I live in a quiet neighborhood, so no street noise, and two of my four walls are almost all windows. I could open my window which my right monitor sits in front of, thereby reducing reflections from the back of my monitor. The other window is most of the left wall, and opening that might minimize some first reflections. I also wonder about leaving the door to my bedroom open, as some of the first reflections from my left monitor might be reduced with that door open. Thoughts?

Try it and find out.

I'm in a room where the right side is open - it's a regular, rectangle but there's an open door frame that leads to another room (and there's no door in the frame). So it's similar - not quite the same but similar. I've testing things out in my studio all week and, after I found a really nice listening position yesterday, Check out the graphs and see for yourself the effects of an open door - maybe this helps. The red is the corner monitor and the blue is the right (which is by the open door frame).

For testing you can use the following free program that Scott used.
Room EQ Wizard Tutorial - GIK Acoustics

Now I've seen it all..taking room measurements before you can open a window.

Would it not be a lot simpler to simply put on the last mix you worked on and ascertain if the sound with the windows open is too skewed for you to work with?

Or better still,do a new mix ,with the windows open and see how well it translates.

I honestly don't think analysing the rooms acoustical properties with the windows open is of any benefit whatsoever.

What is one supposed to do with the results?Close the window?

Stop worrying about trivia and make some noise for crying out loud.

No, it wouldn't. It's much easier to ask an acoustical expert on this forum to weigh in, than to spend hours remixing a song.

Your opinion is duly noted. Now move on to another thread, please, if you have nothing else to contribute.

If anyone thinks opening a window to stop first reflections is a good idea I'd love to hear from them.

Apologies man.

I am hearby banning myself from the acoustics forum.Effective immediatley.

Good luck and I hope you do some great mixes.

Even in the quietest neighborhoods, your going to have birds, distant trucks, police sirens, ect.....

Humor me with an acoustic/scientific discussion of mixing with the windows open please. If a car drives by I can always rewind. Mixing takes hours and hours, and eventually I will hear everything many times.... (and my house is on a big rural lot).

Interestingly enough I encountered a similar situation recently,

It got a tad warm in my home studio while I was tracking my vocals so I decided to open the window, (I have 2 large windows directly behind my monitors) and to my slight surprise the subtle boomy tone I get from about 279-331 Hz was definitely tamed, how much of a difference there would be involving mixing is a different story but I know it made a difference while tracking ...

Sent from my SGH-T959

Alright then.....

One of the things you want is consistency for translation purposes. If opening windows changes the acoustic character of your room, thus the mix, and you mix sometimes with the windows open and sometimes with them shut....

In the Master handbook of Acoustics (Everest & Pohlmann) we are taught to think of a window as the perfect absorber.

Sound goes in, and never comes back out.

if you were only mixing and not recording, a large tent is ideal as no significant amount of acoustic energy is being trapped if you are recording, you likely want some level of isolation from the surrounding noises... on mix down, having openings or thin walls etc can be beneficial for a more even room response (with limits such as resulting resonances etc from adjoining spaces which can be distracting). the size of the openings also dictate the levels and frequencies affected.