Speaker positioning

vladadrian

New member
Hi! I started building a vocal booth in my home studio. Hopefully the photos are clear of the position of the booth. It's on the left side of my desk, really close to my left speaker. On the right side of the desk there is a big open space. Will that cause any problems for my mixes, as in, will it cause any extremely obvious reflections? What could I do to reduce any problems caused by that? It is kind of difficult for me to change the position of the desk in the room. Any suggestion or tip would be highly appreciated! Cheers!U4Yqo8.jpgFpYS7G.jpg
 
With your left speaker effectively sitting in a corner as a result of the vocal booth, you are likely to get an increased bass response from it.

I've never been convinced of the value of home-made vocal booths, and generally feel you don't get much better vocal recordings than you get simply recording in a room.

However, if you are committed to it, keep it and just bear in mind that it will have an effect on the response of the speakers.

As for reducing problems caused by it, unless you have already given acoustic treatment to the room to deal with any inherent problems it may have, I wouldn't worry about them.
 
There's two ways to approach this problem:

- With good ears and lots of time, start moving things till the sound pleases you. Especially the speakers, as you will have more bass on the left.

- Buy a measurement mic (60$). Download REW (free) and start measuring your room. You'll invest a lot of time too, but you'll learn something. And next time, you can do it in one tenth of the time.

It might also show if your vocal booth is worth the trouble.

I can assure you there will be a next time :D
 
Bass (in a room) is pretty non-directional so you probably won't notice where any extra LF support is coming from. What WILL happen due to that wall is that your stereo imaging will be buggered, especially since the wall is of 'finite' dimension, about 1mtr? That will put a 'step' in the response around the lower mids . Again you may not notice unless you have something to compare it with or can rig the speakers temporarily in another, more symmetrical space.

You could try a goodly layer of pyramid foam, 3"+ in the corner but few of us have anything like perfect rooms!

I agree about vocal booths being generally ***t! Unless you want a completely dead space in which to read the news.

Dave.
 
With all that sheetrock and no sound absorption, you've probably got a mess of sound already in that room. And unless you listen with you head almost on top of that keyboard, your speakers are too close together - you head and speakers should form an equilateral triangle.
 
That equilateral triangle is very much an internet invention. It all depends on your speakers and your room.

Some speakers come in a left/right config. Others are a bit more "omni". Some want to be closer together, others need a bit more space between them. Moving them just 10 cm can make a big difference, depending on the room.

I've had the recent case of a studio with a very persistent 125 Hz ghost reflection. After treatment, we couldn't pinpoint it. Found that it was the desk the mixer was sitting on. Tried making it less reflective. Didn't work. What worked in the end, was moving the Focal monitors about 7 cm wider...
 
I will use sound absorption panels. My question was more if sound absorption on that side of the vocal booth will be enough, or if I have to move desk in a whole different place. The speakers are currently close to eachother because I am changing to a bigger desk in a few days and I just placed them on those small stands in the meantime.
 
There's two ways to approach this problem:

- With good ears and lots of time, start moving things till the sound pleases you. Especially the speakers, as you will have more bass on the left.

- Buy a measurement mic (60$). Download REW (free) and start measuring your room. You'll invest a lot of time too, but you'll learn something. And next time, you can do it in one tenth of the time.

It might also show if your vocal booth is worth the trouble.

I can assure you there will be a next time :D

Thank you for the info. I will look for a measurement mic. The reason I am building the vocal booth is because I live close to an elementary school, so it's pretty loud all the time. I am also renting the house, so I cannot make any changes to it (like soundproofing).
 
With your left speaker effectively sitting in a corner as a result of the vocal booth, you are likely to get an increased bass response from it.

I've never been convinced of the value of home-made vocal booths, and generally feel you don't get much better vocal recordings than you get simply recording in a room.

However, if you are committed to it, keep it and just bear in mind that it will have an effect on the response of the speakers.

As for reducing problems caused by it, unless you have already given acoustic treatment to the room to deal with any inherent problems it may have, I wouldn't worry about them.

I kind of have to build it. I live in a loud area, the house has thin walls. I just want something "semi-portable" that I can just dismantle and reuse in case I move to a different place.
 
"That equilateral triangle is very much an internet invention." ?? How old are you Mr C?

The triangle idea goes back to the very first days of stereo when peeps had trains running thru their homes!

The discussion of monitors, rooms and treatment often, it seems to me, to be confused about good LF performance, trapping, and good stereo imaging. The two things are not related.

The whole "theory" of Near Field Monitoring is that it gives good imaging with LITTLE influence from the room. Yes, you need to be aware of 'reflection points' but generally imaging is pretty good for most rooms 'out of the box'.

Of course, monitors vary. It is a general rule that the very best imaging is given by a 'Co-Incident' speaker system and they also tend to deliver a wider 'sweet spot' . Three way monitors also tend to be better because most of the relevant information is coming from one (per side) quite small radiator.

For more on this look up the "Studio SOS" articles in SoS magazine.

Dave.
 
That equilateral triangle is very much an internet invention.

:D

I think the "internet invention" part is that many people have a lot of misconceptions of it's use/value...which is why you see speakers placed every which way, and with little acoustic principals behind it.
The notion that you just move them around until you think it sounds good is certainly one of those inventions. ;)

Speaker placement is an exact science...and there is the ideal, and then from there everything else is less than ideal.
Now...if you have some weird room layout or constricted space that prevents from placing them ideally...that's a different issue, and one that isn't solved by then changing the placement of the speakers to suit the room. Sure, you may find an OK listening position, but you can't fix the room by just moving the speakers around...and you won't get ideal accuracy and proper response if they are not placed in the ideal position.
It's all connected. :)

This is the optimal setup...which I'm positive at least 80% of the home rec people don't even come close to, mostly because their spaces or their setups don't permit it. Not saying you can't mix with some unorthodox setup...just that this is a best-case setup:

https://www.carltatzdesign.com/acoustic-tools/the-null-positioning-ensemble.pdf
 
Cyrano probably meant "urban myth" or "[internet] myth".

Can you tilt your workstation desk so it sits in the corner where the booth is, rather than next to it? I think CoolCat was eluding to this in their post. I'm suggesting just adjusting the placement of the desk where it current resides next to the booth.

You'll lose a foot or two of space behind you/in the center of the room, but it will make each side (more) similar in reflective properties.
 
I kind of have to build it. I live in a loud area, the house has thin walls. I just want something "semi-portable" that I can just dismantle and reuse in case I move to a different place.

Sure, I understand. Many people do not have the luxury of properly designed recording spaces, and are operating in sub-optimal conditions. Sometimes you just have to make do with what you have, rather than what you should have, so just build the booth and hope for the best. If it's semi-portable, you can dismantle it if it creates problems.
 
Have you ever seen a studio where the speakers are in an equidistant triangle with the listening position? I sure as hell never saw one. And I was in a lot of studios...

It's part of the near-field myth. Speakers are speakers. "Near-field" is a marketing trick to sell small speakers.
 
Have you ever seen a studio where the speakers are in an equidistant triangle with the listening position? I sure as hell never saw one. And I was in a lot of studios...

It's part of the near-field myth. Speakers are speakers. "Near-field" is a marketing trick to sell small speakers.

Do a google image search for 'recording studio mixing room' - you'll be surprised. We're talking about mixing environments, here, not just 'listening rooms.
And 'nearfield' is not a marketing trick, etiher. This is a rather old article (hence hte old monitor suggestions): Studio Monitors - Nearfields | B&H Explora
 
From that article: "Nearfield" is a reference to the range of frequencies the speaker is capable of replicating".

So, basically that means it's a speaker with low bass response? That goes for most, if not all so-called bookshelf speakers.

Just like there are no "studio monitors". The clearest example is the Yamaha NS10 you can find as a reference in a lot of studio's. It's a failed hifi speakers that was on sale because Yamaha wanted to get rid of it. One famous producer picked up a couple of pairs cause it was dirt-cheap. People tend to copy behaviour, so now a pair of these Yamaha's fetches a ridiculous price. And Yamaha has re-released these speakers in at least five different models, including even a 5.1 version.

And I was referring to real pro studio's. Never seen one with speakers in a triangle. Just look at the pics. Here's one example:

AbbeyRoad-BW.jpg
 
Ahh...the big studios don't have challenged mixing environments like a home/project studio has...so the whole "nearfield" concept is not relevant.

Also...like in the pic above...there are multiple speaker options...and if you look, it's plainly obvious they are toed in based on the amount of their spread.
Of course, with that many speakers they can't all be in the ideal spot...so the different toe-in angles have to account for that.

In my own setup, my main monitors are set perfectly as per the diagram I linked...but my second pair which sit inside of the main ones are not toed in 30 degrees, and they are obviously not as far apart...same as you see in the picture.
Toe-in of 30 degrees is not absolute...it can be 20-45 degrees, based in your speaker's sound desperation characteristics...but the equidistant triangle is key...and the size of the triangle has an optimum number, with minor fluctuations that will still provide a realistic and accurate stereo image.

For perfect, accurate stereo imaging you have to stick to the "myth"...but just to listen, yeah, you can put them any way you like, but it's not ideal.
If you set up a pair according to the diagram...and then set up a pair any old way...you will easily hear the difference in the accuracy of the stereo image being produced by each pair.
For challenged home/project spaces accuracy is hard enough to come by...so sticking close to ideal is important.

http://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1001.pdf

https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3276.pdf

https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_274-hoeg.pdf

https://www.grammy.com/sites/com/files/pages/SurroundRecommendations.pdf
 
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