Thoughts on my room layout for my somewhat square room?

[kasmira]

You've got a good plan so far. Biggest problem is there is nothing on the ceiling for your first reflection point up there. This also means there's less trapping on the vertical plane to help soften the height mode of your room. You may not need to soften this mode, though..

Also, there's no real need to space your monitors that far off from the front wall. That would put you in the center of the room - one of the worst spots you could be. Monitors against the front wall usually works out better. Whether you go with a 36" or 48" or somewhere inbetween triangle, make sure it works out with your speakers too. If you have three way monitors, you'll want to be at least a meter, more likely 4-5 feet away which is difficult in small rooms. If you have two way monitors, at least a meter for the stereo imagine to open up for sure. Your monitoring doesn't HAVE to be equilateral, either. Its just a reference point. Mine are about 4' apart but only 3' away from me, and it is the best position for them acoustically.

Edit: Also the girlfriend's clothes will not do anything, unless you want them out of your closet.

Lastly, the window will not reflect more than your wall, just an FYI. A drape is still a good idea anyway to combat flutter echo, but in order to combat it the most you may want to cover more than just the window (unless your window is large, in that case you're fine)

[Alex_c]

Originally Posted by kasmira

You've got a good plan so far. Biggest problem is there is nothing on the ceiling for your first reflection point up there. This also means there's less trapping on the vertical plane to help soften the height mode of your room. You may not need to soften this mode, though..

Also, there's no real need to space your monitors that far off from the front wall. That would put you in the center of the room - one of the worst spots you could be. Monitors against the front wall usually works out better. Whether you go with a 36" or 48" or somewhere inbetween triangle, make sure it works out with your speakers too. If you have three way monitors, you'll want to be at least a meter, more likely 4-5 feet away which is difficult in small rooms. If you have two way monitors, at least a meter for the stereo imagine to open up for sure. Your monitoring doesn't HAVE to be equilateral, either. Its just a reference point. Mine are about 4' apart but only 3' away from me, and it is the best position for them acoustically.

Edit: Also the girlfriend's clothes will not do anything, unless you want them out of your closet.

Lastly, the window will not reflect more than your wall, just an FYI. A drape is still a good idea anyway to combat flutter echo, but in order to combat it the most you may want to cover more than just the window (unless your window is large, in that case you're fine)

Thanks for the input. The lady's clothes will act as an HF absorber (at best) and get me some real estate for my own in the bedroom!

Good call about the ceiling, I was planning on doing a couple up there, but totally forgot! Thanks for reminding me.

I think with all the trapping going on, there should be adequate absorption to abate the flutter echo, but if it's still present, it's fairly easy to deal with - Some 3" panels on any remaining bare surfaces should take care of that.

[jwl]

Agreed, good plan so far. You might consider a right rear corner trap mounted directly to the door, or to the wall adjacent to the door where possible.

[Alex_c]

Originally Posted by jwl

Agreed, good plan so far. You might consider a right rear corner trap mounted directly to the door, or to the wall adjacent to the door where possible.

You know, I thought of this too, but I read that leaving the door open is pretty effective at "trapping" (freeing?) the LF's.

Right now when I play a 60 hz tone through my monitors, I have a HUGE null at the center of the room. So bad that it is almost to the point of cancellation. This is with one super chunk already in the room! Once I'm done with Plan A, I will look at trapping any remaining corners until I get it as close as possible. If I get better results with two traps at the corner where the door is, I will go that route but right now I have to stick to the plan I have.

Originally I was going to do about 12 or so of the 24" x 48" x 6" pillow traps at various corners/first reflection zones but during my lunch break from the build today I did some more research and decided that I would benefit from the super chunks and trapping the closet. I have about 30 panels of SNS at my disposal right now but to do everything listed above I think I'll need another 2 packages which is 16 panels.

Long story short... no more design changes until I'm done building!

[jwl]

You will almost always get a null in the center of the room, don't sweat that one. Just make sure you aren't sitting there. As you add bass trapping that null will improve (as will all the peaks).

Superchunks are great, but if you only have limited material, in most cases you are better off increasing your surface area with 4" or 6" thick panel traps. But if you have unlimited material then by all means go with superchunks.

[Alex_c]

Originally Posted by jwl

You will almost always get a null in the center of the room, don't sweat that one. Just make sure you aren't sitting there. As you add bass trapping that null will improve (as will all the peaks).

Superchunks are great, but if you only have limited material, in most cases you are better off increasing your surface area with 4" or 6" thick panel traps. But if you have unlimited material then by all means go with superchunks.

I built 10, 4' x 8' x 3" panels to treat a location for a TV show I was doing the audio for. It was a very big room, but much too lively, so amongst other things, I built those panels to deaden it a bit. After the production was over, they were going to throw all them out (!) so I got my hands on them and now I am re-working them to work with my room that is probably 1/10th the volume of the location I originally built them for. Right now I am about $100 into it for hardware and better fabric, so I have no problem spending another $150 or so to get this room as good as I can get it.

I promised my friend 3 of the 4' x 8' panels for his jam space, so with the remaining 7 panels I have enough material to build 2, 69" tall superchunks and 8 of the 6" thick pillow absorbers. Talk about a score!

One thing I noticed having placed the first superchunk in the corner is that the bass is still very loud while standing next to it. Is this normal? Will things get better as I add more panels, or will it have the most effect on the mix position? I found a spreadsheet, and after punching in some numbers material with a gas flow resistivity of around 3000-7000 rayls/m works the best below 100 hz. From the charts I have seen, 40kg/m3 rock wool seems to have a rating of about 10,000 rayls/m3, which once punched into the calculator shows an absorption of 0.50 at 50 hz, while material with a rating of 5000 rayls/m3 has an absorption of 0.73 at 50 hz!

How much of this really matters, or am I getting to anal about it?

[Tim Farrant]

Originally Posted by Alex_c

Right now when I play a 60 hz tone through my monitors, I have a HUGE null at the center of the room. So bad that it is almost to the point of cancellation.

Fibre glass panels straddling corners are not efficient at absorbing 60Hz and I do not know why people insist on calling them "bass traps". Because you have a cubic room you need serious low frequency absorption. I have posted a design here for limp mass absorbers which I have found effective. If you build some tuned to 60Hz and put them in every wall/wall/ceiling corner I guarantee your 60Hz problem will be reduced.

Tim's Limp Mass Bass Absorbers

Good luck with it
Tim

[Alex_c]

Originally Posted by Tim Farrant

Fibre glass panels straddling corners are not efficient at absorbing 60Hz and I do not know why people insist on calling them "bass traps". Because you have a cubic room you need serious low frequency absorption. I have posted a design here for limp mass absorbers which I have found effective. If you build some tuned to 60Hz and put them in every wall/wall/ceiling corner I guarantee your 60Hz problem will be reduced.

Tim's Limp Mass Bass Absorbers

Good luck with it
Tim

Cheers Tim, that's another curve ball!

All kidding aside, I still have a lot of treatment to do and once I use what materials I have on hand already, I will be exploring further options if my room isn't exactly where I want it.

Those look like they will work much more effectively than a giant triangular monolith of mineral wool, but as of now I need to stick to the original plan and see how the room behaves once everything is in place. I can always add some limp mass absorbers if need be.

[Alex_c]

So, life got in the way and I had to put the project on the backburner for a bit, but as I have some mixing work coming up soon I needed to get this room thing somewhat suitable for a mix session. I set everything up as per the drawing I made, except I still have a couple more 4x2' panel traps to make to finish the back wall. I figure I should add 3 more 4x2' panel traps to try to get those nodes at 60 and 100Hz a bit flatter and to bring down that big antinode at 140Hz. This is a 10X10X8' room essentially, with a 2' deep open closet.

By the way, I am using an AT 4050 in omni mode as a "calibration mic" because that's all I have, but compared to the before graph it's still a world of difference

[Alex_c]

Also not shown on the waterfall is a huge null at around 450Hz. Right now my monitors are about 32" apart resting on the upper shelf of my desk with tweeters just above ear level. Monitors are not de-coupled yet, and I am going to experiment with them a bit further apart on stands.

I also have a question about clouds, should I put it in between my head and the
monitors? Any further back towards the
middle of the room and it will interfere with the light fixture. Alternatively, I could place it behind me, but that seems counter intuitive and there will eventially be a corner trap at the wall/ceiling boundary eventually.

[Alex_c]

Some pics of the progress so far. Monitors are as close together as I could get while keeping 'em on the stands, and after a buch of trial and error with REW, this is the best spot for them. I will try to get my hands on some semi-rigid insulation and do as much ofy ceiling as possible with a cloud. I will cut a hole for the lighting fixture.