Home studio plan: Am I setting myself up for failure?

Francis · 2022-06-20T22:20:36.774Z

A long time ago in Glasgow we used the heavy curtains in my room as an iso booth. For vocals we wrapped the vocalist inside the curtains. I’ve also used step laddders and a blanket when I recorded vocals for an album a few years ago. The quirky methods you remember fondly in my my experience.

Kegeratorz · 2022-06-20T22:29:37.295Z

Looks like a really cool room, congrats, hope you get it all sorted!

Bunker · 2022-06-20T22:31:11.860Z

Francis:

we wrapped the vocalist inside the curtains

I hope this isn’t some sort of confession?..

reeloy · 2022-06-20T22:49:38.683Z

…forget dedicated treatment…
…get a heavy curtain for the windows…
…the more books are on that shelf in ur back, the better…
…move ur working desk a bit more towards the window side, away from that wall to ur left…
…make sure ur speakers swim…
…placed on sylomer or any kind of thicker/stiffer rubber pieces…or hang them…
…stick to the basic tiangle rules for accoustic stereo sweetspot placing of the monitoring…
…take care that radiator cover won’t start to swing/vibrate at some frequencies…
…if so, lean some heavy soft bag against it…

and then, listen to music u like a lot to learn the room, to get used to what u got…
and invest in some good cans…

Airyck · 2022-06-21T00:39:08.048Z

Not necessarily.

The biggest issue you’re going to have is uneven bass response around the room with peaks and nulls and full on cancelations.

I have a relatively small studio (very large master bedroom closet).

It’s 15ft L x 8ft W x 10ft H.

I have some home baked bass traps in the corners to help a little but its still not great for bass.
The biggest help for me was that I use Genelec 8010A’s (3" monitors) with the matching 7040A Sub (6" I think).

While it seems counter intuitive to have a sub in such a small room I’ve found that its actually a blessing. Once I determined my seating area I was able to move the sub around to different spots until I found a position where it didn’t seem to boost or cancel the bass as much.

Bass and sub frequencies aren’t as directional so you can kind of put it wherever it works. It ended up under my desk at an angle a few feet from either wall. It’s not perfect but now that it’s been there a while I know what I’m listening for. Spectrum analyzers and alternative listening environments (cars, living room, etc…) are your best friends in this situation.

Analogic · 2022-06-21T01:46:47.891Z

I am always reminded of the first minute or so of this video when am tempted to think my own space is too small or setup too meagre.

chrisroland · 2022-06-21T01:54:14.548Z

it’s a miracle as much quality tunage actually made it into the world back in the day cause i reckon 99% of the UK studios looked like that (or smaller)

obscurerobot · 2022-06-21T01:58:11.410Z

plragde:

I hope these are nonlethal traps and that energy is safely released outside…!

Build some big piezo panels and turn those frequencies back into electricity!

d4ydream · 2022-06-21T02:02:37.595Z

CCMP:

Two words:

Head phones.

“Hi Fi. Those are two very important things to have in a stereo system”

tracert · 2022-06-21T02:35:05.704Z

I work in a similar size and shape room to yours. I tried for a while to get decent sound, repositioning my monitors, desk, listening position, furniture, etc.
The standing waves from the bass meant it was either completely inaudible, or overwhelmingly muddy. I didn’t feel like filling up half the room with acoustic treatment so I just use headphones now, and have the monitors set up with DJ kit in another room, can playback tunes there for a different listening reference.
My advice would be, if you really want speakers in your studio room, don’t get monitors because they will likely never work properly in that space.

sheathe · 2022-06-21T03:02:58.973Z

I built a recording studio for a client last year using plans provided by a Dutch design firm. One thing I made was this trapezoidal skeleton with 2” acoustic foam fit into it. It was hung at an angle in the room and supposedly was really good for diffusing. We made some other triangular pieces for the corners too.

Here’s a photo…

image828×625 75.1 KB

Francis · 2022-06-21T04:58:49.779Z

Damn. Is she still there? I can’t remember if w let her out.

noFuture · 2022-06-21T06:06:18.889Z

Those speakers clearly look to big for room. You might wanna check out iLouds or something similar. You’ll be surprised at what they can produce. Also try to never place a monitor in a corner.

LyingDalai · 2022-06-21T06:20:04.596Z

thomaso · 2022-06-21T06:45:59.265Z

It will be hard to get that room to be perfect. Mixing with headphones can be a good thing, but that doesnt help with vocal recordings.

A big cloud absorber will help some with the acustics. And you could make some moveable absorbers that you could move into the room when you are doing vocals. Set one up behind the microphone and one behind the singer. That will help alot with the sound when recording.

And i highly reccomend the book from Mike Senior that LyinDalai posted.

darenager · 2022-06-21T09:45:47.672Z

That is almost a perfect cube, as well as flutter you will have standing waves, don’t bother with foam, get about 12-18 mineral wool broadband panels, don’t bother with bass traps either - they will take up too much space and won’t be very effective anyway.

Use small front ported or unported monitors, 5 inch driver or less, proper placement and a decent set of monitoring headphones for checking bass. Keep monitor levels at about 73db and get a spl meter to ensure you can set the level correctly.

plonk · 2022-06-21T09:54:24.800Z

There’s so much advice here, both super practical and theoretical, I’m going to have to take some time soaking it all up. Once again thanks for being awesome and helping me figure this out everyone!

DreamXcape · 2022-06-21T12:14:08.871Z

darenager is spot on with his advise.

You can’t basstrap that room, you would need at least half the space for that to work.

I want to add that the ideal weight/density for broadband panels is about 55kg per cubic meter, rockwool sells multiple kinds of mineral wool with that weight(Rockwool 221).
Don’t use mineral wool that’s heavier than that unless specifically made for acoustics. You can use lighter but then it will need to be thicker.
Make it at least 10-15cm thick.

Your room is about 30cm higher than the average room, so you could use that extra height for some more damping material.

If you use curtains, try to find the completely light-blocking kind.
The heavier the better. Or layer light ones with the heavy cotton stuff.

Also, never use reflection filters on mics.
They are a horrible solution in almost every situation.
Treat the room or place the mic in a better position.

plonk · 2022-06-21T13:11:36.063Z

As luck would have it I do in fact have a spare pair of light blocking cotton curtains lying around which I was planning to install either way. Great to know this could help!

As for the ceiling efforts: The cement in this building is so hard that even with a drill hammer I can really not quite get through, so ceiling works are future dreams for now. It would work space-wise though.

My current thoughts are: Headphones for monitoring, Monitor speakers, I’ll give it a shot but probably won’t work. Vocals: Try it once but ready to order a longer cable so I can record from the living room.

DreamXcape · 2022-06-21T13:56:19.171Z

It’s not necessary to drill in the ceiling, you could just run wood beams from wall to wall and build on that. Broadband absorption also works a lot better with some free space between the absorber and the surface.

All this can be done relatively cheap.
For fabric to cover the mineral wool, the Ikea curtain fabric named DITTE is a good solution.
I used the black version for parts of my acoustics, still looks good after almost 10 years.

For monitor placement, measurements reveal the most.
This is a free tool for acoustic measurements:

roomeqwizard.com

REW room acoustics and audio device measurement and analysis software

REW is free software for room acoustic measurement, loudspeaker measurement and audio device measurement and analysis

Use the waterfall plot to visualize the room response.
You can use it with this cheap Behringer measurement mic:
Behringer | Product | ECM8000
That mic is good enough for most measurements, just not the higher frequencies.

You should aim at an asymmetrical placement of your monitors, a symmetrical setup in a square room is a recipe for disaster. A slight angle might help a bit too, but measuring during placement gets the best results.

And here are some calculators and instructions to make your own diffusers.
Acoustics