More Room pictures...

[bob katz]

I can't find the thread where guys had posted pictures of their rooms, so I had to make a new one. I finally got a shot of our newly-redecorated and additionally-acoustified room, so I thought I'd share it here. Note the VERY small footprint of the rack, which is on wheels. It has very little effect on the imaging and depth. Examine the angles and you can see that any path from the tweeter to the rack bounces off angled top of the rack and up towards the 22' high angled ceiling! The Mackie Pro Control is a potential comb-filter to the ear because of its flat surface but not where it is placed. And it is placed on a totally open wooden frame to minimize acoustic interference. I only use it when I get a mixing job (once every few months), and when doing intense work with it I take it off the frame and literally sit it on the couch next to my lap. Then it's "just like home." :-)

The Real Traps Mondo traps are on the walls now, finally. And 3 more behind the curtain, too in a small alcove. Not seen is the rest of the analog and digital gear and tape decks are on the walls or behind in an 8-foot rack or else "virtual" in the computer. On top of the little wooden rack is a flip-up video monitor which also has minimal effect on the audio. I use a wireless keyboard/mouse combo from Belkin.

Behind the couch is the editing station (not seen). Not seen, on the left beside the couch is the TC-6000 Icon remote, the Avocet Remote, and a midi controller to remote control some other gear. I'm heavy on remote controls so as to minimize the acoustic effect of gear in front of me.

Soon to be added is a rack behind the couch and below its "lip" for additional gear, with the knobs pointing up. And a video monitor on the curtains themselves, hopefully good enough to run the computer and play video for synch when necessary. And then comes the surround :_).

[RainbowStorm]

A really nice looking room you've set up there! I paid some extra attention to those two subwoofers, they seem quite large, but I'm sure they produce exactly what they should. I myself have a quite different setup (sorry, currently I don't have a picture of it), I can't really rely on only 1 set of speakers, so I use 4, ranging from a portable Panasonic stereo to a huge stadium speaker system. This is much because of the rather non-acoustically treated room and the lack of really high-end reference monitors. The combination seems to work well. I use a Paradigm PDR-8 as my subwoofer which sounds as soft as you feed it. Its rather small size makes it possible to not get additional boomy frequencies distracting the rest of the mix in the rather small room. My Panasonic stereo is suprisingly reveiling, that immediately reveils if the low mids are enough and if the mix contains digital distortion. I know all these 4 systems very well (each represent a certain consumer type) how they behave, so I pay attention to different things in the different systems. I have a small Mackie mixer I'm using for monitoring. I've tried to find the sweet spot in each system to be able to know what's really there, so I can "reset" the systems when I need. It happens that I combine combinations of different sound systems as well, since that can sometimes reveil interesting stuff about the mix. My Panasonic is my main tool though. If it sounds great in that and the other systems confirm it I know it will sound awesome everywhere else.

Thanks for posting this image!

[Ethan Winer]

Hey Bob,

> I finally got a shot of our newly-redecorated and additionally-acoustified room <

Awesome! When you get a chance, I'd love to get some photos like that for the RealTraps web site.

Also, your "minimalist" rack reminds me of the setup I use in my living room. I have a Dell laptop on a rolling stand so I can sit on the couch and do surround mixes. Of course, your gear is much cooler than my Dell!

--Ethan

[crna59]

Great room Bob! Too bad all people that "Master" don't adhere to this formula.

Here's the lastest pic of my new Mastering Room. The sub-floor is finished and the framing for the front bass trapping is done.

Regards,

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by crna59

Great room Bob! Too bad all people that "Master" don't adhere to this formula.

Here's the lastest pic of my new Mastering Room. The sub-floor is finished and the framing for the front bass trapping is done.

Regards,

Way to go, Bruce! What are going to be the finished dimensions?

Best wishes,


Bob

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by RainbowStorm

A really nice looking room you've set up there! I paid some extra attention to those two subwoofers, they seem quite large, but I'm sure they produce exactly what they should.

Thanks. They do... finally, thanks to Ethan's traps. But they are only 12" and with the servo drive EXTREMELY tight. All the people who've visited before have to visit again :-). The room is Incredible. But a year ago I thought it sounded incredible... yet I've heard many a good system, and it literally has moved from A- 3 years ago to A+ now, and there's still room for improvement in the low end. While there is not a bass note out of place at this point, the measured response at the listening position with 2.7 Hz analysis is still rather rocky. I honestly don't know how much "better" "better" can sound, since I've rarely heard another treated room with flatter or more extended bass than I currently have.

BK

[crna59]

Originally Posted by bob katz

Way to go, Bruce! What are going to be the finished dimensions?

The Mastering room is 22.5 x 13 x 10.5
I lost 5" in heigth because I floated the floor, but it allowed me to run conduit for high and low voltage.

Regards,

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by crna59

The Mastering room is 22.5 x 13 x 10.5
I lost 5" in heigth because I floated the floor, but it allowed me to run conduit for high and low voltage.

Regards,

13 is a good width but you might need a couple of pieces of sonex at the mirror spots where you can see the tweeters if you can see them anywhere you place a mirror. 22.5 will be excellent after judious bass trapping. 10.5 is a little tight (some people would laugh at me for saying that). Is the ceiling parallel to the floor? Can you slope the ceiling, even a little? If not, then some kind of treatment, perhaps diffusion, perhaps a hair of trapping, on the ceiling, which can be tweaked of course after measurement.

Looks like a great room in the making!

[crna59]

Originally Posted by bob katz

13 is a good width but you might need a couple of pieces of sonex at the mirror spots where you can see the tweeters if you can see them anywhere you place a mirror. 22.5 will be excellent after judious bass trapping. 10.5 is a little tight (some people would laugh at me for saying that). Is the ceiling parallel to the floor? Can you slope the ceiling, even a little? If not, then some kind of treatment, perhaps diffusion, perhaps a hair of trapping, on the ceiling, which can be tweaked of course after measurement.

Looks like a great room in the making!

Thanks Bob... Actually the room was designed by Chris Huston and Bob Hodas. There is an 8' diffusor array at the first reflection. There will be a soffit that runs the perimeter of the room which will be for bass trapping as well as triangulated corners for more trapping. The ceiling will be slopping from the front and there will be another diffusor array at the front and back of the room. Walls are slanted 7.5 degrees for each side. No parallel surfaces. There is 8" of Roxul in the walls with 2 layers of 5/8 drywall/green glue/drywall all hanging on RC and Kinetics isolators.
I can't wait to get it finished!
Here is a link to see the progress and a layout.

Studio Build

Regards,

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by bob katz

Thanks. They do... finally, thanks to Ethan's traps. But they are only 12" and with the servo drive EXTREMELY tight. All the people who've visited before have to visit again :-). The room is Incredible. But a year ago I thought it sounded incredible... yet I've heard many a good system, and it literally has moved from A- 3 years ago to A+ now, and there's still room for improvement in the low end. While there is not a bass note out of place at this point, the measured response at the listening position with 2.7 Hz analysis is still rather rocky. I honestly don't know how much "better" "better" can sound, since I've rarely heard another treated room with flatter or more extended bass than I currently have.

BK

That's great! I also find the bass part to be the tricky part. If the bass is not right the song will not feel right and I've learned that the nature of the bass sound is such that it's quite tricky to know when it's good and when it's not, so a reveiling low end is really important. I'm sure bass traps are very effective for this. I sometimes use the subwoofer's cutoff frequency for knowing the low end better. When it is set at 150Hz I expect the mix to be quite punchy and very soft. But when I set it lower the punch should dissapear gradually but the low end should still be warm, not boxy and hard. This is when I think I don't want a large subwoofer, because larger subwoofers tend to become boxy sounding and it's difficult to hear what's really there. So since my room and setup is not perfect I need to do different things in order to know the sound better. It's a lot of work, but I guess it works for now, until I throw it all out the window and do what you have done!

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by crna59

Thanks Bob... Actually the room was designed by Chris Huston and Bob Hodas. There is an 8' diffusor array at the first reflection. There will be a soffit that runs the perimeter of the room which will be for bass trapping as well as triangulated corners for more trapping. The ceiling will be slopping from the front and there will be another diffusor array at the front and back of the room. Walls are slanted 7.5 degrees for each side. No parallel surfaces. There is 8" of Roxul in the walls with 2 layers of 5/8 drywall/green glue/drywall all hanging on RC and Kinetics isolators.
I can't wait to get it finished!
Here is a link to see the progress and a layout.

Studio Build

Regards,

Sounds EXCITING! What monitors are you going to use and have you decided their placement based on optimization of bass response and depth at the same time? In my 21-1/2 foot room, theory showed that I should place the speakers closer to the front wall for flatter bass response, but when I achieved that, the depth went to pot! So thank goodness for satellite/subs, because I was able to separately optimize the satellite position and sub position. But even that was a compromise. The theoretical position for flat sub response was so out of line physically with the satellites that I was not able to time align them, and a better impulse response with a slightly compromised bass response ended up sounding best.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by crna59

Thanks Bob... Actually the room was designed by Chris Huston and Bob Hodas. There is an 8' diffusor array at the first reflection. There will be a soffit that runs the perimeter of the room which will be for bass trapping as well as triangulated corners for more trapping. The ceiling will be slopping from the front and there will be another diffusor array at the front and back of the room. Walls are slanted 7.5 degrees for each side. No parallel surfaces. There is 8" of Roxul in the walls with 2 layers of 5/8 drywall/green glue/drywall all hanging on RC and Kinetics isolators.
I can't wait to get it finished!
Here is a link to see the progress and a layout.

Studio Build

Regards,

Just visited your site. Wonderful job and thanks for sharing with the world. It looks like you have gone for a soffit design for the loudspeakers, which will be what models?

[Ethan Winer]

Bob,

> the measured response at the listening position with 2.7 Hz analysis is still rather rocky. I honestly don't know how much "better" "better" can sound, since I've rarely heard another treated room with flatter or more extended bass than I currently have. <

It's impossible to get any room perfectly flat - at least a room the size you'll find in most homes. The flattest and tightest room I've ever heard and measured is my own living room, shown in the photo and waterfall below, but I have 39 traps in there.

If you can get the response within a total span of 10 dB you're doing very well, and if you can get it to with 6 dB you could probably franchise the design and layout for a million dollars.

--Ethan

[bob katz]

Are you married, Ethan? That room looks like your sanctum sanctorum!

The measured response in my room is not even close to that flat and your waterfalls look "classically perfect". What would one expect from the designer of the traps himself.

But fortunately, at least now, to the ear the bass is "perfect". There are degrees of perfect!

What loudspeakers are you using?

BK

[crna59]

Originally Posted by bob katz

Sounds EXCITING! What monitors are you going to use and have you decided their placement based on optimization of bass response and depth at the same time?

I'll be using a Wilson WATT/Puppy 8 system and WATCH surround system. Bob Hodas will be here for system tweaking/measurement.

Regards,

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by crna59

I'll be using a Wilson WATT/Puppy 8 system and WATCH surround system. Bob Hodas will be here for system tweaking/measurement.

Regards,

Those are great speakers, as you know. Well, they have to be located reasonably away from walls, no matter how much trapping you use. In my opinion, your physical diagram (unless I misread it) appears to place the listening spot much too close to the front wall to get the best sound out of Watt/Puppys.

If I recall correctly, Watt/Puppy's should be located approximately 1/7th of the total length of the room away from the front wall for optimum depth.

As much as I admire Hodas, I don't think he's that familiar with the "audiophile-style" products and what they can deliver when their positions have been optimized. He's much more familiar with the more "traditional" studio products and what they can do, like Quested or Genelec. I hope I'm wrong, and that he proves to be as much of an audiophile as obviously you are!

Bob

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Bob,

> the measured response at the listening position with 2.7 Hz analysis is still rather rocky. I honestly don't know how much "better" "better" can sound, since I've rarely heard another treated room with flatter or more extended bass than I currently have. <

It's impossible to get any room perfectly flat - at least a room the size you'll find in most homes. The flattest and tightest room I've ever heard and measured is my own living room, shown in the photo and waterfall below, but I have 39 traps in there.

If you can get the response within a total span of 10 dB you're doing very well, and if you can get it to with 6 dB you could probably franchise the design and layout for a million dollars.

--Ethan

Nice room Ethan! It sounds great, doesn't it...!!

[crna59]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

If you can get the response within a total span of 10 dB you're doing very well, and if you can get it to with 6 dB you could probably franchise the design and layout for a million dollars.

--Ethan

Maybe I need you to come to my room when it gets finished. Maybe you could tweak it before it gets finished!!

[Jules]

Hi Bob

Thanks for contributing here.

Those are Limpinski speakers right?

Do you have lead shot inside the speaker stands? Or something else heavy? (but less toxic)

[Brad Blackwood]

Originally Posted by bob katz

Are you married, Ethan?

"What are you wearing?"

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by Jules

Hi Bob

Thanks for contributing here.

Those are Limpinski speakers right?

Do you have lead shot inside the speaker stands? Or something else heavy? (but less toxic)

There's white sand in those stands, they're very heavy and not toxic (yet). They're not limp, but they are Lipinski! I have to have a custom third stand made because I'm putting the center speaker horizontally so as to make room above it for the video monitor on the curtains. I'm on pins and needles concerned about whether the flat panel 46 to 50" monitor is going to affect the acoustics.

BK

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by Brad Blackwood

"What are you wearing?"

Plaid to match the couch covers?

[Hagen Daaz]

almost finished...sounds amazing. 12 years hearing ATC's100, now with 150's. increibles!

[Hagen Daaz]

and a close one.

[djui5]

Originally Posted by Hagen Daaz

and a close one.

Complete with cup holder!!!

[crna59]

Originally Posted by Hagen Daaz

and a close one.

Great looking Control/Mix room!!

Regards,

[gsilbers]

Originally Posted by Hagen Daaz

and a close one.

nice

how do u access the diuferent equipment. isit a digital patchbay inside the computer or did i miss the patchbay on the console./.?

[Hagen Daaz]

Originally Posted by gsilbers

how do u access the diuferent equipment. isit a digital patchbay inside the computer or did i miss the patchbay on the console./.?

It's at the upper left side. Over the Prism ADA-8. 1/4" PB.

[matt thomas]

hi bob

I was asking you about lipinskis in the special mastering forum a while back

Mine have since arrived and I love them, they are very natural sounding, not at all hyped like most speakers I have been used to. I am running them with a new 200 watt/ch perreaux amp. I use them mostly for tracking along with some ns-10's.

I'm happy with them without a sub, but occasionaly i get a hip hop artist through, and they generally always ask "have you got a sub" before they even want to look at the studio. Even if they are just doing vocals in an iso booth, lol.

So my question to you is; what frequency do you have your sub crossovers set at, and what is their slope?

I asked lipinski and they said somewhere just above 50 hz would be normal. But I was wondering what you had done anyway.

thanks, nice room btw

narco

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by bob katz

I can't find the thread where guys had posted pictures of their rooms, so I had to make a new one. I finally got a shot of our newly-redecorated and additionally-acoustified room, so I thought I'd share it here. Note the VERY small footprint of the rack, which is on wheels. It has very little effect on the imaging and depth. Examine the angles and you can see that any path from the tweeter to the rack bounces off angled top of the rack and up towards the 22' high angled ceiling! The Mackie Pro Control is a potential comb-filter to the ear because of its flat surface but not where it is placed. And it is placed on a totally open wooden frame to minimize acoustic interference. I only use it when I get a mixing job (once every few months), and when doing intense work with it I take it off the frame and literally sit it on the couch next to my lap. Then it's "just like home." :-)

The Real Traps Mondo traps are on the walls now, finally. And 3 more behind the curtain, too in a small alcove. Not seen is the rest of the analog and digital gear and tape decks are on the walls or behind in an 8-foot rack or else "virtual" in the computer. On top of the little wooden rack is a flip-up video monitor which also has minimal effect on the audio. I use a wireless keyboard/mouse combo from Belkin.

Behind the couch is the editing station (not seen). Not seen, on the left beside the couch is the TC-6000 Icon remote, the Avocet Remote, and a midi controller to remote control some other gear. I'm heavy on remote controls so as to minimize the acoustic effect of gear in front of me.

Soon to be added is a rack behind the couch and below its "lip" for additional gear, with the knobs pointing up. And a video monitor on the curtains themselves, hopefully good enough to run the computer and play video for synch when necessary. And then comes the surround :_).

Hey Bob,
Great looking room..
Got one question though. Why did you not straddle the front corners with the traps? I think you would find it will work much better on the low end.

Glenn