The Importance of Room Treatment

Z

Zacobe

Obe1Cannoli
SIGH.....

About once a month I learn something really important about music production and it just depresses me... It depresses me because it makes me realize how much I still have to learn. This time it was about acoustically treating your studio. Let me explain...

Since I've gotten serious about making music I have read countless books and forums and watched tutorials and experimented with my gear and one thing I've heard numerous times is that acoustically treating your studio (or room) is detrimental to audio mixing. Well, being the skeptical person I am, I didn't logically think that it would make enough difference to show in my final mix......WRONG!!

I can't BELIEVE how much difference the room makes to mixing! I say this like I just fixed my room up to sound good but actually I haven't done anything to treat it yet. "Well how do you know then?" You may be asking, well, a simple little test I saw in a forum here recently. I over-read (kind of like over heard) someone talking about room acoustics and he said that if your room isn't treated, and you think your audio sounds fine the way its set up, then try this, hold your hands behind your ears and see if you notice any difference in the sound... So I did... and I'll be DAMNED if it didn't blow my mind! I'm not saying it sounded better but it DRASTICALLY changed how the audio sounded just from doing that and it was then that I realized how crappy my room is for mixing audio, and thats where the depression came in :(

Anyway, I didn't post this to expose how much I DONT know about acoustics, I posted it to see if you guys could maybe point me in the right direction as far as making the best out of my completely innapropriate room. I am going to post some pictures of my room and how my extremely humble gear is setup. I actually think that I have my gear setup in THEE worst possible place known to humans, I should actually rename the thread, "I hate room acoustics, look at how my stuff is setup".

Anyway, here's the first three pics, the next three are on the post right below it. I don't have the dimenstions at this time but you can get a general idea of my room layout, the pictures are in order as if I was taking them clockwise. And yes, I did make one of the biggest mistakes of mic placement, in a closet type environment. Oops, I didn't know that was wrong until recently either. I do have a little trivia question for you guys, can you guess what inappropriate material I have covered on the walls of my little wanna be recording booth? Take some guesses, I wanna see who gets it first :)

But seriously, any help would be greatly appreciated, I know a lot of you guys have invested a lot of time and money to get where you're at right now so the little tidbits of advice you drop every now and then are golden to people like me. Hope to hear from ya!!
 
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Welcome to the world of acoustics and yes you are right, room acoustics are going to make or break you recording sound and mixes. If you really think about it, how could it not!!
Here are few things to get you started, but I really encourage you to visit my company website and read over the education page and take a look at the room set up page to clear up the following things I am going to tell you.
1) Your mix spot should be set up so you are facing the shortest wall of the room and sitting 38% of the room length.
2) You want to cover as many corners as possible with PROPER bass trapping. The best bass trapping will have a core of rigid fiberglass or mineral wool.
3) Cover early reflections on right/left wall and ceiling with panels.

Hope that helps you get started
Glenn
 
Its definatly a place to start! I am going to rearrange my room to make the best possible situation. I'm living in Okinawa though so I'm gonna look around for some of the materials instead of trying to order them, the mail system here on base sucks! Thanks for the info!
 
Zacobe said:
Its definatly a place to start! I am going to rearrange my room to make the best possible situation. I'm living in Okinawa though so I'm gonna look around for some of the materials instead of trying to order them, the mail system here on base sucks! Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...

First off, do what Glenn said. You can buy some bass traps and all that stuff if you dont feel like making them: http://www.readyacoustics.com/index.php?go=products.products&cat=10


Second, dont rearrange your room around your studio, arrange your studio around your room, you might have to make some sacrifices though (Iv been sleeping on a couch for a couple years now). Your ears also need to be 0.38 feet of the room length like Glenn said. So if the length of your room is 10f, then your ears should be 3.8 feet of the long wall and in the center of the room.

Now for your monitors, try not to have them right up against the wall(mine are, but i cant do anything about that). Have the tweeters about ear level, and when your making your Equilateral triangle, keep in mind where your ears are going to be, cause you cant move there position. If you want a wider stereo image(which im assuming you want) then place the monitors further back.

For treating your room, do what Glenn said, put traps in all corners, roof to floor, the roof corners, side walls and front and back walls. Also, i noticed you kinda have a little hallway where your door is. When your mixing, i would suggest covering that up with some traps cause if you dont the room wont be balanced and you might notice a loss of frequencies on the right speaker(If you set it up the way i think you are)

Thats pritty much it to get started, unless you feel like tearing your room apart and and reconstructing it.

If you need more help, im sure these guys wont mind helping:
http://www.readyacoustics.com/index.php?go=acoustics-advice.what-do-i-need
 
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Thank you very much for the advice, you guys are great. When I said I was going to rearrange my room I meant that I was going to find the optimal spot for my speakers then move the room around that. As for the hallway, thank you for noticing, I didn't know what to do about that. Would it suffice if I put up a curtain where the opening is? I'm talking ceiling to floor.. Let me know. Also, I don't know where I should move my wall lockers...
 
The hands up by your ears to make barn doors was probably one of my post. By doing that you are blocking reflections off of the walls behind you which in a small room cause a lot of early reflections and smear the stereo image you are trying to hear. Essentially when you do this and if there is a problem the stereo image should become tighter.

In a lot of small rooms you will never overcome this and the "hands for barndoors" trick just becomes a reality check while you are mixing.
 
Read as much as possible on this subject from all the relevant sites and then decide what needs doing.

Sometimes the personal touch is the best approcah, especially if you have a sensible budget to cost in for the consultation.

If you decide to go the DIY route then have a read of my free tutorials on this subject.

Might help you.
 
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