ashcat_lt
Well-known member
I've been mixing in this living room for a few years now. Even without treatment, it has always sounded pretty good. It's about 12 x 21 x 8.5, so almost big enough for decent near field monitoring, and it kind of opens to the rest of the house behind this and like half the walls are just flimsy paneling, so the bass tends to blow through them without quite so much chance to bounce around and mess things up. It wasn't really ideal, but since I listen to everything from Netflix to my music collection on these speakers in this room, I got pretty familiar with it and I feel like the mixes I've done here have been some of the best I've ever achieved.
I was, however, working around a few issues. The side walls are a little too close for comfort. Worse yet, one side is paneling and the other is a window, so it's not really symmetrical. And of course, while the bass wasn't bad, and I have some "poor man's bass traps" (bags of old clothes and fabric) in some of the floor/wall corners, it can always use some tightening up.
Now, a big problem in this particular room is that I can't really fuck with the front or left side wall. The homeowner put a bunch of money into that fancy wood treatment you see in the picture, and of course there's also the big window on the left, so no way of really attaching more traditional panels. The attic is full of blown in insulation, so attaching a cloud to the ceiling would be likewise problematic. So anything I did pretty much had to be free standing.
So I did this:
It really is almost a room-within-a-room. Both walls and the ceiling are constructed pretty much like basic stud walls, 15" on center with R30 pink stuff in between. There is no hard surface to them, though. The kraft facing is on the outside, so any high frequencies that might bounce back from that has to go through the insulation twice anyway. I just happened to have two rolls of that weed-stop fabric used in landscaping that is a pretty fine, tight weave, but completely breathable, and that turned out to be exactly (like just barely!) enough to cover the "inside" of these things. This covers the front 8' of the room, but it's built in 4' sections to make it easier to get in, up, down, and out.
The mix position is almost nuts on that magic 39% spot everybody talks about, which puts it pretty much right at the edge of the panels so they are completely covering all of the reflections between the speakers and my head. We're not actually catching first reflections behind the speakers, of course, but I went all the way back to the corners because: 1) It still covers the floor/wall, wall/ceiling, and wall/wall corners to help with bass trapping and B) eventually I'm going to stick a couple pairs of speakers up in those front corners, so the reflections from those will be covered too.
We also build a simple box that sits behind the rack/screen there to isolate some of the horrible fan noise from two computers and a hard disk recorder that had been really pissing me off. ATM, I've got a couple of extra bales of insulation batts just propped up (and covered with fabric) in the front corners for added bass trapping. Eventually, that will be hidden by some shelving, and whatever structure I end up building to hold those speakers in the corners will include some more trapping action as well.
It made a lot more difference than I thought. The stereo image now is honestly kind of scary well defined. The low end which had been pretty good already is now noticeably tighter and flatter. It really is a case of I didn't really know how far off it was until I fixed it. It sounded good, but often good and accurate aren't quite the same thing. It's actually taking me a bit to get used to things after the change, but I'm already hearing a difference in the couple mixes I've made since the build. I've got ideas for things I might eventually do to make it look a little nicer, but that was never really even on the priorities list.
I was, however, working around a few issues. The side walls are a little too close for comfort. Worse yet, one side is paneling and the other is a window, so it's not really symmetrical. And of course, while the bass wasn't bad, and I have some "poor man's bass traps" (bags of old clothes and fabric) in some of the floor/wall corners, it can always use some tightening up.
Now, a big problem in this particular room is that I can't really fuck with the front or left side wall. The homeowner put a bunch of money into that fancy wood treatment you see in the picture, and of course there's also the big window on the left, so no way of really attaching more traditional panels. The attic is full of blown in insulation, so attaching a cloud to the ceiling would be likewise problematic. So anything I did pretty much had to be free standing.
So I did this:
It really is almost a room-within-a-room. Both walls and the ceiling are constructed pretty much like basic stud walls, 15" on center with R30 pink stuff in between. There is no hard surface to them, though. The kraft facing is on the outside, so any high frequencies that might bounce back from that has to go through the insulation twice anyway. I just happened to have two rolls of that weed-stop fabric used in landscaping that is a pretty fine, tight weave, but completely breathable, and that turned out to be exactly (like just barely!) enough to cover the "inside" of these things. This covers the front 8' of the room, but it's built in 4' sections to make it easier to get in, up, down, and out.
The mix position is almost nuts on that magic 39% spot everybody talks about, which puts it pretty much right at the edge of the panels so they are completely covering all of the reflections between the speakers and my head. We're not actually catching first reflections behind the speakers, of course, but I went all the way back to the corners because: 1) It still covers the floor/wall, wall/ceiling, and wall/wall corners to help with bass trapping and B) eventually I'm going to stick a couple pairs of speakers up in those front corners, so the reflections from those will be covered too.
We also build a simple box that sits behind the rack/screen there to isolate some of the horrible fan noise from two computers and a hard disk recorder that had been really pissing me off. ATM, I've got a couple of extra bales of insulation batts just propped up (and covered with fabric) in the front corners for added bass trapping. Eventually, that will be hidden by some shelving, and whatever structure I end up building to hold those speakers in the corners will include some more trapping action as well.
It made a lot more difference than I thought. The stereo image now is honestly kind of scary well defined. The low end which had been pretty good already is now noticeably tighter and flatter. It really is a case of I didn't really know how far off it was until I fixed it. It sounded good, but often good and accurate aren't quite the same thing. It's actually taking me a bit to get used to things after the change, but I'm already hearing a difference in the couple mixes I've made since the build. I've got ideas for things I might eventually do to make it look a little nicer, but that was never really even on the priorities list.
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