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

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

JBOT · 2022-12-14T11:35:59.843Z

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

resurrecting an old one here, but this just reminded me of something:

I used to put a catalogue together for a client and they had a section on ‘pest control’, that included a whole section of ‘animal traps’, and then a further smaller section of ‘humane animal traps’.

by extension that meant that the first section must have effectively been the ‘inhumane’ range.
it just used to make laugh how the conversations must have gone in store.
Customer: I’m after a squirrel trap.
Store: would that be the humane squirrel trap, sir.
Customer: No. No it would not.

Why do i still find this so funny, nearly ten years later?

Octagonist · 2022-12-14T13:38:23.371Z

plonk:

Here’s a floor map of the space to give you an idea.

Your drawings are great! The scale, detail and lighting are so informative. How did you make them? Did a tool do a lot of the work, or are you trained in this kinda thing?

plonk · 2022-12-14T14:07:11.676Z

Using Google Sketch or Blender you can easily get a result like this Not trained in making blueprints or maps but I have overlapping skills

s3kn0tr0n1c · 2022-12-14T15:10:49.127Z

Just do your best with acoustic treatment but dont over think it or think that youll get it perfect.

Headphones good when doing your kick bass etc. My room a bit off on the low end so its always worth doing a bit it the phones and a bit on the speakers.

plragde · 2022-12-14T16:33:36.255Z

JBOT:

by extension that meant that the first section must have effectively been the ‘inhumane’ range.

Just searched “humane bass traps”, got nothing. Business opportunity for sure. Can sell as an add-on to A4 or those filters without resonance compensation…

Mistercharlie · 2022-12-16T07:41:48.199Z

I spend 95%+ of my music-making time playing, experimenting, etc, and only a tiny part mixing. I much prefer speakers for all of it, to the extent that I rarely make music if I have to use headphones.

What I’m saying is that, unless you are professionally mixing a lot of the time, you might not need all that room treatment. Just curtains, a rug, and as much soft stuff as you can fit in the place.

Use headphones to mix, perhaps, or just listen to your mixes on airpods, kitchen and car speakers etc to learn how your mixes translate.

Terrible advice I know, but not all of us need fully treated rooms.

plonk · 2022-12-16T10:27:59.233Z

Thanks for the advice. Just to give an update: I didn’t end up treating the room in the sense of bass traps and the lot. I do however have a pretty high open closet full of books and fabrics, which seems to help. There’s still a couple brown notes when I play bass that really seem to shake up the whole space compared to others, but you learn to ignore it somehow haha. I listen back to my stuff on open ear headphones, which are not very bass heavy obviously, so I feel like somewhere between my speakers and my headphones lies the truth. I’m still looking for the right rug to cover 70-80% of the room’s floor, turns out I’m picky when it comes to rug aesthetics haha.

Cheers to everyone who helped with great advice, and an extra one to the ones telling me not to worry too much. It really is true that you get used to the imperfections in a space, it kinda doesn’t matter that much at all unless you’re going pro

pokk · 2022-12-16T10:44:15.785Z

That’s a great share, and I believe he helped Broadcast mix their album so…

Old 90’s studio setups are a great way to help with this.

Everytime i have setup a spare room as a studio, and it’s been a long time since I’ve done that, it’s always had acoustic issues, mainly due to their being too much space and not enough stuff to fill it it or treat it. I think bedroom artists stuff always sounded ok as there was always a massive bed their, carpet, clothes, shit everywhere and studio gear just piled in a corner with some domestic speakers and crap headphones. And we lived in that room so ultimately you knew what music should sound like.

Not overthinking too much, prepare for changes, don’t invest heavily in fixed setups, like drilling into walls etc and as others have said just make music in there and be prepared to hit issues and mixes sounding off initially, but they will even in a high-end studio until your used to it.

Often thinking I should change my studio to the setup below. Seemed to work quite well.

Good luck and enjoy the spare room, that’s very cool.

DrOrthogonal · 2022-12-16T11:27:40.472Z

Completely un-music related but, if you can, consider rehanging the door to open outwards and liberate a little extra space and have it feel less cramped