New Control Room (Pictures)

technominds

New member
I just moved house and now have tons more room for my studio!

Here are pictures of the control room, we also have a drum room which I will work on and get pictures up as soon as possible :)

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Time to make some music! :D
 
That room is attractive. But it looks in disparate need of some treatment. It must be a flutter echo nightmare.
 
That room is attractive. But it looks in disparate need of some treatment. It must be a flutter echo nightmare.

Well, i've begun with treatment.

We have two bass traps in the front two corners. I'm going to build some for the back ones too.

Would a diffuser do for the wall behind the desk and also the rear wall?

I can't do much about first reflections due to the /\ shape of the ceiling, but.. seeing as the room is a very irregular shape anyway it seems to be quite dead.

Any ideas?
 
Based on what I've read, if the rear wall is close, (say less than 10 feet behind you) then no, diffusers will probably not help anything. However, in a long room where the return echo from the back wall will be more noticeable at the mix position, then diffusers will help to solve that problem without deadening the room too much.

Your room looks to be too much alive. The sound must bounce around in there like a ping pong ball. This tends to badly smear and blur the way your monitors sound. On the other hand you don't want the room to be too dead either (lacking mids and highs) because it will skew your mix decisions. You need to tame it down to a happy medium.

I believe your goal with mids and highs is to keep the room somewhat alive yet keep all direct echos away from the mix position and/or microphones. Your goal with lows is to even out the room modes and nulls as much as possible, (places where large sound waves criss-cross.)

You really should get ETF or RoomEQwizard to better reveal the echos and modes for you. Learn what the different measurements are really showing you. Then do some experimenting with monitor/sub placement and treatment placements to fix any problems.

In general, thinner treatment reduces mids and highs. Thicker treatment with air behind reduces lows. Diffusers change the direction of reflections. Use these rules-of-thumb to make your decisions.

The sloped ceilings may actually be helping. I'm not sure.
 
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Based on what I've read, if the rear wall is close, (say less than 10 feet behind you) then no, diffusers will probably not help anything. However, in a long room where the return echo from the back wall will be more noticeable at the mix position, then diffusers will help to solve that problem without deadening the room too much.

Your room looks to be too much alive. The sound must bounce around in there like a ping pong ball. This tends to badly smear and blur the way your monitors sound. On the other hand you don't want the room to be too dead either (lacking mids and highs) because it will skew your mix decisions. You need to tame it down to a happy medium.

I believe your goal with mids and highs is to keep the room somewhat alive yet keep all direct echos away from the mix position and/or microphones. Your goal with lows is to even out the room modes and nulls as much as possible, (places where large sound waves criss-cross.)

You really should get ETF or RoomEQwizard to better reveal the echos and modes for you. Learn what the different measurements are really showing you. Then do some experimenting with monitor/sub placement and treatment placements to fix any problems.

In general, thinner treatment reduces mids and highs. Thicker treatment with air behind reduces lows. Diffusers change the direction of reflections. Use these rules-of-thumb to make your decisions.

The sloped ceilings may actually be helping. I'm not sure.

This is exactly how i've been dealing with it.

Strangely enough (I think due to the odd shape of room/ceiling) a clap test reveals a pretty much dead room. I know I should get some bass traps in the top above the desk, and maybe a cloud.

I used to have all my stuff set up in a student house which was a rectangular room with high ceilings and walls made of glass. EVERYTHING sounded terrible in there and in comparison this room is unbelievable. Listening back to mixes that I did in there reveal some extremely embarrassing truths!

I'm upgrading my monitors to VXT8's this week so I shall have a play with placement and also the room controls on the speakers.
 
Alright man. Looking good.

I think you'd be better off facing the sloped ceiling and firing down to where the sofa is. This will allow you to get a good stereo image (atm you have one sloped wall and one vertical which is bad). For a budget/home studio, I believe you're better off investing in absorption than diffusion. You get a lot more for your money.

With your monitors on their sides, shouldn't the woofers be more central, with tweeters to the outside? This will give you a wider stereo image.

You should get bass traps in as many corners as possible (even 2' panels in the corners under the sloped ceiling), have panels in the side and ceiling reflection points, and on the back wall. If you change your setup to what I suggest, you would do well to hang a heavy curtain at the window. This, along with corner bass traps and sofa, would do for the back wall absorption.

Here's what I'd do:
 

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Alright man. Looking good.

I think you'd be better off facing the sloped ceiling and firing down to where the sofa is. This will allow you to get a good stereo image (atm you have one sloped wall and one vertical which is bad). For a budget/home studio, I believe you're better off investing in absorption than diffusion. You get a lot more for your money.

With your monitors on their sides, shouldn't the woofers be more central, with tweeters to the outside? This will give you a wider stereo image.

You should get bass traps in as many corners as possible (even 2' panels in the corners under the sloped ceiling), have panels in the side and ceiling reflection points, and on the back wall. If you change your setup to what I suggest, you would do well to hang a heavy curtain at the window. This, along with corner bass traps and sofa, would do for the back wall absorption.

Here's what I'd do:

The slope is too steep to put equipment up against im afraid. But yea, that would be ideal but it wouldn't work with the equipment I have. Those fostex are not turned on as one of the tweeters are broken. But yea, I will have them standing upright when I fix them!
 
The slope is too steep to put equipment up against im afraid. But yea, that would be ideal but it wouldn't work with the equipment I have. Those fostex are not turned on as one of the tweeters are broken. But yea, I will have them standing upright when I fix them!
I understand that the slope is too steep, but you should just space it far enough that the equipment does fit. It's a much betetr placement than the one you have at the moment for many reasons.
 
Very nice place but where are all the tape machines at??? I know, I know, just going with the flow. I would love to see pics of the drum room when you take them. Is it fully enclosed? That's what I'd like to have, but it's not in the cards at this time. Good luck.
 
This is exactly how i've been dealing with it...[snip]

Sorry, I didn't mean to assume you were a newbie to room treatment. It sounds as if you will be getting things under control then.

You are right about adding more bass traps. Ethan always tells us that you can never have too many bass traps. Floors, ceilings, peaks, alcoves, hell a few on the roof and on the neighbor's house might even help. (just kidding) :D
 
@pandamonk: I would have to have that desk pretty much in the middle of the room as it would not fit height wise anywhere near. Also, the room shape is slightly different to as you have drawn it. I'l draw you up a sketch at some point tonight!

@dodge: Hey man, I would love some tape machines.. It'l be on the buying list down the line! Yea we have a drum room downstairs with a 16/4 core running from one to the other. I'l be doing my first drum tracking this week, very excited to finally be able to listen to what I am micing up without guessing!

@Raw: Thats cool, yea i've been following these threads for years now :) I'm going to add as many as possible, but sometimes I think some people go a little overkill with basstraps. There is treating a room and then there is sucking the life out of a room!
 
May not be the most optimum room but it's quite cool none the less!
I'm with ya on treatment overkill. It needs to sound like a real world room.

Yeah I know, the mix engineers are rolling on the floor right now saying "but, you're not hearing everything!"
If it sounds good ...
 
May not be the most optimum room but it's quite cool none the less!
I'm with ya on treatment overkill. It needs to sound like a real world room.

Yeah I know, the mix engineers are rolling on the floor right now saying "but, you're not hearing everything!"
If it sounds good ...

With you on that!
 
I've sketched where I think the desk could go (It seems like it could even move further back than I've drawn), with around 2-3' space behind the desk.

People definitely do go overkill with thin absorption, but most don't have enough bass traps. Bass traps, on their own, shouldn't suck the life out of a room. The corners take up so little of the room that you could completely fill them with bass traps and still have the vast majority of the walls still bare.

The bass in most rooms seriously needs to be tamed to have any idea of what's going on down there. I'm sure everyone here has experienced one note bass. And I'm also sure that everyone has listened back on headphones, to a track they have mixed through their monitors, and been amazed by what they had missed. Absorption in the first reflection points greatly improves your ability to hear what's going on in the mix!

No-one is suggesting you cover all the walls, just all the corners and the first reflection points. This keeps the liveliness of the room but still treats the major problems. This is all I, and most people here, suggest.
 

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Hey panda.

I agree. But i've seen some people go wall to wall with 2" panels, and I think thats wrong. I agree, kill the corners but creating a completely dead environment is just a bit overkill.

Yea, the desk can't go there. There is another part of the room which I have not photographed which would be blocked off if I put the desk there. Not to mention it would be a ton of room wasted. Surely the sloped ceiling on the right won't be too much of a problem? I always thought irregular shaping was better than symmetrical, but I could be wrong!
 
Hey panda.

I agree. But i've seen some people go wall to wall with 2" panels, and I think thats wrong. I agree, kill the corners but creating a completely dead environment is just a bit overkill.

Yea, the desk can't go there. There is another part of the room which I have not photographed which would be blocked off if I put the desk there. Not to mention it would be a ton of room wasted. Surely the sloped ceiling on the right won't be too much of a problem? I always thought irregular shaping was better than symmetrical, but I could be wrong!
Yeah. Well when people recommend bass traps, they're not talking about wall to wall 2" absorption. A dead environment is a horrible place to record/mix. No-one here, who knows anything about acoustics, is recommending that.

No, you want symmetry in a control room. If you don't have symmetry your stereo image will be skewed. Ah, I didn't know about that part of the room. I see it now that I know about it. Where I recommended wouldn't be symmetrical either then. What's the drum room like?

You could maybe get away with it where it is if you have solid back absorption panels in the first reflection points.
 
I can't really work out where my reflection points will be. One would be towards an angled wall, which would surely be enough to re-direct the reflection elsewhere? The other would be where the blind is in my room, so unless I get curtains or get a gobo I can move when I mix, then i'm not sure what I can do.

What about the wall behind the desk?

Should I make some 2" panels for the rear wall and one to hang on the door?

I'm very excited to see how these new VXT8's will sound in the room.. Can't wait to get rid of these damn Alesis MKII!
 
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