Banished To The Basement! (Acoustic help needed)!

[loopy]

Due to a major remodel project, I have been banished to the basement. I have a small project studio that I use to convert, mixdown and do vinyl restoration in. I don't do any acoustic tracking
so at least that is not a problem.

The basement is a rectangle, 30' x 24' with a 7'.3" ceiling with exposed joists stuffed with the pink fiberglass stuff.

I have set up in one corner facing the long wall about 5 ft from the end (short) wall and 10ft from the long wall. Monitors are Event ASP8 and are about 6 inches from the wall and in an equilateral triangle approx 5ft on each side.

The joists run parallel to the small wall.
The floor and walls are poured concrete and there is a set of bookcases on my left.

I will attempt to do an ASCI drawing below, but I don't know how it will turn out. BTW what to you guys use to draw and post stuff like this?

Any help with a better location, or temporar treatment would be appreciated.
It sounds fairly decent to me in the sweet spot but I can hear all kinds of standing waves if I move away.

30 ft
_____________________
| x x
| x
| 24ft
|
|
------------------------------------
I can't seem to get the right side of the drawing to line up. Just move the listening position over a couple of feet from the left wall.

Any and all help will be appreciated because I am stuck here for a few months!

Loopy

[Ethan Winer]

Loops,

> The basement is a rectangle, 30' x 24' with a 7'.3" ceiling with exposed joists stuffed with the pink fiberglass stuff. <

That's a good start, but you should consider making a smaller room inside that space. Large rooms are great! But with all that surface area they also require a lot of acoustic treatment which gets expensive. If building a few walls is an option, you can make a great sounding room and get a much better low frequency response.

> Any and all help will be appreciated because I am stuck here for a few months! <

Okay, if it's only a few months you may not want to build walls. In the mean time, there's a lot of information about room treatment in my Acoustics FAQ:

www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

--Ethan

[jajjguy]

The first thing I try to consider when setting up a listening position is left-right symmetry. It looks as though things are very different to the right and left sides of your mix position.

Ethan, you are right that a large room takes more treatment to deaden (though it seems he may have plenty of treatment on the ceiling). Then again a large room also takes more sound energy to excite, and therefore might not need treatment so urgently. And, of course, modal behavior in the low end is generally less problematic in a larger room.

Loops, depending on your monitoring loudness, you may find that deadening your large room is not so necessary (especially given all that absorption on the ceiling). If, on the other hand, you find that the room's contribution is disruptive, you might try walling off a mix area, perhaps with absorptive gobos (like office cubicle partitions).

[Ethan Winer]

Jonah,

> And, of course, modal behavior in the low end is generally less problematic in a larger room. <

All good points, thanks for clarifying.

--Ethan (another cello player, but probably not as good as you)

[loopy]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Jonah,

> And, of course, modal behavior in the low end is generally less problematic in a larger room. <

All good points, thanks for clarifying.

--Ethan (another cello player, but probably not as good as you)

Thank you Ethan and Johah for the great advice!
Yes, the right side of the room is the open side, but it is not totally open because the staircase comes down the middle and there are some bookcases and typical basement "junk" in the way.
The left side of the room has the wall, but there is a desk with bookcase on top of that as well.

IOW, the only "bare wall" is the wall in back of the monitors.

I don't monitor at loud levels, but even then, switching a mono source between left and right monitors seems to have pretty much the same sound, which surprised me a lot.

I am going to look into closing off the right side because my better half wants the basement finished anyway so this would be a good time I suppose.

I'm pretty surprised it sounds as decent as it does and I even dragged my monitors outside to give a listen in the open air to experiment and see what effects being in the basement might be adding.
I suspect the fiberglass laden ceiling and the bookcases and junk is helping diffuse things a great deal plus the fact I listen at low levels, fairly close to the monitors is helping things.

loopy

P.S Great website Ethan!
I'm learning a great deal!