Analyzed My Room - Now What???

[Bix]

So I purchased a dbx RTAM omni mic today and measured my room. The dimensions are 12'W x 13'L x 8'8"H. The listening position was center of the 12' foot wall and 64" away from the 12' wall. I used Mackie HR624 monitors. I used Room EQ Wizard and took the following sample.



The room is an unfinished basement room. It has no dry wall and I had previously filled all the stud cavities (walls and ceilings) with R19 insulation. I am working on my first album and am really trying to make the best recordings / mixes as possible and had noticed that my mixes weren't trasnlating worth a dang. Plus some of my acoustic tracks just weren't sounding right. I was thinking about investing in new monitors, but i was talked out of that in favor of treating my room. So I am prepared to go the DIY route but am curious, given my description of my room and my results above, what do folks recommend? Start only with bass traps in the corners, or should I put up some broadband absorbers on reflection points as well? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Bix

[PaulP]

Originally Posted by Bix

So I am prepared to go the DIY route but am curious, given my description of my room and my results above, what do folks recommend? Start only with bass traps in the corners, or should I put up some broadband absorbers on reflection points as well?

If you have bare insulation everywhere your reflection points may already
be taken care of. Is there anything covering the insulation ?

Any chance of supplying a drawing of your room ?

Paul P

[byrd62au]

This is a me too reply. I measured my room the other day and now I'm like what now?
Not sure what the process is deciding what to add or remove. Will follow with interest.

[Bix]

There is nothing covering the insulation and the RT60 values are very low, 0.5 on low freq and drop to 0.1 across the freq spectrum. I'll work on a drawing of the room, sufffice it to say it is almost square, with it being 12' by 13'. I am monitoring facing the 12' wall.

Bix

[Glenn Kuras]

Looks like to me you just need to add bass trapping.

[Bix]

Glenn

Thanks for the feedback. I am planning on the DIY method, and planning on building effectively 2' X 4' panels 8' high in each corner. Is it possible from the measurements I took, that you can tell me whether 4" or 6" bass traps in the corners would be necessary? At this point in time, I am thinking of treating the corners and directly behind my monitors, and am planning on buying enough material to build 4" traps in the corners, 4" traps behind the monitors with enough material left over to build (4) 2" absorbers for use wherever the data seems to indicate would have the biggest impact. Or I could just build 6" thick 2' x 4' x 8' traps for the corners. This is all the budget will allow at this time... Which approach would be better?

Also, I'm a little concerned that I don't have enough reflection in the room given all of the exposed "fluffy fiberglass". Does it make sense to try and add some reflection back in the room, and if so, what materials work best to do this, and are there areas i would want to target and/or avoid?

Thanks so much for your time.
Mike

[Glenn Kuras]

If your on a low budget then go with more 4" panels as covering more area is always better then less panels but thicker. You will want to hit the back wall with 4" panel spaced off the wall around 4" also. There are strong nulls and peaks coming from that area.

[jkretz]

total n00b here, but what software did you use to take this measurement? could you explain a little bit more of the process?

i have a studio that i would like to measure as i suspect "interesting" response to say the least....

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by jkretz

total n00b here, but what software did you use to take this measurement? could you explain a little bit more of the process?

i have a studio that i would like to measure as i suspect "interesting" response to say the least....

Here you go
Room EQ Wizard Home Page

[Bix]

Glenn

Thanks for the response. I hate to keep bugging you with questions, but am i right to be concerned about how dead the room is currently? Is there anything I should do to add some reflections back into the room, so it's not quite so dead sounding? If so, what should I add and where?

Thanks a bunch.
Mike

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Bix

Glenn

Thanks for the response. I hate to keep bugging you with questions, but am i right to be concerned about how dead the room is currently? Is there anything I should do to add some reflections back into the room, so it's not quite so dead sounding? If so, what should I add and where?

Thanks a bunch.
Mike

For the traps you are building now you could use FRK on the fronts to help reflect some of the highs back in the room. It would have "KIND OF" the effect of our 244 or monster (also Ethan's traps) which starts to roll off around 500hz.
Beyond that you could take down some of the fluffy stuff you have now but keep it in the early reflection points (What Are Early Reflection Points. SPOTLIGHT:Bob Ebeling - Revolution Studio)

I am not in the room so it is hard for me to understand everything you have going on.

[Glenn Kuras]

I just got your PM and would rather keep questions here as others may have the some question. thumbsup
You can use either 6 pound or 8 pound. I myself would go with the 8 pound as it is shown that denser material will work a bit better when the panels are 6" or thinner. If you make them thicker or filling the corner you can use less dense.

[Bix]

Cool. Thanks again Glenn. I'm off to buy materials. I will share my results in a couple of weeks once I have results to share.

Mike

[Bix]

I have built 9 of the 12 absorbers and placed them in the room. I spent several hours last night moving them around the room trying to find the best performance. While they've made a sizable impact, I still have a large peak from ~250Hz - 800Hz, and am wondering what others may have done to fix a problem in this specific frequency range? If anyone has ever fought something in this particular freq range, I'd appreciate you sharing what you might have done to fix this issue. Once I have all 12 absorbers built I will post a new chart, so that everyone can see the impact that they have had on my room.

Thanks for your feedback.
Bix

[Bix]

Well I've finished up my room. Here's the latest result from REW...



It's still has some problem areas, but it's much better than it was originally. I also added 3 MIL plastic dropcloth on the three of the four unfinished walls to help add a little life back in the room. I think it sounds good, and it is already helping my mixing results.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Bix

[ciro]

absorption in the front wall helped to tame these low/mid peaks a bit - in my (smaller) room.

Ciro

[kurt]

Much better. Congrats..

[Bix]

Originally Posted by ciro

absorption in the front wall helped to tame these low/mid peaks a bit - in my (smaller) room.

Ciro

Ciro

I have (3) absorbers going across the front wall, absorbers in both of the front corners, and the entire wall is exposed studs with fluffy insulation in the studs. I know this is not ideal, but I've corrected for these peaks by means of EQ across my main bus.


Bix

[Bix]

Originally Posted by kurt

Much better. Congrats..

Kurt

Thanks a lot for the kind words. I'm 80% done re-mixing my first song in the room, and I am having by FAR the best results of any of my mixing attempts. Since this is also my tracking room, I am looking forward to recording some acoustic guitar and vocal tracks, as I expect the results to be greatly improved as well.

This site has been incredibly helpful and I am really grateful for all the input and especially the results.

Bix

[andrebrito]

Your RT60 is low for critical listening (except if you really dig on mixing on a very dry space) ... adding more absorption is going to turn this space into a even more anechoic environment. Unless you did the measurements in a wrong way.

[Bix]

Originally Posted by andrebrito

Your RT60 is low for critical listening (except if you really dig on mixing on a very dry space) ... adding more absorption is going to turn this space into a even more anechoic environment. Unless you did the measurements in a wrong way.

The RT60 is really low in this room. I added some plastic drop cloths to add some more reflection but even with this, it is still a very dead room. Not having a ton of experience, I don't know how this negatively affects my mixes, but I'm still acheiving better results since adding the acoustic treatments I have added. I believe my measurement data is valid, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that I did something wrong, but the low RT60 values do correspond to this being a very dry room.

Bix

[ciro]

Originally Posted by Bix

the RT60 values are very low, 0.5 on low freq and drop to 0.1 across the freq spectrum.

Originally Posted by andrebrito

Your RT60 is low for critical listening (except if you really dig on mixing on a very dry space) ... adding more absorption is going to turn this space into a even more anechoic environment. Unless you did the measurements in a wrong way.

Andre:

the main issue for you is the low RT 60 or the drop 0.5 (lows) to 0.1 across the freq spectrum?

Thanks

Ciro