Recommended range of diffusion for a small room

[Ziko]

Hi there,

I'm looking at building some QRD's for my tiny home studio (track and mix in the one room). I've run up the "Acoustic Calculator" app and now I'm just trying to work out what the best range of diffusion I should build for.

My room currently is 10'w x 13'l x 9'h, I'm renting though and will buy soon and hopefully end up in something a touch bigger, let's say 14x14x9.

I'll use a prime seed of 7 and won't want a maximum depth of more than 20cm.

What do people recommend in terms of the diffusion range, am I best to go with around 370-1800 or should I go a little higher like 450 - 2200 or even 600 - 2900?

My main motivation is to improve vocal recordings in the room, get a bit more life/air/sparkle in them.
If a lower range is highly recommended for small rooms though to help sort out the lower mids range then I'll take that into account.

btw, I have bass traps and broad band absorption in the room already, it's quite dead, I'm tryin to liven it up a bit.

Thanks,

Simon

[Smithcok]

Do you have graphs of the room? (frequency response, RT60, impulse response, etc.)

A detailed look at those can help give you a direction of aim for diffusion.

[Ziko]

Hi ya,

No I don't, I've never done any measurement of my room to be honest, not sure where to start. Are there free tools available? Do I need a special mic or can I get OK results from a mic I have already?

[Gohanto]

For measurements you really want to have a proper calibration mic. Renting or borrowing an Earthworks would be ideal, but Behringer's ECM8000 is $50 is surprisingly accurate (usually within +/-1 or closer).

Just trying to be a voice of reason though, but if you're buying soon wouldn't it make more sense to wait a bit and find how the place you find sounds?

Maybe I'm on the only one, but if I were your situation and I made custom diffusion panels, the only place I'd find is one where they'd somehow be completely impractical. And if I didn't make them then I'd find a place where it would've worked fine.

[jwl]

I agree, I'm not certain diffusion will help you in a room that small. You should do some testing, with something like Room EQ Wizard and a decent, cheap test mic like the Behringer or Nady.

I doubt you want to liven up a small room like that, the less of that small a room you hear the better, in general.

[666666]

Originally Posted by jwl

I doubt you want to liven up a small room like that, the less of that small a room you hear the better, in general.

Agreed. My new drum room is about 10'X18' with a low ceiling, I'm about to install heavy absorbers on all surfaces, I want the room to disappear. Small rooms just don't sound good and often leave a very detectable fingerprint on the audio that you can never get rid of. And it would seem that in order to create diffusion panels to truly help a small room situation, the panels would need to be physically large (deep) to be truly effective, makes no sense, the room is already almost too small, the last thing you want to do is throw in some ultra deep diffusion panels. Just add some really good bass traps / absorbers, and buy a really good outboard reverb unit (T.C. Reverb 4000, Bricasti, KSP8, etc)... I'd say this is the best solution for super small rooms. Done right, it can be extremely effective.

[Glenn Kuras]

Ziko,

I agree with JWL that diffusion would not be the best pick for that room, but for the non critical areas (like back side walls and ceiling) diffusion would work well to control the flutter that is so bad in small rooms.

Glenn

[Ziko]

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys (I'm in New Zealand so just got out of bed and boom there they all are).

Perhaps I'm best to wait until my partner and I buy a house, although something tells me I won't have much spare cash lying around all of a sudden!

I've got the room quite dead sounding already, check out Ziko on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos to hear some tracks where everything except the drums was tracked in there.

I might pick up an ECM8000 and do some measuring, is room EQ Wizard the best software to use? I'll post some stats once I have em.

Thanks again.