Hi everyone,
I posted this over in REW thread but was pointed here as a better place for advice. I have a ground floor studio in our three story house which includes a live room, vocal booth and a control/listening room. I have been steadily preparing the various spaces over the past 5 months and have arrived at the time to work the control room.
Here are my REW measurements taken with the following equipment:
Alesis Monitor One Mk2 speakers powered by an old school Yamaha EMX150 desk
Tascam US-1800
Behringer ECM8000 using the generic calibration file
The measurements were taken at my listening position, ear height, 900mm from each speaker at 75dB
The room is 3m x 3.5m x 2.7m high and has limited treatment at the moment - 6 x SA600-75's from Sound Acoustics which were left over from the vocal booth - one between speakers, one each at first reflection and 2 stacked on top of each in the back two corners of the room.
I have also been cheating a bit with room eq using a Behringer Ultra Curve Pro DEQ2496 - used the same ECM8000 in the exact same position to create an automatic room eq.
I'm interested to hear what you guys think and if there are any suggestions further treatment wise (including anything which might reduce dependency on the Ultra Curve).
And finally a diagram of the room layout including guitars hung on the right hand wall There is a medium weight curtain that covers the main entrance and front windows.
I'm looking forward to getting to know as much and as many people as I can,
Cheers,
Mick
Being offset is giving you different response between left and right speaker. Door behind you makes it difficult to address cancellations off the rear wall.
35ish is modal as it does not change based on the EQ where the others do.
Decay time seems long in the 100 and down range. Upper frequencies seem short. Looks like too much thin absorption and not enough thick.
Here are the left and right charts at 1/24 Octave smoothing. I've included both with and without the UltraCurve as I am still interested in treating the room to reduce reliance on it. I guess I'm keen to clean up anything it may be masking if that makes sense.
This is a perfect example of why you need to set up symmetrically left to right in a room. The right speaker is obviously a much bigger offender. That's likely because it's set up pretty much 1/2 of the width of the room while the left is getting a ton of boundary gain from being corner loaded.
As you're seeing, you can't EQ out a modal null. You need to work with positioning to fix that null.
Unfortunately, I dont see a way to position things for R/L symmetry. I would fill that left corner behind the speaker with absorption for starters though.
Sometimes when you get stuck between a rock and a hard place like this, you have to resort to something drastic like sitting diagonally facing into a corner.
Treat the front corner and the diagonal corner behind you as well as your side walls more for boundary interactions than for reflections.
Thanks for the replys Bryan and Jim,
The monitors are not crucial for recording but are when mixing etc so perhaps I'll extend the end of the work area with a collapsible shelf in front of the vocal booth door and move the right hand monitor to get the symmetry required. I'll do a temporary setup and measure and post the results tomorrow.
Any suggestions as to how far from the corners /vocal booth wall I should look to get them?
Cheers
Mick
Here are the diagonal measurements. Speakers and listening point make a 1000mm equilateral triangle. The listening position is now facing the top left corner of my studio plan diagram on page 1 of this thread. No treatment in the room...
Both left and right with no UltraCurve
Left with no UltraCurve
Right with no UltraCurve
Both with UltraCurve
Left with UltraCurve
Right with UltraCurve
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks heaps,
Mick
Really hard to AB those with so many graphs in between. Any chance you can just use overlays so we can see each one AB diagonal vs original on the same graph? For now, let's just look at both channels no eq.
Hi Bryan,
Thanks heaps for persisting with this. Here are the AB charts. I have done 2, original offset v diagonal (but the original still had the temporary treatment in place while the diagonal doesn't) and the symetrical v diagonal (both with no treatment).
Well, certainly different. Don't know that it's any better. In fact, the diagonal appears to have more nulls if you look at things with 75db being the midline of the response.
Ok, thanks Bryan. So do you think I should go to the symetrical setup or stick with the diagonal? Any suggestions on where to focus with treatment or is this just going to be a case of more trial and error?
Cheers,
Mick
If you do the symmetric setup, at least you can test left to right, front to back, etc. and try to pin down where a problem is coming from to address it - assuming you can/are willing to treat where it needs.
Ok symmetrical it is. I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to improve the acoustics of the room. Are GIK products available here in Australia? Where would you suggest I start?
Cheers,
Mick
I'll see what I can source locally then. Given I am a novice and am not sure what to look for in the graphs do they show anything I should specifically address to begin with? Any insight/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Mick
Nice! I'm really interested in Bryan's input about how to "read" the measures of the different positions (i.e. is there a way to pinpoint where the problems are coming from with these graphs??).
That said, the blue one (backward 1 foot) feels like it would be a better listening position, as it is the one that helped the most with the bass problems. It kinda caused trouble at higher freq, but since it's a lot easier to cure higher freq than lower ones.... however I guess you can not really afford 1 foot back hehe
As far as acoustic material, if you can't afford the real stuff the DIY way can be affordable. Wooden frame, dense mineral wool, good thick fabric and some time can do the trick! Or take a look on Ebay for some acoustic foam. Just make sure the NRC ratings of the foam suits your needs, usually 4" thick does a honest job.
I would agree that back 1' seems to help most with the lowest problems and get you closer to the +/-5 desired. It does deepen a null farther up - likely a cancellation off the wall behind you.
Ok, so time for some research into what treatment to go with. Given we are going with the symmetrical setup should I just start with the standard first reflection points (left/right/ceiling) or maybe focus on the rear wall. I have freedom to do whatever I want construction wise so if putting a temporary or false wall in front of the windows at the rear will help then that is no problem.
Thanks again,
Mick
I've done a fair bit of treatment and rearranged the studio as per this new layout...
The speaker on the right is on a swivel mount so access to the booth is not obstructed.
I have treated the first reflection points at left, right and ceiling and have installed bass traps up the front left corner behind the speaker, across the ceiling/front wall corner above the workstation, across the ceiling/back wall corner and almost all of the way along the left and right/ceiling corners.
I have raised the speaker heights to 1320mm centers (from 1265mm) and have moved the listening position back 300mm. I am going to try lifting the speakers further to 1500mm on Wednesday to see if that makes further improvement.
Here is the comparison between the original 'Ideal Listening Position' (Black) and the measurement taken today after the above changes (Blue)
I feel like I am making progress but am keen to receive further wisdom if its available...
As yet the back wall is untreated and is simply the curtain dropped in front of the windows. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Mick
PS. In case anyone is interested, here is the measurement taken with the UltraCurve activated and calibrated for the room changes...
Here is the measurement after raising the speakers to 1380mm. It's not going to be practical to take them to 1500mm as I had hoped.
Red is the new 1380mm graph and blue is the previous 1320mm graph
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