a.)About to treat my room and b.)Is a room ever 'hopeless?'

[Yumid]

So I live in a 1 bedroom apartment. 2 typical rectangle rooms+ a kitchen.
I have 2 options for my studio, id prefer my bedroom since I don't want the first thing people see when they walk in to be a bunch of bass traps and stuff up on the walls. Plus it would be cheaper to treat my smaller room.

The big thing about BOTH of these rooms is they have a BIG window that slides to open and is only 1 layer of glass thick. Far from sound proof. And I live downtown in a big city so there is usually noise. Not a lot, but you can always hear something, whether its cars driving by or some one coming down the alley.

Both rooms have horrible resonance when you clap as well. And although id rather use my bedroom, with the size of my bed its going to be hard to find a spot where i can directly position my monitors in the middle of the room facing the long way. But I could maybe work around that.

Anyway, long story short. 2 rectangle rooms, one bigger, one smaller. Both have horrible resonance when i clap. Both have a giant single layered glass window that slides to open next to a generally noisy alley. They are both rectangle, but I will post pics soon to give exact shapes.

also, if I go with the bedroom, how do things like dressers/other desks/etc.. affect the travel of sound? If I end up going with my bedroom, which i want too..its gonna be a PRETTY full room. It technically is rectangle..but the end shape of it is far from rectangle as far as sound refection goes.


EDIT
Just moved in so I have like no furniture hah, all I brought with me here was clothes. I flew.

[video]https://vid1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg497/YumidRecordings/20140818_112533_zpsad414670.mp4[/video] Big Room
[video]https://vid1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg497/YumidRecordings/20140818_112608_zps20d1a17c.mp4[/video] Small Room

the problem with the small room is that my speakers will need to be where my bed is with my back facing the closet.. and the problem with the big room is all the noise from the fridge and out in the hallway. My bedroom is definately the quieter choice, but its also more square and smaller.

 

[bandcoach]

I'd resign myself to minimal treatment (early reflections only). your situation is not ideal and there is really no point in choosing either room as you will need to do a lot to get them to sound nice and then you will still have the issues of the sliding windows

 

[Yumid]

Yah, Im finally getting around to going interface/monitor shopping. And it feels like such a waste spending all this time and being nit-picky about which monitors to get when both rooms are horrible anyway. Not sure if I should just get the best pair of cans that I can or stick with the monitor idea. I can always reference at school but eventually I will need monitors at home..Well I need them now, but it just seems pointless with my room situation.

I always have my windows open though so the sound that comes in could be reduced ALOT. Im just used to it being noisy in here cuz they are always open. I just closed them to re check and around this time of night its really that bad. Cant hear anything. But during the day it would be noisy. Either way I've gotta work with what I have. I don't wanna just do nothing haha, I was getting excited to get some monitors in here before I started thinking about all this.

 

[sheggs]

Yah, Im finally getting around to going interface/monitor shopping. And it feels like such a waste spending all this time and being nit-picky about which monitors to get when both rooms are horrible anyway. Not sure if I should just get the best pair of cans that I can or stick with the monitor idea. I can always reference at school but eventually I will need monitors at home..Well I need them now, but it just seems pointless with my room situation.

I always have my windows open though so the sound that comes in could be reduced ALOT. Im just used to it being noisy in here cuz they are always open. I just closed them to re check and around this time of night its really that bad. Cant hear anything. But during the day it would be noisy. Either way I've gotta work with what I have. I don't wanna just do nothing haha, I was getting excited to get some monitors in here before I started thinking about all this.

I can't help with your sound isolation but given a choice I would always choose the larger of the rooms as you will encounter less issues with low frequencies that way
All rooms will improve with treatment but it can be a lot harder to get the response form some rooms than others

First thing you need to do for the reverb is put some acoustic panels where the reverb is occurring. Flutter echo like this occurs where two flat surfaces are parallel each other. So this could be coming off your window (in which case treat the wall opposite) or somewhere else. What type of floor do you have.
Any pictures would be great. You can also deal with windows with freestanding panels where necessary

 

[Yumid]

Only problem with the bigger room is the kitchen attached to the living room. There is always a Hum coming from the fridge. I never even noticed it until i actually started listening and planning for room treatment. I took a video of a walkthrough on my phone so you guys could see but it won't let me attach the file to an email because its over 25mb. Any idea how to send a bigger video file from android to email? I suck at this stuff haha.

Carpeted floor.
I can never hear people below me, and my neighbours are either really quiet or the walls are good. Every now and then ill hear foot steps from next door but never talking or TVs.
And those windows I mentioned are better at keeping noise out then I lead on to seem. I actually have them closed today and i can only hear the odd car drive by every now and then. might affect recording but I could work around it while mixing. Which is all I really are about right now (mixing)

So outside noise will be kept in mind but there isn't much I can do about it. Ill settle for some basic treatment, because the clap resonance is TOTALLY undeniable, its horrible.

Ill post that video as soon as I can send it to my Mac off my android.

edit:just recorded them as a downgraded file, Video links are in the OP. Excuse my lack of furniture haha. Just moved here.

Ill try and get better videos if needed but those will have to do for now.

REPASTING down here too incase you miss the vids up there
Just moved in so I have like no furniture hah, all I brought with me here was clothes. I flew.

[video]https://vid1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg497/YumidRecordings/20140818_112533_zpsad414670.mp4[/video] Big Room
[video]https://vid1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg497/YumidRecordings/20140818_112608_zps20d1a17c.mp4[/video] Small Room

the problem with the small room is that my speakers will need to be where my bed is with my back facing the closet.. and the problem with the big room is all the noise from the fridge and out in the hallway. My bedroom is definately the quieter choice, but its also more square and smaller.

 

[Nutek Studios]

Isolation and treatment are two completely different animals, you will never have complete isolation unless you build it that way which is VERYYY expensive. I totally agree about just trying to catch those early reflections (with broadband panels, not FOAM). Simply monitoring at lower levels can help take the room out of the mix.

 

[Salem Beats]

also, if I go with the bedroom, how do things like dressers/other desks/etc.. affect the travel of sound? If I end up going with my bedroom, which i want too..its gonna be a PRETTY full room. It technically is rectangle..but the end shape of it is far from rectangle as far as sound refection goes.

Filling your rooms with stuff will help a lot!

Large furniture, bedding, and other soft items will help with absorption.
Generally, larger and thicker stuff will absorb deeper frequencies.

Hard wood items like bookshelves, desks, coffee tables, etc., will help with diffusion.
This will make your room less square and will help to randomize the reflections that exist in your room.
With reflections randomized, you'll be much less likely to have significant dips and boosts at particular room modes.

Have you checked out this 24 pack of Auralex foam on Amazon?
It's a pretty good deal.
I recommend that in addition to filling your apartment with used stuff from your local thrift store.

-Ki
Salem Beats

 

[sheggs]

Filling your rooms with stuff will help a lot!

Large furniture, bedding, and other soft items will help with absorption.
Generally, larger and thicker stuff will absorb deeper frequencies.

Hard wood items like bookshelves, desks, coffee tables, etc., will help with diffusion.
This will make your room less square and will help to randomize the reflections that exist in your room.
With reflections randomized, you'll be much less likely to have significant dips and boosts at particular room modes.

Have you checked out this 24 pack of Auralex foam on Amazon?
It's a pretty good deal.
I recommend that in addition to filling your apartment with used stuff from your local thrift store.

-Ki
Salem Beats

We normally would not recommend using random items as diffusion. This short following article on diffusion explains why -


Diffusion is often a misunderstood concept in the audio field; so what exactly is diffusion? According to Webster, there are several definitions which relate to various fields. Let’s take a look at the generic definition and one more audio related.

Diffusion, in general, is the movement of a substance from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

Diffusion, in audio, is the scattering of sound waves, reducing the sense of localization.

Those two definitions may seem to be very different but they really aren’t. If we think of a series of sound waves bouncing off of a wall, they’re concentrated and moving in the same direction at the same time. The reflections off of the wall will come back to the listener at approximately the same time and from approximately the same direction. The ‘concentration’ is still intact in the spatial and time domains.

Now, if we introduce a diffusor onto that flat surface and we generate the same sound waves, what happens? Most people would say that we are scattering the sound in other directions rather than in the directly reflected path. This is true, but is not the whole story. A good diffusor not only changes the reflections to propagate in different directions, but does so EVENLY in all directions. Just splitting a wave to go into 2 directions doesn’t do enough. We’ve effectively changed the concentration of the waves in a certain portion of the room. We’ve also effectively taken the intensity of the initial wavefront and split it among the various reflections so that each one is not only coming from a different direction, but each is also weaker and harder to distinguish but we’ve lost no energy in the process.

A proper diffusor also impacts the time domain. If we have the same wave and it gets reflected into multiple directions evenly, the length of the path the various waves must take to reach the listener also changes. In the world of sound, distance is time. For ease, we can say that 1 foot equals approximately 1ms of time. So, if we’ve changed the path into say 8 different paths (in reality, there are many paths but we’ll look at 8 just for ease of understanding), each one ideally with have a different path, which means that they’ll arrive at 8 different times. Again, we’re diluting the concentration of sound but this time in the time domain instead of spatially. In addition, these different path lengths cause differences in the number of reflections and the amount of air the wave passes through which will cause each reflection to have a different intensity (more dilution in yet another domain – intensity).

So, now we have 8 reflections that have been changed and are all different in 3 domains – time, direction, and intensity. This makes it much more difficult for our ears and brain to determine exactly where the sound is coming from. This fits perfectly the definition of a lack of localization. The net result of this is that we trick our brain into thinking the room is larger than what it is and yielding a more spacious sound.

There are a great many myths about ‘home brew’ ways to provide diffusion. Most do not work at all and many work poorly or only over a very narrow range of frequencies. Let’s take a look at one – a bookcase with books set at randomly varying depths.

First of all books, if anything, will be more absorptive than reflective at any but the highest frequencies. Second, random depths do not generate random reflections over a predictable and controllable area. The width, height, spacing, and pattern of the wells of a diffusor are carefully calculated to make sure they generate a smooth and even scattering of the waves over a 180 degree angle. Third, without this carefully calculated spacing, we can cause frequency related aberrations due to constructive and destructive wave interactions from various reflections. We’re in effect getting very little of the benefit of a diffusor while creating more issues in the frequency response.

Another myth is using CD/DVD cases or LPs in the same sort of random manner. In addition to the issues presented above, the cases themselves are so narrow that the frequencies that would be affected would be only in the highest ranges. Again, the width, depth, and pattern of the wells and peaks of a diffusor not only generate the proper diffuse pattern, but also determine the frequency range over which a diffusor is effective.

 

[Salem Beats]

We normally would not recommend using random items as diffusion. This short following article on diffusion explains why -


Diffusion is often a misunderstood concept in the audio field; so what exactly is diffusion? According to Webster, there are several definitions which relate to various fields. Let’s take a look at the generic definition and one more audio related.

Diffusion, in general, is the movement of a substance from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

Diffusion, in audio, is the scattering of sound waves, reducing the sense of localization.

Those two definitions may seem to be very different but they really aren’t. If we think of a series of sound waves bouncing off of a wall, they’re concentrated and moving in the same direction at the same time. The reflections off of the wall will come back to the listener at approximately the same time and from approximately the same direction. The ‘concentration’ is still intact in the spatial and time domains.

Now, if we introduce a diffusor onto that flat surface and we generate the same sound waves, what happens? Most people would say that we are scattering the sound in other directions rather than in the directly reflected path. This is true, but is not the whole story. A good diffusor not only changes the reflections to propagate in different directions, but does so EVENLY in all directions. Just splitting a wave to go into 2 directions doesn’t do enough. We’ve effectively changed the concentration of the waves in a certain portion of the room. We’ve also effectively taken the intensity of the initial wavefront and split it among the various reflections so that each one is not only coming from a different direction, but each is also weaker and harder to distinguish but we’ve lost no energy in the process.

A proper diffusor also impacts the time domain. If we have the same wave and it gets reflected into multiple directions evenly, the length of the path the various waves must take to reach the listener also changes. In the world of sound, distance is time. For ease, we can say that 1 foot equals approximately 1ms of time. So, if we’ve changed the path into say 8 different paths (in reality, there are many paths but we’ll look at 8 just for ease of understanding), each one ideally with have a different path, which means that they’ll arrive at 8 different times. Again, we’re diluting the concentration of sound but this time in the time domain instead of spatially. In addition, these different path lengths cause differences in the number of reflections and the amount of air the wave passes through which will cause each reflection to have a different intensity (more dilution in yet another domain – intensity).

So, now we have 8 reflections that have been changed and are all different in 3 domains – time, direction, and intensity. This makes it much more difficult for our ears and brain to determine exactly where the sound is coming from. This fits perfectly the definition of a lack of localization. The net result of this is that we trick our brain into thinking the room is larger than what it is and yielding a more spacious sound.

There are a great many myths about ‘home brew’ ways to provide diffusion. Most do not work at all and many work poorly or only over a very narrow range of frequencies. Let’s take a look at one – a bookcase with books set at randomly varying depths.

First of all books, if anything, will be more absorptive than reflective at any but the highest frequencies. Second, random depths do not generate random reflections over a predictable and controllable area. The width, height, spacing, and pattern of the wells of a diffusor are carefully calculated to make sure they generate a smooth and even scattering of the waves over a 180 degree angle. Third, without this carefully calculated spacing, we can cause frequency related aberrations due to constructive and destructive wave interactions from various reflections. We’re in effect getting very little of the benefit of a diffusor while creating more issues in the frequency response.

Another myth is using CD/DVD cases or LPs in the same sort of random manner. In addition to the issues presented above, the cases themselves are so narrow that the frequencies that would be affected would be only in the highest ranges. Again, the width, depth, and pattern of the wells and peaks of a diffusor not only generate the proper diffuse pattern, but also determine the frequency range over which a diffusor is effective.

This is all fine and well.
Nobody suggested that an improvised diffusor would be as effective as a purpose-built one.

If you can afford them, purpose-built bass traps, broadband absorption panels, and diffusors are the way to go.

Let's take it one step further:
Why not just hire an acoustician to design a studio and hire someone to build it on open land?

Mixes made using monitors in a furnished apartment will generally translate better than mixes made in an empty one.
It seems like common sense, and my experience supports the notion.

-Ki
Salem Beats

 

[sheggs]

This is all fine and well.
Nobody suggested that an improvised diffusor would be as effective as a purpose-built one.

If you can afford them, purpose-built bass traps, broadband absorption panels, and diffusors are the way to go.

Let's take it one step further:
Why not just hire an acoustician to design a studio and hire someone to build it on open land?

Mixes made using monitors in a furnished apartment will generally translate better than mixes made in an empty one.
It seems like common sense, and my experience supports the notion.

-Ki
Salem Beats

I was just adding balance and let people know of some of the pitfalls. Its an article on diffusion. Some people find items in their room add postively to the sound. Many more finds it create additional problems.

 

[Salem Beats]

I was just adding balance and let people know of some of the pitfalls. Its an article on diffusion. Some people find items in their room add postively to the sound. Many more finds it create additional problems.

The discussion helps new producers realize that hard objects (and their positioning) factor in to room tone.

-Ki
Salem Beats (+Reviews)

 

[sheggs]

The discussion helps new producers realize that hard objects (and their positioning) factor in to room tone.

-Ki
Salem Beats (+Reviews)

Is this a private dance all can we all join in?

 

[Yumid]

I dont understand why throwing reflections off balance would benefit you? Wouldnt you WANT reflections hitting both of your ears at the same time to get an accurate stereo image? I thought as far as reflections went, symmetry was key? No?

I wish our studio design class was sooner than the 4th semester

 

[bandcoach]

reflections are part of the room signature, they define the size of the room. With small rooms these reflections return to us quickly, causing us to hear repeats of the original sound source that may interfere destructively or constructively with the source, causing peaks and dips in the rooms frequency response

absorbing and diffusing the reflections allows for us to hear the source without interference, allowing us to make eq decisions that are not coloured by the room

 

[Yumid]

absorbing and diffusing the reflections allows for us to hear the source without interference, allowing us to make eq decisions that are not coloured by the room

This makes perfect sense to me, but the part where I get confused is--(assuming the first sentence of the below statement is true)

Regardless of how much you diffuse or manipulate the path of a reflection, they will always come back to your ears.

SO, wouldnt you want the reflections from your R speaker and the reflections from your L speaker hitting you at the same time so it doesnt throw off your portrayal of the stereo image? I understand having dressers and beds and whatever can diffuse the sound and stop 'bad' reflections; BUT what if its diffusing the sound in a non-symmetrical way?? Like say the reflection from my right speaker is getting diffused on whatever is sitting on the right side of my room(bed, dresser, whatever). But the sound wave from the left speaker doesnt go through the same path as everything diffusing the sound wave coming from the right speaker, so it just naturally bounces off whatever is on the left side of room and reaches me BEFORE the reflection from the right side does. Wouldnt this cause problems with the stereo image you THINK you're hearing?

Basically my point/question is- I understand reflections and I understand random items in your room can help with diffusion of sound, but HOW important is symmetry when manipulating the separate reflections on either side of the room? I know to some degree its important, and before now I assumed it was way more important. But no one in this thread seems to be mentioning anything about the symmetry of the situation, just that random objects can act as diffusers. How do you deal with symmetry when you have 'un-symmetrical' objects in your room? (beds, dressers, etcs..)

 

[Salem Beats]

This makes perfect sense to me, but the part where I get confused is--(assuming the first sentence of the below statement is true)

Regardless of how much you diffuse or manipulate the path of a reflection, they will always come back to your ears.

[...]

SO, wouldnt you want the reflections from your R speaker and the reflections from your L speaker hitting you at the same time so it doesnt throw off your portrayal of the stereo image?

You're getting confused because you're mingling two separate things in your mind:
- The stereo image of your source, and
- The stereo image of your room.

The goal is for your room's reflections to be as "vague" (read: "random") as possible,
so that you don't make adjustments to compensate for phenomena which occur only in your particular room.

If you're close to a wall (i.e., in a small room), asymmetry is much more likely to cause problems with comb filtering.
This will cause stereo imaging problems because the speaker nearest the wall will suffer major dips and boosts in frequency response.

However, when you're placed properly in a room large enough where the reflections are perceived as reverb,
the effects won't be nearly as drastic.

If your room's reflections are playing a major factor in your perception of your source's stereo image,
you probably need to turn down the volume on your nearfields.
The main benefit of the small "near-field" monitors we use today is the ability to sit fairly close to them,
so that we can perceive a lot of detail without needing to turn them up so loud that they "liven up" the room a bunch.

-Ki
Salem Beats (+Reviews)

 

[bandcoach]

Only thing that I would add is that your right speaker will be reflected by the left wall and vice versa

 

[Salem Beats]

Only thing that I would add is that your right speaker will be reflected by the left wall and vice versa

Yeah, sound waves play with one another like ripples in a pond.

In my own experience with poorly positioned setups,
the speaker directly adjacent to a wall will suffer drastically worse frequency response (especially noticeable in the bass with large speakers).

-Ki
Salem Beats (+Reviews)

 

[bandcoach]

if it is loaded into a corner there is actually a 6db spl boost at the resonant frequency of the corner

this is found by taking all three lengths in the room (H, W, L) and applying the resonant freq formula as follows

=(speed of sound/2) x SQRT((1/Height)[sup]2[/sup]+(1/Width)[sup]2[/sup]+(1/length)[sup]2[/sup])

to find any other room resonance simply substitute 0 for the dimension(s) you not want to include

so for a small room with dimensions of say 8' x 12' x 20', the resonant frequency in any of the corners is 89.46Hz

 

[GIK Acoustics]

Yeah, sound waves play with one another like ripples in a pond.

In my own experience with poorly positioned setups,
the speaker directly adjacent to a wall will suffer drastically worse frequency response (especially noticeable in the bass with large speakers).

Both of these statements need a caveat in them:
Sound waves in rooms do act like ripples in a pond for low frequencies, since they are omnidirectional from the source. High frequencies do not behave like that though, they behave like rays of light.
Speakers near boundaries aren't always so bad - in fact, in many small rooms, the best spot is right up against the front wall. Having the speakers in the 20-40cm range is the worst spot you can put them at. This is due to the interactions the monitors have with the boundaries which can cause cancellations and peaks at certain frequencies. This is very room dependent, some wall constructions don't exhibit this behavior as much. But we've got a brief article on our site explaining these phase cancellations, known as "SBIR" here: Speaker Boundary Interference Response SBIR GIK Acoustics