At what point do monitors become overkill for untreated home studio rooms?

[Lumin]

What is important is… making sure you're listening to what is coming out of your speakers rather than your room being the speaker.
What are the dimensions of your room? Hi tones can easily be tamed with a few simple DIY panels on the walls but Low frequencies are the tricky ones unless your room dimensions are near mathematical specs.
if you're the only one doing all the work in the studio and your "sweet spot" (listening position) is acoustically in near perfect means… get the best monitors you can afford.
We upgraded our main monitors to Micromain 27s a few months ago and I will be buying the 35s for my personal studio soon...

[joeq]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

So the "overkill" line has to sit somewhere. But where exactly does it sit?

I think it's more than a little strange to talk about 'overkill point' of 'speakers in an untreated room', as if there was a law requiring you to leave your room untreated.

Hang a few panels and the 'overkill line' moves dramatically.

I mean I'm sure you could tell that a $15,000 pair of speakers are better than the Focals even in a room like this,

you mean a room like this which you could start treating for a fraction of the cost of even a modest speaker upgrade?

the dollar value delta

compared to the dollar value delta of taming your early reflection points and trapping some bass ?

[mustgroove]

I can buy new speakers. I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own.

Moreover, I'm aware of the cheap basic options for treating a room, but this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread. If I want to (in this or any other apartment) I will. I'm asking about where the overkill line lies for rooms such as this when you take them as they are.

[grrrayson]

There's no definite line because acoustics is very complex and every room is different. I suggest looking at it differently: first determine exactly what you want to improve (low end extension/left-to-right imaging/specific frequency response issues/etc.) and then determining the best way to accomplish that, which could be different speakers, (most likely) room treatment, or perhaps something else entirely different like a new room altogether, taking the time to do a "car test", some analog outboard ear candy, or simply just more ear training. (Actually, it always comes down to more ear training.)

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

I can buy new speakers. I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own.

Moreover, I'm aware of the cheap basic options for treating a room, but this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread. If I want to (in this or any other apartment) I will. I'm asking about where the overkill line lies for rooms such as this when you take them as they are.

You can treat an apartment - well, basically. There are none permanent solutions.

But why do it? You're happy with your mixes!! Are your clients? Then leave it alone! You're doing it right no matter how "wrong" it may be. If its an issue then solve it, but otherwise - sounds like spending money of the sake of it!!

[AllBread]

I would say any monitor investment becomes overkill immediately in an untreated room. You don't have to go whole hog - just some bass trapping in the corners, treat the first reflection points and build a cloud over the mix/speaker position.

If you can't do that, I'd spend my money on better headphones!

[Steve_B]

As this is for a rented bedroom/flat, I’m guessing that you are not recording commercially. The overkill point is set by yourself. Spend what you think is the right amount. It doesn’t make an difference what others think. If your choice makes you happy, that is good and all is well with the world.

If you are aiming to please a wider audience, or create mixes that translate as they say, analyse what is wrong (or not) with your present mixes. If you are getting good well balanced mixes that work well outside your own room, then the only reason for changing is for marketing purposes, to hopefully attract more clients, with, as they say in live sound, more rider friendly gear. If you can churn out a finished product, that is more than acceptable, using a crummy 3” drive unit in a cardboard box, then from a financial point of view anything on the market is an overkill. Why waste your money?

Unfortunately, you can’t separate your monitors from your room. Even more unfortunately your room can have a bigger influence on the sound of a recording when played back in another room than the speakers you use. For best results you have to consider the whole monitoring environment not just one element. Even changing the key of a song can affect how it sounds in a given environment. Acoustic panels can be made free-standing so the “I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own” excuse is fairly weak.

However, given that this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread, then visit your favourite online store, choose your favourite brand of speaker and choose the most expensive you can afford. If you are producing a single genre or style of music, that may influence your choice, but it doesn’t matter what I or any other forum members like or don’t like, we will not be listening to them.

Enjoy your choice.

[loopy]

Some basic panels mounted on the walls in the appropriate places shouldn't damage things beyond a simple patch and paint than hanging a large picture would do.

If you monitor at very low levels, some creative use of bookcases with staggered books, large stuffed animal toys and plush furniture can help somewhat. This is in no way a substitute for even the lowest level of proper treatment and won't work if you are monitoring at loud levels. It can help tame down a room though if you have no other choice.

[cdog]

It takes half an hour of work and a few hundred bucks to hang some basic traps. Placement is also critical. I wouldnt recommend investing anything in monitoring without some basic treatment. Heck, even a big couch can eat a lot of low mids and bass and work wonders on an otherwise empty room.

[Nick Morris]

Originally Posted by narcoman

You can treat an apartment - well, basically. There are none permanent solutions.

But why do it? You're happy with your mixes!! Are your clients? Then leave it alone! You're doing it right no matter how "wrong" it may be. If its an issue then solve it, but otherwise - sounds like spending money of the sake of it!!

This is how it looks to me too

[doulos30]

can you not mount acoustic panels to something like hardboard backing and just stand them up where you want them? shouldn't be to hard to do

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

OK so I've got a bit of a general monitor question... but let me start with my particular scenario.

I have a pair of Focal Solo6s and I've produced mixes on them that I'm super happy with. But I've got basically a bedroom studio, totally untreated. I've been toying with the idea of upgrading my speakers, but considering the state of the room, I'm totally aware that much of the "step up" in speaker quality I would get for my extra money would be cancelled out by the untreated nature of my room.

But right now I'm borrowing a pair of Fostex PM0.5 MKIIs (while my Focals get repaired - tweeter amps need replacing) and I'm *hating* how they sound. So obviously despite the room being untreated, the jump from the Fostex to the Focals is noticeable and "worth making" even in a bedroom context. The gains are tangible and IMO worth every cent I paid for the Focals. I cannot wait to get them back.

But say I wanted to upgrade from the Focals to something else (been considering the Micromain 35s). Who knows whether that jump would produce a comparable "holy shit I can TOTALLY hear why these are better speakers" kind of realisation. Or alternatively, if there are noticeable gains in fidelity even in an untreated room, would they be worth the dollar value delta between the two pairs of speakers?

I mean I'm sure you could tell that a $15,000 pair of speakers are better than the Focals even in a room like this, but it's hard to argue that spending $15,000 on speakers in this room wouldn't be overkill.

So the "overkill" line has to sit somewhere. But where exactly does it sit? Many of my buddies use Focals and they seem to be very popular in the untreated home studio market. But would Micromain 35s or anything upwards of that just be totally overdoing it?

And just to pre-empt, yes I'm aware that D/A is an important factor - feeding Micromains with a Soundblaster would be overkill but I'm really not talking signal chain here, just speakers & rooms. I use an Orpheus so I'm confident my D/A is not a limiting factor.

OK, understood that it's not always convenient to do structural work. And all circumstances are potentially different. But you could very likely use bass trapping and use side diffusers to cut down on early reflections and improve things a fair amount.

The thing about the room, the immediate environment, is that, at its best, it will be 'neutral,' with no standing waves [almost impossible to get in small, parallel wall/floor/ceiling rooms but somewhat mitigatable with bass treatment] and minimal early reflections. (Many folks do like the sort of diffused 'late' reflection you can end up with in a LEDE [live end, dead end] room, which was a dominant design style over much of the last few decades.)


However, an untreated room is sort of like a fun-house mirror.

It distorts the sound, particularly because of standing waves, which are bass resonances of the room, (like the 'boom' note(s) on a poorly balanced acoustic guitar) whose wavelength coincide with the dimensions between parallel walls and 'criss cross' or overlap each other, you get phase cancellation in some spots and reinforcement in others, which means that moving your position by even as little as 4 inches [less than the distance between your ears!] or so can fairly radically alter the balance of frequencies you hear. (You can try 'fixing' the sweet spot with EQ -- but the very EQ that helps even up balances in that one spot can be the OPPOSITE of what is needed only inches away.)

Because of that, it can be hard to predict how a given speaker might sound in such a room.

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

..But right now I'm borrowing a pair of Fostex PM0.5 MKIIs (while my Focals get repaired - tweeter amps need replacing) and I'm *hating* how they sound. So obviously despite the room being untreated, the jump from the Fostex to the Focals is noticeable and "worth making" even in a bedroom context. The gains are tangible and IMO worth every cent I paid for the Focals. I cannot wait to get them back..

I'd have to say though that it also follows that regardless of treatment, a speaker's basic tone comes through -in addition to rooms contributions presumably.

(Where you draw this 'quality break point' though, who knows.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by loopy

Some basic panels mounted on the walls in the appropriate places shouldn't damage things beyond a simple patch and paint than hanging a large picture would do.

If you monitor at very low levels, some creative use of bookcases with staggered books, large stuffed animal toys and plush furniture can help somewhat. This is in no way a substitute for even the lowest level of proper treatment and won't work if you are monitoring at loud levels. It can help tame down a room though if you have no other choice.

Originally Posted by cdog

It takes half an hour of work and a few hundred bucks to hang some basic traps. Placement is also critical. I wouldnt recommend investing anything in monitoring without some basic treatment. Heck, even a big couch can eat a lot of low mids and bass and work wonders on an otherwise empty room.

Right. Bass standing waves are simply reflections with very long wavelengths because of the distance between parallel walls. The more you can break those up and absorb them, the better. Something to remember, though, is that, while higher frequencies can be fairly easily diffused, bass waves, because of their greater energy, tend to travel through lighter materials. So a cloth hanging on a wall might soften HF reflection but bass waves will mostly pass right on through but be largely reflected by the wall.

[ddageek]

There is no point of overkill, it's a matter of specific speakers working in any space and personal taste. Some untreated rooms are better than others, and if you can make it work for you fine! Over the years Ive worked in as many crappy rooms as good rooms, it's all about spending the time to get to know the room ( I had a client who was pissy about me chargeing him for 30 min of listening to CDs until he heard the results and "that was the best Lowend ever done in this studio").
If you can hang pictures you can treat , nail wholes are easy to hide, and that 3M sticky stuff is easy to remove!

[joeq]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

I can buy new speakers. I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own.

this is the same lame excuse the "mix on headphones" crowd gives

acoustical treatments can be put on stands or hung on the walls with picture hooks or french cleats. I own my own house, but nothing is glued or nailed to my walls.

If you want us to believe your landlord prohibits the hanging of pictures on your wall, you will need to upload a copy of the lease with the relevant paragraphs highlighted

Moreover, I'm aware of the cheap basic options for treating a room, but this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread.

Of course not, it's a 'spend money on speakers' thread. My point is still relevant to your OP as posed, because the investment of pricier speakers is "protected" by appropriate room room treatments. It increases their value, which is supposedly what you are asking about.

If I want to (in this or any other apartment) I will. I'm asking about where the overkill line lies for rooms such as this when you take them as they are.

And I am saying "taking the room as it is" is a totally arbitrary assumption. Especially considering the relative costs. It's make-believe.

Pretending the room is "impossible" to treat makes thinking about and discussing potential speaker upgrades purely an intellectual exercise - disconnected from the practical realities of someone actually using those speakers to mix.

School assignment?

[TurboJets]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

I can buy new speakers. I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own.

Moreover, I'm aware of the cheap basic options for treating a room, but this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread. If I want to (in this or any other apartment) I will. I'm asking about where the overkill line lies for rooms such as this when you take them as they are.

???????

[StringBean]

The breaking point is when you start considering a sub for the low end. A decent pair of $200 speakers will be perfectly adequate but even $5000 focals simply won't overcome the room obliterating the accuracy of your bass.

For general balance between low end and midrange a good pair of headphones are very useful, but to really nail the exact low end volume you need a treated room is essential.

[Enlightened Hand]

I have a hard time separating the speakers from the room when I think about things. We have all worked in untreated rooms and they're a crap shoot; You simply never know what you're going to get. So yeah, you can work in an untreated space with whatever speakers and call it good so long as you know the room and can mentally compensate for the things it adds and takes away from the sound playback. If it works for you it works.

But in general there is no absolute line of "overkill" with speakers in untreated rooms because once you put speakers in an untreated room you've committed to addressing exactly half of the problem with your playback being unvarnished. It's always going to be a half baked solution. You're always in that case going to be listening to a rough approximation of the sound from your speakers and you're always going to be chasing shadows when you mix. It's not that putting better speakers in is in anyway overkill. It's that anytime you don't deal with the room acoustics you're approaching the overall situation of critical listening from a half way effort.

In short: you don't yet know the unvarnished sound of your speakers and so who knows? Maybe they're better, or worse than you think. But you'll never know if you ditch them and buy a more expensive pair. And the crazy part is that so long as you keep up with the untreated space you'll not REALLY know the unvarnished sound of any other speakers you put in that room as well. So what's the point in changing speakers if the room stays unaddressed?

The breaking point is 843,73 euro

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by electricthing

The breaking point is 843,73 euro

+/- 20dB

[purplesky]

Those Focal Solos are pretty nice speakers for a bedroom studio.

Just buy whatever you can afford and learn and enjoy them.

As far as the no treatment thing goes if you know the room and your mixes are good why replace the Focal Solos?

Pros master on those speakers so they should be fine for a bedroom.

The upside of buying new speakers is you will be fueling the economy and keeping a speaker company in business.

[Lumin]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

I can buy new speakers. I can't treat a room in an apartment I rent & don't own.

Moreover, I'm aware of the cheap basic options for treating a room, but this isn't a "should I treat my room" thread. If I want to (in this or any other apartment) I will. I'm asking about where the overkill line lies for rooms such as this when you take them as they are.

You're allowed to track, play and mix loud music in your rental apartment room but not allowed to hang couple of traps on the walls?...

[Lights]

The only way to answer this question is to analyze the room. Without knowing how inaccurate your room is making your sound, it's impossible to tell if you're going to waste money on new monitors. Moreover, the "overkill" point you are looking for is the point at which you're getting less benefit dollar-for-dollar than you would get from the same amount spent on room treatment. My guess is you have already crossed that point with the Focals.

Post a waterfall graph of your room and you will be making a far more educated decision.

[mustgroove]

Thanks for the replies, even the ones that strongly insinuate I'm an idiot

- In all likelihood I'm gonna be moving out of my current apartment in the next 6 months or so. So it's not so much that I "can't" treat my room, there is just no point in doing so at this point when moving is pretty imminent.

- As I said I'm happy with the mixes I make in the room exactly as-is, on the Focals.

- This isn't a "should I treat my room" thread and nor is it a "what speakers should I buy" thread.

- The responses make it pretty clear that room treatment is a big priority. Small cost, massive improvements. I totally get it & the very next dollars I spend on my studio (when I'm in a new place) will be on treatment.

- But the fact remains that even in an untreated room, as shitty & amateur & imperfect as you've all made it clear that that is, the gap between the Focals & the Fostexes is so massively apparent. So my question is more hypothetical I guess. Would the jump from Focal to, say, Micromains be as noticeable, even leaving the room in its untreated state?

Treating my room will make my mixes better regardless of what speakers I use, but this isn't even a thread about making better mixes either... I can tell the night & day difference between 2 given speakers even in a bare untreated room, and I'm just curious at what point that effect might tail off...

[grrrayson]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

-Would the jump from Focal to, say, Micromains be as noticeable, even leaving the room in its untreated state?

Treating my room will make my mixes better regardless of what speakers I use, but this isn't even a thread about making better mixes either... I can tell the night & day difference between 2 given speakers even in a bare untreated room, and I'm just curious at what point that effect might tail off...

It's not linear like that; stop thinking there's a one-dimensional spectrum where every step is clearly better than the last. Especially don't think of more expensive options as better. (Don't fall prey to internet hype, which is just consumerism in disguise.) That's why there's no such "line" like you're looking for. More expensive speakers like the Barefeet might very well sound worse in your room. (I caution you that those speakers in particular are more dependent on room placement than most; I've heard the MM27 sound downright bad in a major studio.) Or some $10,000 monitors might sound just as good as what you have now but simply different with their own quirks yet not better. Acoustics is too complex for that kind of oversimplified linear thinking. Your question here is based on a false premise.

Again, determine what specifically needs improvement, then figure out the best way to accomplish that improvement. It sounds like you don't need to improve anything. Congrats!

By the way, simply leaning or stacking 2'x4' panels against the wall won't even require putting so much as a nail hole in the wall. I do far worse to rentals all the time.

[Lumin]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

Thanks for the replies, even the ones that strongly insinuate I'm an idiot

- In all likelihood I'm gonna be moving out of my current apartment in the next 6 months or so. So it's not so much that I "can't" treat my room, there is just no point in doing so at this point when moving is pretty imminent.

- As I said I'm happy with the mixes I make in the room exactly as-is, on the Focals.

- This isn't a "should I treat my room" thread and nor is it a "what speakers should I buy" thread.

- The responses make it pretty clear that room treatment is a big priority. Small cost, massive improvements. I totally get it & the very next dollars I spend on my studio (when I'm in a new place) will be on treatment.

- But the fact remains that even in an untreated room, as shitty & amateur & imperfect as you've all made it clear that that is, the gap between the Focals & the Fostexes is so massively apparent. So my question is more hypothetical I guess. Would the jump from Focal to, say, Micromains be as noticeable, even leaving the room in its untreated state?

Treating my room will make my mixes better regardless of what speakers I use, but this isn't even a thread about making better mixes either... I can tell the night & day difference between 2 given speakers even in a bare untreated room, and I'm just curious at what point that effect might tail off...

Given that the effect might tail off makes it a curious study in an untreated room.

[hello people]

My speakers are Mackie MR5's and I think I've crossed a line as wide as a tennis court in thinking that I'm doing good with them in my room....since my room is completely and utterly untreated and terrible...total waste...until I treat my room...which I will do...eventually...

[sage691]

Originally Posted by mustgroove

- But the fact remains that even in an untreated room, as shitty & amateur & imperfect as you've all made it clear that that is, the gap between the Focals & the Fostexes is so massively apparent.

How do you know that for sure when (as another said) your listening environment is a sonic "hall of mirrors" ?

I'd rather mix on a $100 boom box in an honest, accurate room than even a $100,000 pair of monitors in a room like you describe. As a matter of fact, I've been in rooms where $50,000 had been spent on design and treatment alone to create that "sweet spot" of unvarnished truth, yet the PRIMARY monitors for mixing decisions were a $500 pair of NS10s.

An accurate, honest monitoring environment is BY FAR the most important thing in the art of audio production, and that includes both tracking AND mixing. Everything else after that are aesthetic decisions that differ from person to person.This is the conclusion you will come to after many, many years of banging your head against the wall.

But hey, I understand perfectly: there is NOTHING glamorous or exciting about the thought of DIY room treatment; as a matter of fact, it's downright nasty and monotonous -- kind of like changing a car tire when you get a flat, but MUCH worse !

And besides let's face it: the real reason you're here asking these questions is because deep down you are NOT happy with your mixes and you know they could be alot better !