Will acousitc treatment help?

mixingsound · 12th July 2011

Hi,

I have a question, I have quite low end nearfield monitors, ESI nEar 05 and they don't translate well. How much will treating the room help? If it won't help much because the speakers are not very good, is it better to just buy good headphones?

Thanks

Max Dread · 12th July 2011

It's always going to help in my opinion. Granted, it cannot make your speakers sound better than they are. But conversely, your untreated room can make your speakers sound a lot worse!

Let's lok at it another way....

People often talk about music in their cars, and how it sounds good because a car has a lot of good acoustical properties compared to many domestic rooms. This is certainly true of my car.... and yet I have an old banger with the stock sh!tty stereo and speakers in it. A heck of a lot worse than your speakers! Yet the car helps them to sound better than they might in a room situation.

If you have the means to do this, take your speakers outside and listen to some familiar tracks to see how they sound when you take the room out of the equation.

Good luck.

Max

PS - whereabouts in the UK are you out of interest?

Gdupproductions · 12th July 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixingsound

Hi,

I have a question, I have quite low end nearfield monitors, ESI nEar 05 and they don't translate well. How much will treating the room help? If it won't help much because the speakers are not very good, is it better to just buy good headphones?

Thanks

They don't translate wel becuz the frequezncy range is sh*t.....If treatment is done right. They can translate very wel, and help allot.

Acoustic treatment is a investment

SörenHjalmarsson · 12th July 2011

Hi mix,

ANY speaker system will be improved by properly treating the room in which they operate. You need to think of your speakers and room as a complete system, which together, create the response that you'll actually hear.

Headphones are a great complement (especially in a less than ideal room), you will also need to extend the bandwidth of your speakers (with an extra LF transducer) if you want full-range re-production of your source material.

MVH
Sören

sound_music · 12th July 2011

yes, it will help alot, even with "less than ideal" speakers. room treatment is the best thing you could do to improve the overall performance of your system, regardless if it's a high or low end rig.

psykostx · 12th July 2011

Room treatment and a DAC ... speakers are only as good as the signal sent to them and the signal reflected from the room they are in.

I've done some pretty amazing mixes of poor recordings on absolute crap bookshelf speakers though. I have a lot of experience working on other people's crappy equipment in different crappy rooms, so that really helps. Working on the real thing is a piece of cake now... I can bang out a 16 track rock mix in about 20 minutes on just about anything. Not bragging, just saying, experience is KING.

Glenn Kuras · 12th July 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by psykostx

Room treatment and a DAC ... .

Sure if you are digital I guess you could not work at all without DAC!!!

Max Dread · 12th July 2011

@ psykostx

I've seen you've mentioned in several threads about the effect of the DAC in the room.

I'm interested to hear more about this from others... Perhaps I should start a new thread?

But in a nutshell, when I bought my Lavry DA10 and was initially underwhelmed by the little difference it made. I was told that it is difficult to hear the difference unless a room is very well treated. Would you and others agree with this?

psykostx · 12th July 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenn Kuras

Sure if you are digital I guess you could not work at all without DAC!!!

Hahah you could just watch the green binary waterfall.....and instinctively know what it sounds like ....

mixingsound · 16th July 2011

Still can't decide between little treament vs headphones. Maybe you have some more tips for me?

Thanks

Max Dread · 16th July 2011

Seems to me that the answers in the thread so far lean to a treated room.

Without knowing more about your situation I think it is tough to say. But I'd personally say that you should aim for both.... Treat the room as well as you can but have some decent headphones for critical listening tasks too. As you listen and learn your room and headphones more, you'll also learn which tasks are suited to which method. Stereo pan decision etc. - for example - you'll no doubt want to do over the monitors....

Starlight · 16th July 2011

Treatment vs headphones is the wrong way to think. You wouldn't buy expensive fresh coffee (your monitors) and then ask whether to buy a coffee machine (treatment) or a can of beer (heaphones). Headphones serve a necessary but different purpose. Treatment finishes what you have started by buying monitors. As Sören said above, "You need to think of your speakers and room as a complete system." Treatment helps your room behave acoustically as it should.

You know how echoey your bathroom is. You wouldn't set up your monitors to mix in the bathroom. The sound would bounce around and you will be hearing more echoes of the original sound coming from all directions. Other rooms have hard surfaces that also reflect sounds, just not quite as hard so you don't notice the problem quite as much. And where sound bouncing round a room, some waves bounce back and either amplify or cancel the original sound, giving you false peaks and nulls, casuing you to erroeously remix the sound to treat a problem that is specific to your room. To tame the unwanted reflections we use acoustic treatment. Your monitors are not able to give you an accurate representation of your music in an untreated room.

Milk, no sugar for me, thanks.

12th July 2011	#1
mixingsound Gear Head Joined: Jan 2011 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 51 Thread Starter	Will acousitc treatment help? Hi, I have a question, I have quite low end nearfield monitors, ESI nEar 05 and they don't translate well. How much will treating the room help? If it won't help much because the speakers are not very good, is it better to just buy good headphones? Thanks

12th July 2011	#4
SörenHjalmarsson Lives for gear Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Skövde, Sweden Posts: 940	Hi mix, ANY speaker system will be improved by properly treating the room in which they operate. You need to think of your speakers and room as a complete system, which together, create the response that you'll actually hear. Headphones are a great complement (especially in a less than ideal room), you will also need to extend the bandwidth of your speakers (with an extra LF transducer) if you want full-range re-production of your source material. MVH Sören __________________ Sören Hjalmarsson (A JHBrandt Padawan) Desperado Studios www.desperadostudios.se Gös&Hjalmar Sweden *"If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together"*

12th July 2011	#6
psykostx Gear addict Joined: Jun 2009 Posts: 479	Room treatment and a DAC ... speakers are only as good as the signal sent to them and the signal reflected from the room they are in. I've done some pretty amazing mixes of poor recordings on absolute crap bookshelf speakers though. I have a lot of experience working on other people's crappy equipment in different crappy rooms, so that really helps. Working on the real thing is a piece of cake now... I can bang out a 16 track rock mix in about 20 minutes on just about anything. Not bragging, just saying, experience is KING. __________________ For mixing, Voxengo SPAN is my most often used tool... it's great when your ears tell you there's something wrong but you can't quite turn the right knob (and it's FREE too!!)

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12th July 2011	#2
Max Dread Gear addict Joined: Nov 2006 Location: Norfolk, UK Posts: 447	It's always going to help in my opinion. Granted, it cannot make your speakers sound better than they are. But conversely, your untreated room can make your speakers sound a lot worse! Let's lok at it another way.... People often talk about music in their cars, and how it sounds good because a car has a lot of good acoustical properties compared to many domestic rooms. This is certainly true of my car.... and yet I have an old banger with the stock sh!tty stereo and speakers in it. A heck of a lot worse than your speakers! Yet the car helps them to sound better than they might in a room situation. If you have the means to do this, take your speakers outside and listen to some familiar tracks to see how they sound when you take the room out of the equation. Good luck. Max PS - whereabouts in the UK are you out of interest?

12th July 2011	#5
sound_music Lives for gear Joined: Sep 2008 Posts: 1,235	yes, it will help alot, even with "less than ideal" speakers. room treatment is the best thing you could do to improve the overall performance of your system, regardless if it's a high or low end rig.

16th July 2011	#10
mixingsound Gear Head Joined: Jan 2011 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 51 Thread Starter	Still can't decide between little treament vs headphones. Maybe you have some more tips for me? Thanks

16th July 2011	#12
Starlight Gear maniac Joined: Mar 2011 Location: UK & Slovakia Posts: 254	Treatment vs headphones is the wrong way to think. You wouldn't buy expensive fresh coffee (your monitors) and then ask whether to buy a coffee machine (treatment) or a can of beer (heaphones). Headphones serve a necessary but different purpose. Treatment finishes what you have started by buying monitors. As Sören said above, "You need to think of your speakers and room as a complete system." Treatment helps your room behave acoustically as it should. You know how echoey your bathroom is. You wouldn't set up your monitors to mix in the bathroom. The sound would bounce around and you will be hearing more echoes of the original sound coming from all directions. Other rooms have hard surfaces that also reflect sounds, just not quite as hard so you don't notice the problem quite as much. And where sound bouncing round a room, some waves bounce back and either amplify or cancel the original sound, giving you false peaks and nulls, casuing you to erroeously remix the sound to treat a problem that is specific to your room. To tame the unwanted reflections we use acoustic treatment. Your monitors are not able to give you an accurate representation of your music in an untreated room. Milk, no sugar for me, thanks.