers produce more bass! So if you want bass in your room, you have to put it there. What speakers are you using? Make and model.

Soffit-mounting (or "flush-mounting") your speakers will help to increase your bass response a bit, but you don't have the budget for that, and your speakers are already against the wall, so the gain would only be a couple of dB.

But your friend is also right: Your room is small, so it needs LOTS of bass trapping. That will even out the modal response of the room, which could be causing problems right now that you aren't even aware of, and will only notice when you take your mixes and play them somewhere else; then you notice the problems.

So you need both: Get a good sub-woofer that covers the frequency range you need, and also a good crossover to go with it, and also install lots of bass trapping in the usual places. Yes, you could use the closet as a bass trap: take the doors off, empty it out, and stuff it full of mineral wool. Good start!

Apart from that, you also need treatment on your first reflection points in the room, a cloud on the ceiling, and absorption on the rear wall.

The problem here is your budget: a good sub is going to cost you 3 or 4 times your initial budget, a cross over will be about the same as your budget, and the treatment can be started for your budget, but will end up costing many times that by the time you are done. So that brings a paradox: Treating with bass traps now won't help much, since you don't have much bass in the room, so you won't notice a huge change. Buying a good sub and crossover certainly WILL put plenty of bass in the room, but that will excite modes that just aren't even there at present, upsetting the room response even more! To fix that, you need the treatment.

So which do you do first? Treating, which will help a bit but not hugely until you get the sub? Or get the sub, which will create huge issues that you can't solve until you treat?



- Stuart -

if I may ....

Well into the 'basic' treatment for my new room ...

even my Auratones sound better! ... and they at not know for their bass response.

One thing noticed ... doing only 'partial' treatment DID expose other nasty acoustical
problems in the room!!! For example, we pulled 1 of the ceiling clouds so that we could
do the fabric covering for it. That area under the ceiling sound HORRIBLE ! Hand claps
sounded like a basketball bouncing

not sure I'm helping ... but wanted to share my experience as I learn/build.

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Stuart, my monitors are Roland RSM-90s, and I have an Alesis RA-100 power amp:
http://www.rolandus.com/products/produc ... ductId=297

Please don't laugh too hard at my monitors, because I actually really like them, and I've had them about 10 years so I know them really well.

For a sub, I was looking at the cheaper Yamaha HS-10W....

I know I'm not top of the line here, but my thought is I'm better at least hearing those frequencies, and then doing lots of comparisons on other systems, etc for now till I can afford more.

Nobody's laughing! Nothing wrong with those, if you know them well. The only reason I ask was to find the specs, to see where the bass starts rolling off, which turns out to be around 70 Hz. The HS10W has a built-in cross over, but the minimum frequency you can set it to is 80 Hz. However, I don't think that will be too much of a problem, since the curves for each speaker type seem to sort of fit anyway. There might be a bit of a mismatch in the response there, but you could always get a parametric equalizer or external crossover to deal with that, worst case.

The HS10W will extend your low end down to about 30 Hz according to the marketing hype, but more realistically about 38 Hz flat, based on the published graphs. That should be fine for most genres, unless you are doing explosions, earthquakes, and dramatic rumbles for movies or something.

So yeah, sounds like you have a plan. All you have to do now, is to decide if you can afford to do both at once: get the sub AND put in the treatment. But as RJ hinted at, if you only have money for one, starting with the treatment is probably the smart thing to do. It will help some, even for what you had already, but it will help even more once you get the sub in.

But there's another thing you can try here: do an acoustic analysis of your system / room response right now, as-is, before treatment or subs. Down load REW (it's FREE! ) and use it to test your room right now, and post the results so we can see what type of room issues you happen to have right now. That also gives you a base-line for comparing against in the future, once you do add subs / treatment.


- Stuart -

Soundman2020,
I read your post regarding using REW to test the room. Can you tell me if this cheaper version of the Galaxy SPL Meter would work?

http://www.markertek.com/Tools-Test-Equ ... -130.xhtml

No, that's not the idea. What you need is a decent measurement mic, such as this:

http://www.markertek.com/Audio-Equipmen ... l?DBX-RTAM

You connect that to your DAW, and run REW. I'ts fairly easy to do.


- Stuart -

Ok. Thanks.