Mixing/Tracking Room Rebuild

[RKrizman]

After 25 years it's time that "Home on the Range" got a major shave and haircut. Years of junk building up, wiring chaos, "living room acoustics" with a cloudy midrange and woofy low end. A fun place, but not the precision tool it needs to be.

-R

[RKrizman]

After an initial consult with Steven Klein I decided to hire Jeff Hedback, HdAcoustics Home, to steer me in the right direction. I sent him room dimensions and he did a Google Sketch-up.

In the second picture, an overhead shot, the mix position is along the top wall in the large part of the room. The open space jutting off to the left is the piano alcove.

[RKrizman]

After pondering my room dimensions, Jeff sent me some impulses to record from various sections of my room. I sent him the recorded files and he generated data. Here is a waterfall from my left front speaker at the mix position. Makes me seasick just to look at it.

-R

[AnthonyRochester]

ouch! So that's the room you've been working in for 25 years?

[RKrizman]

Can you believe it? I think I've done it all with ESP.

However, I have been fairly successful, so something has been working.

-R

[HermanV]

Is this in your actual living room?
I'm interested to see how this gets improved

[RKrizman]

Believe it or not I had this custom built as a studio, but since I'm primarily a composer I set it up as a comfortable, open, sunlit living space and just made the best of the acoustics with sensibly placed sonex. Monitoring in the near field I was actually able to turn out good work, probably because I know the space intimately and know which corner to stand in to tell if there's too much bass. Most of the music on my website was mixed in that room and overall, well, it's been a career.

But yes, there has been an improvement which I'll show in the course of documenting the re-do.

Plus, you know graphs always look way worse than they sound.

-R

[RKrizman]

Here are a couple more "before" measurements.

-R

[RKrizman]

So here's what Jeff came up with for starters. The red panels are the large GIK basstraps, the green ones are either modified or unmodified GIK 244's

-R

[RKrizman]

Part of the treatment, indicated by the green panels with lines in them on the plan, was a custom device designed by Jeff. First I ordered custom milled slats of 1" thick basswood. Then I had GIK make me some 244 panels incorporating a solid wooden frame so these slats. with their varying widths and spacing, could be toe-nailed and glued to the wooden frame. The result is a panel that absorbs, reflects and diffuses. Maybe Jeff will chime in and say something about the idea behind it.

-R

[RKrizman]

After a much needed paint job it's time to but these babies up. The GIK panels come with 4 eyehooks. We put corresponding hooks in the ceiling, and with some difficulty, managed to hook up the panels. Thanks to my bud Gero for the gymnastics. More details and further pix at my blog.

[Jeffrey Hedback]

Hello Rock,

You're are quite the storytellor! Great job unveiling your new room.

On the slats, I actually posted a decription of them and their design thoughts in another thread last week. I'm going to borrow my own words, add a touch more and look forward to your next posts.

The slat pattern I used in Rick's room is a .5 scale version of the "534". However, I specified (and supplied via a mill shop partner I work closely with) the slats to be 1" thick and of basswood. The slats were mounted onto custom made GIK 244 panels.

The reasons are mainly to do with the dynamic uses of Rick's space. He may go from a mix, to drum to single voice in the same day. The .5 scale spacing with lower volume uses addresses specular issues but sounds mostly like a reflective surface (in other words not absorptive or diffusive)...but at louder volumes the multiple edge diffraction benefits kick in and when combined with rotated arrays (2'x2') the result sounds like the air is compressed...spacious and detailed but compressed/controlled. It gives a lot a placement and micing options while serving the primary mix function well.

The purpose of the basswood is to reduce unwanted resonance by thinner typical wood stock. Basswood is an affordable tonewood. We did discuss ripped 3/4" MDF as an option. I'm glad Rick followed my recommendation of the basswood. The 1" thickness increases the edge diffraction benefit described above.

Moving on to location aspects:
- on the vault above his mix the slats are vertical only parallel to full 4' length of those panels. This is to disperse perpendicular toward the sidewalls
- on the rear downward slope and above the piano is the 2'x2' rotated array pattern just decribed (for the reasons described).

The slats seemed to fully do their thing witht he addition of the wood floor...ooops Rick, I'm getting ahead of you.

[RKrizman]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Hedback

The slats seemed to fully do their thing witht he addition of the wood floor...ooops Rick, I'm getting ahead of you.

Hey now....

-R

[Colonel Blues]

Nice work, wanna see a before/after, could be amazing !!! Congrats !

[RKrizman]

Okay, here's what they look like installed. Some other issues to deal with, however.

-R

[Syncamorea]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Hedback

The .5 scale spacing with lower volume uses addresses specular issues but sounds mostly like a reflective surface (in other words not absorptive or diffusive)...but at louder volumes the multiple edge diffraction benefits kick in and when combined with rotated arrays (2'x2') the result sounds like the air is compressed...spacious and detailed but compressed/controlled. It gives a lot a placement and micing options while serving the primary mix function well.

With the slats so far apart, I would have expected some absorption. Do you have any other details you can share?

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Hedback

The purpose of the basswood is to reduce unwanted resonance by thinner typical wood stock. Basswood is an affordable tonewood. We did discuss ripped 3/4" MDF as an option. I'm glad Rick followed my recommendation of the basswood. The 1" thickness increases the edge diffraction benefit described above.

The basswood looks great too! I only like MDF if its covered by something else. Too many bad memories of cutting and laminating the crap for speaker cabinets.

[Colonel Blues]

All this looks really great !!! Bravo !

[RKrizman]

So now that the devices are on the ceiling and walls it's time to trap the early reflections at the console. Jeff recommended 4" of 703 wrapped in fabric so I had GIK make me 7 panels, 5 of which went behind the speakers and 2 to the right on the wall's reflection point. I had a couple Realtraps laying around so I stacked them in the front right corner. Above the listening position I have 2 panels of 2" 705 panels from Primacoustic.

[RKrizman]

With the front of the room effectively dried up it's time to return some energy from the back wall, so diffusion is in order. In the back window well I already have a pair of 244's, over which I mount 4 GIK D1 diffusers, each stuffed with pink fluffy (is that a good idea?). Flanking those I have a pair of GIK quadratic diffusers. The distance from the speakers to the back wall is about 16 feet, and the distance from there back to the listening position is about 11.5 feet, far enough so that the returning reflections are useful rather than destructive. Rather than reacting negatively with the direct sound, the resulting reflections seem to fill out and enliven the image.

[RKrizman]

Thanks Colonel Blues!

-R

[AnthonyRochester]

what's on the left of your mix position? Is it not symmetrical? I ask because you just put absorption on the right wall.

[RKrizman]

Check out the 2nd post in this thread and you'll see the layout of the room. To the left of the mix position the room opens out into an 8 ft deep alcove, making the entire space somewhat L-shaped. The reflections off that more distant wall to the left are greater than 20 feet, round trip, so are treated differently.

-R

[RKrizman]

So yes, as Jeff mentioned, I then put in some new floors. We decided it would be best to put hardwood in the center area of the main room but leave the carpet in the alcove and beneath and behind all the studio furniture. It cost about a grand to install some nice prefinished white oak, which goes very nicely with the other colors in the studio.

-R

[RKrizman]

At this point, even though the studio isn't rewired and cleaned up yet, Jeff did some tests to see where we're at. You can interpret for yourself the before and after waterfalls. There is a graph of the ETC with the blue denoting "before" and the teal denoting "after". Note the scoop in energy in the inital 25 ms in the "after" graph. Finally you can see how the RT60 smoothed out.

For descriptions of how I evaluated the change in the listening experience, go here:http://www.rickkrizman.com/Site/Blog...tening_!!.html

-R

[Trev@Circle]

Looking v cool! thumbsup

[johndykstra]

Rick, I hope the Black Eyed peas was simply a scientific experiment... not something you attempt to enjoy

Nice work brother.

(do I see the tape machine hiding in the elcove off to the left?) How often do you still go to tape?

[RKrizman]

Originally Posted by johndykstra

Rick, I hope the Black Eyed peas was simply a scientific experiment... not something you attempt to enjoy

Nice work brother.

(do I see the tape machine hiding in the elcove off to the left?) How often do you still go to tape?

I've actually always liked the Peas, and I like that song. I especially like "Where is the Love". Their newer stuff, not so much.

Yes, that's a JH-24 back there, all patched in. Last time I did drums I went to tape and then immediately to Pro Tools, as we recorded. In addition, I often bounce tracks to tape and back.

Thanks,

-R

[RKrizman]

So it's time for phase 2. This is where I tilt the entire studio and dump out 23 years of extraneous junk, empty all the racks, and rewire with a new Dsub bay. So I'm out of business for a week, at this guy's mercy:

Zack Fagan is Under The Wire! Under The Wire specializes in the design and installation of recording studios, home automation, post production complexes, video and audio edit bays and more!

Not so interesting to blog about. Think I'll go hit a happy hour!

-R