Room tune up clinic

I,m certainly interested

I think I have to something with my floor in the recording room

---Roland Lover----
VS 2480, Fantom X, Vdrums Vstage, Boss GT8, JC 120 Guitar Amp, U-8 Interface, DS-90A Monitors

Have you got some pics I can look at...

William

I live in a house, in my room where my X7 stand and where I make music.....
And in that room there lives another person, a lovely person......so we live together in this house.....
and so it is.
Here I make my music and I don't want to build a "soundfort"....
so, can you give us some tips to listen in a normal room ?
and...."music makes my day" (Marvin Welch and Farrar)

r.

pics would help because I can see where to suggest putting some treatment. And by treatment, I don't mean expensive stuff. Also, I would need your room dimensions, windows, closets etc... pics make that easier to figure.

In general, there are speaker height, distance from the wall considerations and host of other things to consider to optimize your sound.

William

williamcoakley.com

I'd like abit of advice, please. I am generally quite happy with the sound in my room apart from the bass response, which is a bit on the light side. Gear wise, I am using a Fantom X7, Roland JV90, a few other synths, drum machines, guitars etc, and softsynths running thru: Yamaha 01x, Yamaha i88x and Yamaha 01v mixers connected by mLan to Cubase, and for monitoring I have a Samson C-Control feeding a Denon PMA350SE amp which drives Spirit Absolute 2 nearfields (and a pair of cheapish Yamaha PC speakers for "crap system" playback checks). There is a some pics and a diagram of my set-up on my site (link is in my signature) and a few more specific pictures here:

http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/DSCF1491.JPG
http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/DSCF1492.JPG
http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/DSCF1493.JPG
http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/DSCF1494.JPG

The nearfields are raised on some sturdy stand that my brother-in-law fabricated from some 1/4" steel plate (http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/DSCF1302.JPG), with the stands and speakers cushioned on some little pads of "Blutack".

The room is roughly 16ft long and 9ft wide with laminate flooring (plus a thick rug), and has insulated stud walls (using 18mm chipboard, not plasterboard) plus a double glazed window behind the speakers. The ceilings are artexed plasterboard and there is an archway about 6ft from the speakers (and window) end of the room. The ceiling above the speakers is pitched at around a 10deg angle.

As I said, I'd like a bit more bass response in the room as my mixes can tend to end up a bit bass-heavy. I'm only really interested in improving the sound in my normal listening position as I normally work alone in my studio.

Any ideas or suggestions, William?

BTW, please excuse the mess... I have to use my studio as my office too ;o)

Dave

http://www.drstudio.demon.co.uk/
"Musicians fall into three categories: those with a physical block, those with a mental block and those with a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Is the bass uneven and shallow or evenly shallow? You can test it with a nice deep sine (or close to it) bass sound and as you descend down into the bass move your head a bit to see if you're getting any variation near you.

Rooms come down to two problem areas. Everything below about 200 hz and everything above. The problems above 200 Hz are easily addressed compared to bass problems below 200 Hz. Paticularly below 160hz treatments involve what is called "bass trapping." It's just a fancy term that means trying to interrupt the standing bass waves in a room.

You think your studio is messy, I dare not show anyone mine. But the mess can be good... unfortunately, things like bookshelves and stuff on the walls usually only effect the stuff above 400 Hz. So all your stuff is helping but not where you're needing it. And there's no room for bass traps... as they can get bulky. One candidate that might help is some tube traps but before we go there... we can improve a couple of other things. First, I notice around your listening area you have mucho flat surfaces. Some foam absorption might be the ticket and if you send me a floor sketch showing the listening position and speakers, I can better advise.

The rule is to get rid of early reflections from surfaces near you. You might even consider hanging what they call "a cloud" from the ceiling. What these absorption products do, is they give you better imaging by reducing the intensity of early reflections.

So send me a sketch or drawing of the floor plan and then I can get a better idea of what to do. Maybe its me, but from the pics it's not certain where your monitors are.

{edit} Okay I see it now on your website pic. That window is problematical because its a hard reflective surface and may be contributing to a mid and high presence. Remember that sound is relative. You can create the illusion of having more bass by carving out some mids and highs. Anywaze, we'll continue when you tell me about the evenness or not of the bass.

In the end, you can make some improvements in your bass response, but if the bass is uneven, we can only make a small impact on that. But we might be able to determine where the drops and peaks are in the bass and knowing that can help. What we need now is just to rebalance your listening area to your speakers. BTW if you can post or send speaker curves ...that would help.

William

williamcoakley.com

Hi William,

I Have two 16 X 10 X 9(tall) feet Rooms. All concrete walls. I have all my corners, up and down with Auralex Basstraps. I have like 60% of my walls covered with Auralex Acoustic foam. On the control room I have some difusion on top and on the back. My biggest problem is that I have the rugs on top of the concrete floor. Bass Frequencies produced for example by a set of latin congas, create a problem on the recording room.







Im sorry the pics dont show much but Ill post more pics later

---Roland Lover----
VS 2480, Fantom X, Vdrums Vstage, Boss GT8, JC 120 Guitar Amp, U-8 Interface, DS-90A Monitors

Thanks William. The speaker curves can just about be made out on the brochure PDF (linked at the bottom of this page: http://www.soundcraft.co.uk/product_sheet.asp?product_id=104. The speaker are on solid stands, are in an upright position, are sitting level, and my ears are on the same level as the tweeters.

Floorplan is here: http://drstudio.da-media.co.uk/studioplan.pdf... the units should say "cm" but CorelDraw was having none of that and refused to scale the units!

Playing a deep sine wave through the system, there is no change in the bass response when moving side to side, but there is a definite dead spot about 1 metre from the back wall (moving side to side made no difference) where the volume was less than half when sitting in my normal position... as I moved much nearer the back wall the volume recovered a bit, but still to only about 60% of the volume in my normal listening position. I have indicated thbis as coloured bands on my floorplan diagram.

I'm starting to suspect the archway might be messing up the sound a bit.

Dave

http://www.drstudio.demon.co.uk/
"Musicians fall into three categories: those with a physical block, those with a mental block and those with a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

You're right about the archways. They are adding mid and high interference and added to the window and walls that are reflective in your listening area... my guess is all three are bouncing enough mids and some highs around to create the illusion of more mids and highs making you hear less bass.

A couple of things. Begin playing bass pitches of some sine wave or similar bass starting at the G below middle C. As you descend down to the lower octaves, see if you can determine what notes are stronger than average and which ones are weaker than average. When you've written them down, record a sequence using those same notes descending from G below middle C and this time listen from a standing position behind your listening position about where the arch is. Then repeat about 3 feet further back into your studio area and describe what the results are.

Also, I'm noticing that you have yourself located between the speakers when you play but not when you mix (when you're at the computer)... this two can create problems unless you're dragging the mouse and keyboard over to where your keyboard is now.

William

Also, I just noticed that you may be getting some reflections from your desk.

William

Are you using Venus bass traps?

I notice you have a nice array of diffusion do you have a floor plan with some dimensions?

Also, you may be getting some imaging problems from your desk reflecting some highs up at you. I can't see what's behind the speaks and inbetween them.

Clarify if you can with pics or drawing. thanks

William

William, I'll give that a go. Actually, I mix in front of the speakers... whilst I do occasionally turn to the computer to tweak EQ plugins and so on, most of the time I use my 01x to control Cubase during the mixing process.

Do you think a few auralex foam panels on the walls either side of the arch facing the speakers will help cut down the high and mid reflections? plus maybe a couple of foam panels on the ceiling where the sound bounces from the speakers? I'd preferr not to cover the window as this is the only source of daylight in the room.

Dave

http://www.drstudio.demon.co.uk/
"Musicians fall into three categories: those with a physical block, those with a mental block and those with a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Good ideas... I would try at least some 2" and if $ permits even thicker. I know about window problems, I have one room with 12 feet of glass in the front corner. Even tho its isolated behind a partition... it does make a perfect 12 foot drum head and resonates at the worst possible freqs. If you treat the arched walls with 3 or 4 inch you will significantly reduce the problem the window is causing although it will still remain problematical for imaging.

How did your bass tests come out?

William

The main problem seems to centre around "A" in the second to bottom octave of the X7 keyboard (Cubase reports this as being A1). All notes dip to about 30% volume in that dead spot in my room... but G#, A, A# and B are overall slightly lower in volume than the rest of the notes in all positions around the room.

I thought the room dimensions would be causing this (standing waves), but the wavelength of A1 is 6.27m, which doesn't seem to correspond to any of the room dimensions.

I hadn't noticed before, but the audio when playing sine tones "seems" to emanate from a point higher than the speakers... I guess that will be the ceiling reflections mucking aroind with the imaging.

Auralex tiles are quite expensive here in the UK, but I've found some GCD tiles on eBay (http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZdegorankin.. do you have any experience of GCD products?

Dave

http://www.drstudio.demon.co.uk/
"Musicians fall into three categories: those with a physical block, those with a mental block and those with a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!