Advice on acoustic treatment and Monitors / Sub Woofer

D

declansmith

New member
Hi

I am looking for some advice on my small studio setup in terms of acoustic treatment and whether I should invest in a Sub Woofer in order that I can accurate mix the bass . I primarily use my studio for video and as far as acoustically, mixing the soundtrack, recording foley sounds, voiceovers and occasionally use it to record vocals, keyboards, & guitar. I would say that most of it's use is mixing. The room is almost square as below:

View attachment 71449

EDIT: There should be a picture here but I can't get it to display. The Room is 3.2M x 3.6M. My Monitoring setup is at one end offset to one side (i.e. not central to the room)

(Note: I have chucked the NRV10 in the bin and re-instated my Mackie1604VLZ)

I have fairly recently got StudioSpares Seiwen monitors which are awesome and extremely clear, but I am guessing that due to the room dimensions that's why I don't hear much bass. What I want to know is given the limitations, what is the best way to monitor / mix to ensure the bass content is as I want it. In other words, would a sub woofer be useful to compensate the rooms characteristics? I am keen to include sub bass sounds in certain mixes, but due to the variety of listening setups I don't want to under cook or more importantly over cook the bass. What I don't quite understand is how to know I am getting a flat response given the room /equipment characteristics that I have.

The rough method I have used so far is to listen to alot of different production mixes and then add a boost to 80Hz on the mixer output to make things warm sounding as I like it. Then I assume that if I mix to that, what gets mixed down should be "ok". I'm sure I have probably committed heresy doing this, so I would like to learn the right way setting the room up for accurate and pleasurable monitoring.
 
All I can comment on is where you said the room's almost square.
THAT tells me you're gonna need bass trapping (4 inches thick at least) and don't worry about overdoing it.
Bare minimum I would do is floor to ceiling in the 4 wall corners, either with superchunks or as panels with an air gap behind each panel and then see about putting more up where the walls meet the ceiling.
But, at least, in those 4 corners.

Also, adding a boost at 80 seems like your room is lying to ya. Get some trapping done and see how that translates to other playback systems.

Monitoring will probably work better in the center of your shortest wall with your back to the length. Granted, not a big difference in this case but every bit helps.

Save your thoughts on the subwoofer til after some trapping treatment. Generally speaking, I've found that mixing with a sub adds more of a shit factor than actually helping. It's got to be placed right to help.

my 2c...
 
I've been thinking about working on treatment... Is 4 inches really enough to do any sort of bass trapping?
I thought that the 2 feet I was thinking about wasn't even going to be worth it...
 
MrWrenchey said:
I've been thinking about working on treatment... Is 4 inches really enough to do any sort of bass trapping?
I thought that the 2 feet I was thinking about wasn't even going to be worth it...
Click to expand...

If made out of the right materials (not "foam"), 4" is the thickness of most bass traps, if we're not talking about super-chunks. Super-chunks are great, too, but a good 4" proper bass trap should be fine.
 
Thanks. I'll look into the bass traps. It's a shame the picture of the room didn't show up in the post as that showed location of desk etc. I guess it's better to start off without artificially adding more bass (that always felt like a recipe for disaster). I'll treat the room first as you suggest, and let you know how I got on.

EDIT: Not sure what treatment where. I seem to have lots of corners and not much space behind the speakers. Below is the URL of the layout of my project studio and a photo:
https: //picasaweb.google.com/116036488951066271782/OddsnSods?authuser=0&feat=directlink
 
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