Listening In The Corner

[Ruphus]

I´m aware of that every room is different and all, but maybe there is some general wisdom about the point in question.

It seems like I´m having some difficulties in judging the low end. What sounds firm here can turn out to be mud listened anywhere else.

Now, I found out that when standing in the corner behind me ( like 4 meters distance to my chair ) I can hear the low end very well.

Not very practical to stand back there, but it appears like possibly being a way to rule out the boom. ( Havn´t checked by listening to results outside, yet.)

Theoretically, what I hear back there should be a build up I guess and too much to judge from, but I am of the impression like what I tweaked out that way in the low mids to bottom to have much been the boom that used to reveal on stereos elsewhere.

Could it be thinkable that in some rooms corner-listening was an appropriate thing to do?

Ruphus

[jdunn]

Probably not.

But seriously, if that's what works in your room for the best translation to the outside world ( ), use that to your advantage.

I recently had the help of a very good designer to build some absorber panels for my loft/control room. He had me listen for the bass build up before we built them. It was all in one rear corner, with very little bass in the opposite rear corner.

So we're doing more bass trapping in the corner with the build up obviously. With panels on the whole back wall, the build up is a lot less. So far it sounds way better up there, but there's more work to do.

I really need to float the floor. It's a bit of a subwoofer. But in the spirit of this post, I can work with it. In fact, it's not that bad. I'm thinking about it though.

Here's a picture of the corner w/ bass build up. Those RPG Pro Corners (cheap!) are in front of the existing basstrap. I just put them there for the hell of it. Figured it can't hurt. There's one more panel that hangs over the mix position, but I haven't put it up yet.

Hey Ruphus, I've got some new Tubop tracks I'm mixing. I recall you liked that stuff, and I'd be glad to hear your comments. PM me w/ your email addy and I'll send you one. I'll make it an mp3 under 10mb so the servers don't kick it.

[joeq]

I tried playing low frequency tones in my room at 1 Hz increments as suggested in an article Ethan Winer wrote. With each tone, moving my head just a few inches could make a big difference in resonance/cancellation. It was shocking how high the peaks were and how deep the nulls were.

Just as shocking was sitting in one spot while the frequencies changed and hearing the difference a few Hertz makes at the same location.

You are never going to find a "spot" in your untreated room where all the bass frequencies are "correct" . Trap trap trap that bass.

I played the series of tones all at the same level out of my speakers and this is what the response was like in the corner before treatment:

(the spikes are just the clicks or pops where the uncrossfaded waveforms meet)

[jajjguy]

Obviously, you'll do what works for you. But here's the theory angle:

All the room modes are equally and fully expressed at the corners. To you and me, that means a couple things. First, you get more bass in the corners. Second, you get even un-screwed-up bass in the corners. So yeah, you may find you are able to judge the low end better in the corners, but at the cost of hearing too much of it. So just be careful not to make bass-light mixes in reaction to bass-heavy listening.

[Ruphus]

Jason, E-mail send!

Thank you for your advice, guys.
Seems there is no quick way to find out. On the one hand it seems great to have found a spot at all where I can hear the low end, on the other hand I ended up with such drastic EQ settings this way that it might well show to be too much again.

Coming to translating conditions appears to be quite demanding.

Even more puzzling, this room sounds pretty good otherwise. When listening to live performances it sounds really nice.

Ruphus

[Glenn Kuras]

The problem with going and stand in the corner is, yes you will hear more bass, but you are still getting a lot of spikes and nulls in the low end. If your room is treated correctly you are able to hear the low end clear which will make your recordings much better. Let bass traps be your friend.
I never understood why people spend thousands on equipment and try to work in a bad room. It is like buying a Porsche and only putting 3 wheels on it.

[Sqye]

Originally Posted by myfipie

The problem with going and stand in the corner is, yes you will hear more bass, but you are still getting a lot of spikes and nulls in the low end. If your room is treated correctly you are able to hear the low end clear which will make your recordings much better. Let bass traps be your friend.
I never understood why people spend thousands on equipment and try to work in a bad room. It is like buying a Porsche and only putting 3 wheels on it.

No, the MAIN problem with standing in the corner, is that everyone will think you've done something bad (and THAT'S not ALWAYS good for business)

[Ruphus]

Obviously I´m no expert on acoustics, but what you say sounds like a thinking mistake to me.

As I described there is too less LF to be heard in this place. ( And I wouldn´t estimate this to come from cancelling out, for the room being multi angled with hardly any surfaces facing each other in parallel. It appears rather like well diffusing to me. That could also be the reason why live music sounds good, with a nice little tail in the highs and no boom. )

Trapping the corners on the other hand from what I understand serves the task to omitt colouring the image at listening position from LF build-up in corners.

That is not the problem I´m having though.

Someone correct me if I´m wrong.



Ruphus

PS: Or might the idea be to trap the corners for listening in there again?

[jdunn]

By trapping that bass, you're improving the frequency balance throughout the room, not just at the mix postition or in the corners. At least that's what happened here. As you walk around the room, it's much more even overall.

I don't want to give away secrets, but the panels we built for my room function as Diaphragm Absorbers. The rear panel vibrates the most at the loudest frequency that hits it, like a condenser microphone capsule. There's an air gap between the rear panel and the wall.

In front of the rear panel we used some type of polyester material, which is less aggressive than fiberglass. If anyone wants specifics you can PM me.

[Ruphus]

Yep, that´s exactly how it is.

Me too since recently likes to either go out in the corridor or maybe better even close myself in the booth. Sounds a bit similar to when you´re hearing a party from outside the house or something, and when it sounds like a trainstation or a wale fart instead then the mix could be not ready yet. ... me thinks, time will tell what the booth-sound relatively means.
- If I can say so.

Ruphus

PS: And yes, the question of distance you mention appears very plausible to me. The first focus here seems to be about three meters from the monitors. Very narrow, a half step away and you are away from it. I was wondering too whether the typical nearfield placement was not allowing proper audition from the seat. The next spot with more bottom is in the corner, might be 5 meters distance and sits about 50 cm before the corner.

I recall from long ago about stereo thingies when it was said that stereo wasn´t right under 3 meters distance of the speakers from each other. Used to place my stuff that way. Maybe one would need a bigger triangle to get a better hearing from the chair. ..?

[jdunn]

Since my loft is open to the living room on one side, I go downstairs and sit in my tv chair to check overall balances. It's good to listen at a distance, even if it's outside the studio. If something is popping out too much in the mix, or buried, way off balance wise, this is a good way to hear it.

[Jules]

A 'corner lsiten' is normal at some studios.

Depends on the studio.. but it can help study:

Sub bass
Bass
Kick drums
All of the above

Especially in a small room where there is little chance for bass signal to develop at the listening position.

Learn it & use it to your full advantage

[Ruphus]

Mmmm ... a loft!
Have been inspecting a couple lofts a while ago. One was even directly at the water. What a view that was! And it even was in a pretty massive building. Others places were too meagre in construction. ( If you must count with troubling any neighbours it´s a no-no, at least for me.) But in the end finances wouldn´t allow a move. Seems I´m stuck here for while.

Jules,

I´m trying already and so far the results seem to be much better ( must show yet through outside tests and GS feedback ).
Have you ever had the experience to have thinned out a mix too much by corner listening?

Ruphus

[Ethan Winer]

Ruphus,

> Have you ever had the experience to have thinned out a mix too much by corner listening? <

This problem is more complicated than it may seem. The issue isn't simply having too much or too little bass. Rather, it's that all small rooms have a large number of peaks and deep nulls. Which frequencies are affected depends on the size of the room, where you're listening, loudspeaker placement, and the frequencies involved. This is why bass traps are the only viable solution, because they always flatten the response, lowering peaks and raising nulls.

--Ethan

[Ruphus]

Hi Ethan,

I can imagine traps to be nice to have in many situations, but you wouldn´t mean that the circumstance of LF-perception at only certain spots was to mean that LF being cancelled out everywhere else in the room, do you?

Wouldn´t that need an exceptional case of proportion, say very special to meet such accidental dimensions?
As a layman I can easily imagine a room with standing waves; but a room neutralizing almost all LF instead?

The place looks roughly like below, speakers distance is about 160 cm from center to center. Ceiling is of 350 hight and the floor is rather swinging than massive wood.

All surfaces plain apart from a carpet under the drums. The wall on south of the drawing is of the old beam / straw / loam type, the other walls of the old massive way.



Ruphus

[ncCountryMike]

It seems to me that you may need a combination of all of the above. I don't think adding traps will do the entire trick. You still need to consider the distance from your monitors heavily. Even with traps, if you're not far enough away to let the LF develop, you're never going to get an accurate representation from your chair unless your back wall is really conveniently located. One option would be to get a sub and correctly postion it (along with making sure at that point to have your traps set correclty) to help you judge bass in your mix. Hopefully at that point you'll have a good enough reference that you won't have to leave your chair.

[Jules]

Originally Posted by Ruphus

Jules,

I´m trying already and so far the results seem to be much better ( must show yet through outside tests and GS feedback ).
Have you ever had the experience to have thinned out a mix too much by corner listening?

Ruphus

Sure!

You need to learn the room!

Or, learn the corner!

Do what you gotta do in your studio!

[Ruphus]

Thanks Mike,

distance in a way appears causal to me too.
So, I guess the typical nearfield placement that you see most often is too narrow.

Jules,

yeah, stupid question.
Comes from the habit to ask rather one question too much than too less.
... And still, at wrong spots I might be asking too little. That´s how it goes. Bad management.

Ruphus

[Ethan Winer]

Ruphus,

> you wouldn´t mean that the circumstance of LF-perception at only certain spots was to mean that LF being cancelled out everywhere else in the room, do you? <

Yes, everywhere in the room major portions of the low end are missing or greatly reduced. The graph below is absolutely typical of the response in most small rooms. As you move around in the room the frequencies shift, but the basic problem remains.

--Ethan

[Ruphus]

Wow Ethan, that graph looks scary like the Himalaya when running out of rope and sandwich on an ice pin.

Someone find one of those guys who shove real estate rocket high in price and let them eat that paper. How´s one supposed to live in caves?

Too bad I can´t stretch the speakers distance here.

After years you got me beaten to it.
Thought the room to be sounding nice enough, but you say it needs either generously wave travel or humbly wall dressing.

Don´t want to invest too much now, for intending to move from this place rather sooner than later. Could I use some dense foam, originally intended for construction insulation matters ( I know, .. the difference of isolation / absorbtion & diffusion ), as a not so ideal, but somewhat helpful provisional solution for corners?

Thanks for your kind help,

Ruphus

[tINY]

The reson that the bass response evens out in the corners is because you have eliminated two of the surfaces that are reflecting sound. The remaining walls are far away, so the 1/4 wavelegth cancellation is at lower frequencies. (remember that at 1/4 the wavelength from a solid wall, you will get complete cancelation of that frequency).

The solid walls aren't helping you either. Modern walls made of gypsum board help low frequency in two ways. At very low frequency, they transmit the sound out of the room (not completely, but you do loose some energy that way. They also act as pannel resonators that will resonate at certain (usually low) frequencies and absorb energy that way (especially if there is good insulation in the wall.

If you dont want to spend a lot of money fixing the acoustics for better low end, there is another trick to try. Get two or four sub-woofers, wire them for mono and move them around the room until the bass flattens out. This does two things, it can cancel out the room modes (boomy, ringing problems) and it can flatten out the response at the mix position by creating multiple sources. The multiple sources can help because at one freqency where a single woofer passes sound by you and reflects off the wall to be canceled at your head, the other speaker(s) have a path from that speaker to the same wall and then to your head is different, so it doesn't cancel out.




-tINY

[abit]

+ At the moment U did every thing U could with traps and such,
and there is no more budget to make it batter,
U can start listen..and listen..and listen.. those favorite *reference tracks*,
well known killa mixes, and here U have a good chance to figure out, how to get friendly/comfortable with your room.
Hey U can listen *reference tracks* even now - in the corners, in the kitchen sitting in the toilet.
What ever it takes.
But as U can see my main point here is a *reference*.
This what helped me to get along with my room.

[Ruphus]

Interesting as always, Tiny.
I´m totally bankrupt right now, but will be keeping the idea in mind.
Spinning it further, guess one day we´ll have those ring monitoring systems in rooms. You put in a callibrating program and you get any default room shapes with ideal centering of monitoring position almost regardless of actual room dimensions. Killer stuff. :O)

Suppose so far I´ll put some cheap thing in the corners and go the way Abit and Jules suggested. Burning a million CDs until I learned the environment.
Also I´ll be digging out an old ghettoblaster-like thingy, hoping it to help too.

Thanks a bunch, friends.

Ruphus

[davidk]

i put my left foot on the membrane of the sub to check for bass/kick levels.
i mix down kinda quiet, havent cranked it in years.
when the cabinet in the corner vibrates, its enough sub in the mix.
mind u im mixing for club use.
bass traps are wicked, def helped my mixdowns. got a couple in the corners
of my place.
rooms, as they re part of the gear, are like speakers, you have to learn them,
when they re not
perfect. nothing is ever perfect anyways.