Thought I’d start a place where we can ask questions and share some thoughts, images, plans, DIY and anything related on the topic of making our spaces sound better.
Most of us have far from ideal rooms for our passion and just hanging a few absorbers and putting bass traps in the corners helped me tame my current almost cube-like space.
To kick things off, the first question I have is on desk placement for my new studio.
We’ll be moving into our house soon and I have this space for my little studio.
It’s 3,8 × 3,6 × 2,5m with a sloped ceiling which starts at around 90cm.
The shape of your room is very similar to mine. The slant on your roof looks shallower than mine and my main problem I’ve had is my height. I’m 6’7 and can only stand up at the highest point of the room.
I did used to have everything set-up against the high wall in the room, but I didn’t have much space to move backwards in my seat and would keep banging my head on the roof.
If I would have set up against the low wall, I’d lose so much space to get my speakers at the right height I wouldn’t have had enough room to freely move about the space in my chair.
So in the end I set it up like I do now, and as my gear list has grown I honestly couldn’t set it up a different way.
I don’t have any acoustic treatment though, I mainly mix on headphones using Slate VMX as I do most of my work once the family are all asleep, I then finish mixes off using IK MTMs. But at least in this configuration they are away from the walls and the correct height. I’m no mixing expert but I can get a decent sounding mix with this set-up.
It has been a double edged sword. On one hand I’ve always had to make comprimises due to the dimensions of this room but it is a large space and if the ceiling was full height, no way would I be allowed by the family to use this, I’d of been relegated to a smaller room in the house.
it’s one thing to treat a room for “perfect” accoustic…
and it’s another thing, to treat a room to NOT feel disturbed by the outside world and ALSO NOT disturb that same outside world…
to achieve a “perfect” accoustic room is way more easy and cheaper to do, than to make sure ur neighbours will never bother u…and on top of it all, that u will never bother ur neighbours…
these two goals are frequently mixed up, but ain’t the same at all…just sayin’…
my living room/studio is much bigger,
but has a similar shape like your room.
pros and cons in my experience are:
that shape needs much less treatment
than a normal cuboid room.
the ceiling is like an acoustic element already.
(less parallel surfaces, wood/insulation)
One little “trick” to solve the problem with speaker height on the low side of such rooms is to let them point up a bit.
What I didn’t like on the low side is that my speakers where so near to the ceiling, no matter what.
I have them on the high side of the room for that reason, my room just sounds better that way. My speakers need some distance from the wall so I loose a lot of space too, but I can still stand or even jump in the front of my desk,
I´d concentrate on the ergonomics of your studio(stuff you own) first,
and think about acoustic treatment later.
If you fill up that room with the usual stuff (+curtain, carpet, books, plants…) it should sound pretty good anyway.
Nice place! And I am more and more moving into the direction of placing my desk under the slope.
I am not as tall as you, but I have enough space to be able to stand in front of my desk and I might steal your idea for the tier stands to go a bit vertical rather then into depth.
I have a room that serves as my joint home studio / home office. Because of layout and marital harmony I’ve never treated this space (other than filling it with too much music gear ).
To make things worse: 1) gear and furniture constraints dictate that I setup my monitors on the short-axis of the room rather than the long axis; and 2) there’s a strong asymmetry in the amount of space flanking my left and right monitors (again room constraints). Everything I’ve ever read about studio monitor positioning tells me these are big no-nos.
I’ve recently gotten a new pair of speakers and a sub (Neumann KH80 DSP + KH750 DSP) and a calibration mic that allows this system to do its own room calibrations. Because my room is untreated I was expecting only modest results.
To my surprise, I got the following room calibration results. Dashed line is pre-alignment; solid yellow line is post-alignment. Red line is the Neumann default target curve.
I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at these sort of response plots, but I was surprised how good my space was even without the alignment, and super surprised at how nearly flat the response was with the alignment.
Are such results typical of home studio setups or did I just happen to win the untreated home studio lottery in terms of frequency response?
That’s almost flat. I am impressed by the calibration Neumann is capable of. Can you switch between you initial sound and the corrected? I’d be curious about the difference ans how noticable it ist.
You can indeed toggle between aligned and non-aligned.
I did notice a difference in bass handling, but I fully admit that my perception of difference was probably strongly influenced by looking at the graph in front of me!
Did you measure loud enough and far away enough (listening position)? These do seem almost too good to be true. You mentioned asymmetry in your placement but I see only 2.5dB nulls which sounds uncommon. For example, I have 14dB null below 100Hz for one speaker and another one that is 9 in a different range or so, can’t exactly remember. Are your walls made of wood or is it a very large room maybe? Can you measure one speaker at a time and apply eq for each speaker separately? I suggest doing so. Aim for 80dB SPL while measuring to get the room modes ringing.
Those Neumann frequency responses are truly amazing. I was going to buy KH120II’s but lost my interest after measuring my asymmetrical speaker placement with current speakers. Maybe one day when I can get proper placement. I get by with EQ but it killed all the joy from listening by killing the subs A LOT, compensating for the huge dips.
Yep, measured at 80db SPL at listening position (equilateral triangle, 121cm sides).
The Neumann MA1 calibration routine is actually quite involved. 7 different measurements at listening position and 6 other specified locations around listening position.
For reference I did a quick comparison of the uncalibrated settings using FuzzMeasure and I get pretty much the same as the pre-alignment result shown above.
It seems the Neumann KHS80 + KHS750 combo just performs really well in my space.
When I get a chance I’ll take a few pics and sketch my space and see if folks can reason/speculate about why I’m getting good results despite the oddities of my room.
So here’s a sketch and few photos of my home studio space. As you’ll see the room is rectangular but with a nook for the main entry door. There’s a bunch of “unusable” space on one side of the room that needs to be kept clear for easy access to closets and a bathroom door, so my desk and other gear are arranged asymmetrically in the space and the main direction of my listening arrangement is along the short length of the rectangle.
In the pics above the desk chair is out of place to make room for the measurement mic.
I repeated the Neumann alignment this afternoon with pretty much the same results. I also cross checked the aligned setup on FuzzMaster with similar results.
So again, despite the idiosyncracies of this space and the layout I’ve settled upon, these speakers with their built in DSP seem to be doing an outstanding job of providing the desired response curve.
A couple of Q’s for the audio engineer types reading this thread:
What are your theories about why I get decent results without treatment?
Could it be that all the shelving, bookcases, ceiling fan, modular cases, gear, etc. are acting like acoustic diffusers?
Your room is on the larger side, that is always good (decay times increase but usually better for room modes)
Your room has stuff in it, and stuff generally absorbs sound
Your room measurements lack room height? Impossible to calculate modes without knowing room height… If I assume 7 foot room height, the calculations already come pretty favourable
Thanks for the suggestions. This room has 8 ft ceilings.
I did plug my measurements into the calculator you suggested but didn’t know how to interpret the output in any sensible way. Guess I’ll have to dig into some basic acoustics to get a baseline understanding.
Hey, most of that stuff goes over my head too! I think its meant for people who actually have a strong grasp on all acoustic academia and design rooms for a living.
But what I can tell you is, I’ve rarely seen as good looking results from this tool. Your room seems really good to start with. 870 sabins of absorption to reach RT60 studio level reverb times, and room modes dominate 20 - 84Hz. These are good figures man
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