John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi there... This is my first post here, i found your forum by searching google.

I am a Drum & Bass producer from Bristol in the UK and i have a degree in music production & technology where i studied acoustics as one of my modules, so i am no expert, but i do know a bit about it. For the last 5 years i have been in a room which i treated myself and built panel resonating bass traps, tuned to the axial modes in my room. I had good results with this and was able to get pretty accurate mixdowns. Now i have moved and i have a smaller room which is not an ideal shape, but unfortunatley, its all i have so have to make the best of it. Its a rented property and i am not allowed to screw anything to the walls so ! am unable to make panel resonating bass traps. My productions sound cool in the room but when i play them anywhere else they are seriously lacking in bottom end… I don’t know what to do… I was thinking about buying some broadband bass traps… but i don’t want to waste money buying the wrong thing and it doesn’t help…. I was also considering buying Arc 2.5 software and mic but again, i am not sure if that will help or not. I have treated all the first reflection points with acoustic foam which i fastened to the walls with poster strips so as not to damage the walls.

Any advice would be much appreciated… I know its never going to be perfect but if i can get it as good as i possibly can without spending too much money that would be great.

Also, I would have prefered to have the speakers facing down the length of the room but unfortunatley due to the placement of doors this isn't practical either so i have my desk along the side of the room so the speakers are facing towards the other side wall. My speakers are front ported... Adam A7's. I have a budget of about £500 for this project at the moment.

Below is the dimensions of the room…

Length: 2.84 m
Width: 2.38 m
Height: 2.42 m

The walls are made from plasterboard as is the ceiling and the floor is carpeted. There is one small window which is covered by fairly thick curtain and there is 2 wooded doors.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Oh yeah, i forgot to say.... I do not need to turn the volume up loud... i like it at a very moderate level and i don't record and vocals or other instruments in the room.

Welcome,

You're definitely in a rough situation. Those dimensions are almost cubic. No matter what, you need as much bass trapping as possible. You can build these yourself and stand them up floor to ceiling. You could probably use finishing nails in the top corners to hold them in place enough to keep them from falling down.

I was also considering buying Arc 2.5 software and mic

This won't work. Physics won't allow it. You need acoustic treatment to solve you problem. You can buy a measuring mic and use REW to take measurements of your room.

Greg

HI there Woodsy, and Welcome!

Its a rented property and i am not allowed to screw anything to the walls

That's unusual! Most rental agreements have clauses that say you have to hand it back in the same state you accepted it, after first repairing any damage that you might have done, but it's unusual to have a blanket prohibition on hanging pictures or decorations on the walls. Double-check what the contract actually says.

My productions sound cool in the room but when i play them anywhere else they are seriously lacking in bottom end…

A common problem in small rooms: mixes not translating. Heavy bass trapping needed!

I don’t know what to do… I was thinking about buying some broadband bass traps…

Well, do you want "broadband", or do you want "bass traps"? Not necessarily the same thing, and your room likely needs more bass trapping than broadband.

I was also considering buying Arc 2.5 software and mic but again, i am not sure if that will help or not.

No, it won't. As Greg pointed out, you can't fix a room that has lousy acoustics with software, for exactly the same reason you can't fix a lousy hamburger with software...

This type of software and hardware is often advertised as "room correction", but that's actually a lie! It is impossible to "correct" a room using software. The marketing hype makes it seem like you can just install the software, hook up a mic, and all your problems will go away: not true. Not even vaguely true. This type of software can ONLY be used right at the end of the room treatment and tuning process, AFTER the room already has all of the required acoustic treatment in it.

For a more complete explanation, take a look at the second post in this thread! http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =1&t=21236 That's something I wrote a while back about this whole "room correction" hoax, demonstrating with real-world examples why it does not work, and in fact CANNOT work. Greg is exactly right when he says that the laws of physics prevent it from working.

I have treated all the first reflection points with acoustic foam which i fastened to the walls with poster strips so as not to damage the walls.

That is probably not doing anything like enough fir your room. In order to be effective, first reflection point treatment must be thick: at least 4", and 6" is better.

I know its never going to be perfect but if i can get it as good as i possibly can without spending too much money that would be great.

Well, make up your mind! Which of those two do you want!!! It can be "as good as possible", or it can be "not too much money", but it can't be both. That's like saying "I want a brand new Ferrari for US$ 10k". Ain't gonna happen! You can get a car for 10k, or you can get a brand new Ferrari, but it won't be the same car!

unfortunatley due to the placement of doors this isn't practical either so i have my desk along the side of the room so the speakers are facing towards the other side wall.

In a room that is practically square, that's probably not too much of a problem. It would be better to have things oriented the other way, but it's probably livable. It's not your biggest issue, by far.

My speakers are front ported... Adam A7's.

Nice! Good choice.

Length: 2.84 m
Width: 2.38 m
Height: 2.42 m

That's practically a cube! Ooops! Not so good. That room is going to need major treatment.

The walls are made from plasterboard as is the ceiling and the floor is carpeted.

First thing to do: get rid of the carpet. Carpet is a pretty good way of trashing your room acoustics, since it does the exact opposite of what small rooms need.

Carpet absorbs high frequencies very well, mids to a certain extent but randomly and rising with respect to frequency, then does absolutely nothing at all to low frequencies. That's the opposite of what a small room needs. All small rooms need huge amounts of low frequency absorption, some in the mid-range but less and less as frequency rises, with little to none in the high end. Carpet makes your room sound dull, boomy, thuddy, muddy, lifeless, etc.

Secondly, it is on the floor, which means it destroys the reflections from the floor that your brain relies on to build an "acoustic picture" of the room. All your life, wherever you go, your ears are exactly the same height above the floor, and your brain is very, very accustomed to figuring out the acoustic signature of the room based on the reflections it hears from the floor. If you sit down, your brain recognizes that, and adjusts it's "image" of the room accordingly. It does not use the ceiling or the walls for that, because the distance from your ears to the walls and ceiling changes all the time, many times per second as you walk around, so the "signature" is not constant or consistent. Ceilings are different heights, and when you walk outdoors, there is no ceiling at all! But there is still a floor, and it is still the same distance from your ears as every other floor.

If you have carpet on the floor, your brain no longer has any reflections to use for this.

So forget the carpet. You'll find it really hard to have a good acoustic setup in a room with thick carpet on the floor. It messes up your psycho-acoustic perception of the speaker locations, as well as your ability to determine directionality, so you'll never get an accurate sense of the real sound-stage, and never have an accurate stereo image. Carpet is pretty good at destroying spatial perception. So since you are determined to keep the carpet, you'll be sacrificing all of that.

Have you ever noticed that world-class control rooms practically never have carpet on the floors in the front half of the room? There's a reason for that. So as long as you are happy with your room never being able to provide the clues to your brain that it needs to correctly determine spatial locations, then that's fine: leave the carpet in. On the other hand, if you want your room to be the best it can be, do what the pros do, and take it out.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Before you can treat the room, you first need to identify exactly what is wrong with it. Your ears can't do that, but this is one place where software CAN help, and indeed, is the only method. You will need to use the REW software for this, to analyze what is wrong with your room. Here's how: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122


- Stuart .