Author Topic: Choice of room for home studio  (Read 578 times)

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Offline workman

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Choice of room for home studio
« on: January 09, 2010, 09:42:16 AM »
I would be grateful for some advice on whether a certain room would work as the control/mixing room for my home studio set-up.  We are moving to a smaller house, and the room in question measures only 8'6" by 6' 3".  I am concerned that this may cause the sound to bounce around to much and thus not give me a true acoustic image for mixing. 

Can anyone advise me on whether this would be do-able, or would the room reflections just be too  much?

Thanks!

Offline RawDepth

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Re: Choice of room for home studio
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2010, 10:20:48 AM »
The general rule for a control room is...the larger the room the better. However, with home recording, you are often forced to work with what you have. If life gives you lemons, make lemon aid.

If you monitor at higher volumes then, yes, the sound will bounce around within the room.  The problem is that these reflections badly smear or blur the sound you hear. Some frequencies become exaggerated while others get canceled out altogether. This can be completely misleading when it comes to making critical judgments in your mix. That is part of the reason why many amateur mixes sound so amateur. What sounds right in the control room won't sound right on other systems.

The good news is you can tame those reflections by putting up some homemade sound absorbing panels at just the right places. Mainly these would be needed at the first reflection points, the rear wall, side walls, and ceiling.

Next, because low frequency waves tend to build up at the corners, placing sound panels across the corners (with some air space behind) helps to reduce those as well.

The panels can be made out of anything thick, dense, and porous. The materials at this site works the best. http://www.atsacoustics.com/cat--Fiberglass-and-Mineral-Wool-Batts-and-Boards--106.html

You can frame them out with wood and wrap them in any loose weave fabric like burlap or felt.

You can read more about controlling sound waves at this site. http://www.realtraps.com/ They have some interesting articles and videos to learn by. Click on the Acoustics Info tab at the top.

Let us know what you end up doing. We love hearing about it.
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Offline stainless

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Re: Choice of room for home studio
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2010, 11:34:09 AM »
Welcome to HRS Workman

as RawD said , you can make the traps, diffusers and baffles to help "tame" the room. Placement gets to be somewhat a challenge- and trial and error requires a good ear (a signal generator, or some room correction software)

as to the rock wool versus the rigid fiberglass, I personally find the rigid fiberglass easier to work with (cuts like buttah with an electric carving knife)



Will you be facing the short wall or the long wall?

I'm assuming the ceiling height is 8'?

One area that ill be problematic is the centerpoint area between the ceiling/floor/ side walls/front/back walls- here is where standing waves will be the biggest problem... and in a small room, probably right about where your ears will be

before you start- I'd recommend that you get a signal generator (there's freebie software versions to be found)- with your monitors set where they will be, slowly move a mic around the room (recording it) you should find areas where the signal is stronger or weaker- weaker is often a sign of standing waves canceling each other out from being out of phase.  You'll need to "sweep" the frequencies so this could take some time, making a new track for each targeted freq-  remember that harmonics come into play, so if you sweep 40 Hz, you probably don't need to sweep multiples of (80, 120, 160, etc)  probably something along the idea of 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 should cover it

OR get some room correction software, start with a pass  with bare walls, and then see what/where  with respect to adding acoustical treatment does the most good-

It is possible to kill a room by over-treating, so don't think you need to trap every corner and place diffusers and baffles everywhere- I have a lot of open wall/ceiling/floor space

here's some pics of mine, all the acoustical "treatments are built by me on the patio or dining room table (very understanding wife!)
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Offline Dogbreath

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Re: Choice of room for home studio
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2010, 02:23:05 PM »
totally agree...small rooms need bass trapping. period.
The good news is that they're not that expensive to make.

I'd start with em in the corners and especially to the corners to the left and right of your mixing station.

 8)