Too dead ?

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by studioland

Just put 2 bass traps in the upper corners of my mix room :
42*24*6 and

One big in the back : 60 * 24 * 8

put insulation on the whole right wall : 3'' mostly and a bigger 6'' in the right speaker area
on my back door 3'' and in the back door corner 3''
I also have 3'' on the whole ceiling

So that's a lot but what's left is windows (big), wood (floor and walls)

Before I had problems for LR focus now if I move my head half an inch I can hear the R or L speaker
The room is reverbless, before there was and I can really pin out bass lines no problem.
Now I can hear reverbs in mixes very good.

The room is fairly dead : is this a problem for mixing ? Do I risk to put too much reverb ? May all the insulation made me lost too much high frequencies ?

The only way to really know is to test the room.

Glenn

[Barbary Ape]

I think I might have the same problem. I might have put too much acoustic foams in my walls. A friend of mine who works in the same field told me that my room was dead. I didn't believe him.

I treated my room in a way that I could make the monitors in my room match the sound of my AKG 240DF which are diffuse field headphones that simulates an acoustically treated room(and I think I have a pretty close match). Was I wrong in using this method as a reference to treat my room?? or is it my friend that's wrong??

[Hannes_F]

Did you measure the reverberation time?

[orange]

way too many variables to tell if it's TOO dead or not.

How big is the room ?

In small rooms you probably don't have much choice but to work fairly 'dead'. It's almost impossible to get a good accurate balanced, diffuse and 'lively' soundfield in small, boxy rooms.

I don't think that it's feasible to earmatch the sound of headphones ('diffuse field' or not) to a room, especially by guesswork, and probably a waste of time either way (just my opinion). There are quite a few software tools on the internet to give you a more accurate benchmark as to what your room sounds like.

[loujudson]

If "Too Dead" is a mystery, you might need this:

http://www.toodeadtoswing.com/

which is a great mystery, and the audiobook has excellent music too!

;-)

[studioland]

"The only way to really know is to test the room."

Ok any link or thread on how to test my room. I have an spl meter, mic ...

What should I do ? Which software do I need ?

[bpape]

Dowload Room EQ Wizard (free) from hometheatershack.com. It will let you run frequency sweeps for response and for decay times.

Overall, I'd say you have an awful lot on the ceiling. I'm also a bit concerned, unless I misread, that you did one side but not the other which is not good. Symmetry in front of you is key.

Bryan

[Hannes_F]

Again, measure the (frequency dependent) reverb time, and then you know. Look for T60, e. g. in the software WinMLS. It should be around 0.2 sec, then you are fine.

Note that thicker absorbers do not swallow much more high frequencies but are better for absorbing bass. So in case you are really too dry (I doubt it) then the way to go would not be to make the absorbers thinner, but smaller.