Help picking a room?

S

superelixir

New member
Up until now, I've been recording and mixing in my bedroom, with no treatment. I know treatment is important, but the problem is that my room is so cluttered (with rectangular furniture against the walls creating more corners) that I feel treatment might be more trouble than it's worth. I know this is not at all an ideal set-up, so I've been looking for alternatives. There are two other options for me:

- Very small, empty room in the basement. Off the top of my head, it is ~7' x 9' (I will try to measure it later), and one of the shorter walls opens into a larger room. I could either cover this opening with a hanging door, or leave it open. The advantage to this room is that nobody uses it for anything, and it would be really easy for me to treat (less wall-space and no clutter). One downside is that it is really cold down there (or maybe it isn't a downside? but not the best for my instruments).

- Large room with tall ceiling. I don't know the dimensions, but it is also rectangular. Downsides are that I would not be able to treat it, and there is more ambient noise because the walls to the outside are not so thick. I'm thinking I could use this room if I want some natural reverb (the ceiling is over 20 feet high, slopes upward toward the middle), but since I can't get treatment for it, probably not a good place to set up.

My bedroom is small, or medium sized (don't know the dimensions, maybe 10' x 18'?) It is very cluttered with things, which makes it hard to spread out when I am recording, and makes it a problem to treat.

I am leaning towards the small room, but I would love to hear advice from you guys. Are there downsides to recording and mixing in such a small room? I am thinking that even with treatment, it might be hard to eliminate standing waves and choppy short delays...
 
It's not a dumb question, but there's no good answer. Can you move some of your "stuff" into the 7x9 room to allow treating your current room?

--Ethan
 
Not really... Most of it is furniture (a bed, closet, dresser, etc.) around the walls. It means there are a lot of extra corners and parallel walls in my room that would be hard to treat.

So is 7x9 suboptimal?

P.S. I just read an article on surface reflectivity... written by you! Cool stuff. :thumbs up:
 
superelixir said:
Are there downsides to recording and mixing in such a small room? I am thinking that even with treatment, it might be hard to eliminate standing waves and choppy short delays...
Click to expand...

Yes there are - just like what you've enumerated, and is quite difficult to even fit a drumset in such a room comfortably, let alone to get a good recording out of it. My drumset is on a. 8' x 10' rug and I can't imagine if the walls went up at the edge of the rug. The 10' x 18' room seems ideal, the basement large area seems ideal for recording if you do full bands recording at the same time. All of the rooms would need treatment.

Furniture does not create extra acoustical corners btw. I mean it does, but when we talk about corners, we're talking about the actual boundaries of the room as that is where modes propagate. Those areas need to be treated with bass traps to eliminate standing waves and modal buildup, etc.

I think you'd get the best suggestions if you were able to post the dimensions of the room with the objects in it.
 
Okay, I will try to do that. I don't record drums by the way (mostly due to space limitations where I live), only guitar cabs and vocals.
 
room.png

So, I was a little bit off with my estimate. Here is a rough diagram of my room. I decided, if it is really necessary, I could get rid of all the furniture besides my bed (my room is signficantly smaller with the furniture around the walls).

If I go through with this, does anyone have advice on how to treat the room? Where should I position my mixing station, amps, etc.? Is it big enough to record drums in as well?
 
I thought that an 18' x 10' bedroom seemed pretty big, but I thought maybe you had the master...haha.

I would move the bed to the bottom right and position your mixing position along the 11' length, but I'm still not sure if you could fit a drumset in there. A typical kit takes up AT LEAST 6' x 4' for a small one. The large room seems the best bet for recording, I take it it is your living room?
 
The big room is sort of like a porch, added onto the outside of the building. The problem is the room is so big I'd never be able to treat it, and there's a pretty strong reverb that I don't think I would like in all of my recordings...

For the drumset, I wouldn't mind if it crowded the room. I'm just wondering if it would be possible to get a good sound out of it.

Any advice for guitar cab placement? Or is that not as important?
 
Ah, I understand. I think the amount of panels you'd need in the small room to get a neutral sound would probably end up costing you the same as treating the larger room since you won't have to focus on low frequency issues so much...though on a very small budget, it might make more sense to use the small room. The drums would sound good enough if the room were treated a lot, but the room would need to be quite dry. To put it simply, you either want a room with great ambiance that you can capture, or a room with no ambiance. Typical small room ambiance does not sound good on a drum recording..

Typically, I suggest guitar cabs against the wall so you don't get any SBIR effects, and experiment more with mic placement.
 
Okay. Sometimes I prefer a dry drum sound, so that wouldn't be the end of the world, and I guess if I really wanted something else I could temporarily move my set up into the big room...

One thing I should've mentioned is that I have two windows--one in the middle of the top wall and one in the bottom right (on the right-hand wall). I would prefer not to cover the windows with treatment. Does that change anything? Should I angle the monitors so that they aren't pointing directly at the window in the bottom right?
 
Any advice for treating this room (in the diagram I posted)? It will be used for both recording (mostly vocals and guitar cabs, maybe bass cabs as well) and mixing. Is there any way to make a room this size (7.5' ceiling) sound decent, without making it completely anechoic?
 
The basics are:

* As many corner bass traps as you can manage, including wall-ceiling and wall-floor corners.

* Absorbers at the side-wall and ceiling early reflection points.

* Absorbers or diffusers on the rear wall behind you.

Do that and your small room can be fine. More elaboration here:

Acoustic Basics

Also, small rooms need to be mostly dead. A large room can give a pleasing ambience, but small room ambience usually sounds like a small room. Better to make it mostly dead, then you can add better quality reverb and ambience with plug-ins while mixing.

--Ethan
 
Thanks Ethan. A few more specific questions:

- How would you recommend treating the little cut-away in the bottom-left corner of the room? It seems like a place a lot of bass energy could accumulate there, since there are two corners right next to each other. I can't treat both corners (unless I use foam) because the treatment would block the door from opening. One option is to set up a large bass trap with a stand, blocking off (most of) that area while I am recording or monitoring--would that help?

- Say the mixing desk is on the north side of the room. I would want absorbers at first-reflection points, on either side wall and on the ceiling. Where should I put guitar/bass amps with respect to the mixing desk--is there any way to do it so that there is "overlap" between the reflection points? Or will I simply need to treat the amps in a similar fashion? Besides first-reflection points, are there any other "rules of thumb" for setting up absorbers/diffusers throughout the room?
 
superelixir said:
Thanks Ethan. A few more specific questions:

- How would you recommend treating the little cut-away in the bottom-left corner of the room? It seems like a place a lot of bass energy could accumulate there, since there are two corners right next to each other. I can't treat both corners (unless I use foam) because the treatment would block the door from opening. One option is to set up a large bass trap with a stand, blocking off (most of) that area while I am recording or monitoring--would that help?

- Say the mixing desk is on the north side of the room. I would want absorbers at first-reflection points, on either side wall and on the ceiling. Where should I put guitar/bass amps with respect to the mixing desk--is there any way to do it so that there is "overlap" between the reflection points? Or will I simply need to treat the amps in a similar fashion? Besides first-reflection points, are there any other "rules of thumb" for setting up absorbers/diffusers throughout the room?
Click to expand...

A panel on a stand would work well in that area in the corner. It will still sound quite boomy standing back there, but the goal is to get it so that it doesn't affect mix decisions.
There is no 'first reflection point' that needs treatment for an amp per-se. First reflection point treatment is for critical monitoring, not necessarily for recording. As any time you move the mic you're changing where the 'first reflection' points are. Also, many amp speakers are more directional than a typical monitor loudspeaker, so first reflections of an amp would be much lower gain than typical early reflection points. The better idea is just to use panels in front of or around the amp so that no loud reflections can be recorded by the mic.
 
As already recommended, you should try to treat the room as much as possible with trapping in every corner available plus walls and ceiling treated as much as possible - not just reflection points. This will make the available living space smaller, but you will have better results from your mixing.
Remember that most of the above recommended treatment is ONLY a starting point.. minimum, if you will. That's what you need to start making it accurate in that room.
Cheers,
John
 
Thanks, that makes sense.

Right now I have 4 GIK Monster bass traps as well as 10 2x4 2" OC703 panels. I am planning to make frames for the 2" panels so that they have a 2" air pocket in the back, and I might combine a few of them to make two 4" panels for the ceiling (since it would be lighter without the wooden frame).

So altogether there would be one bass trap in each corner, 6 2" panels with 2" air pocket on the walls and 2 4" panels on the ceiling (for early reflection points). How is that for starters? Do I need any additional bass traps for the corners? Should I look into getting diffusers?
 
superelixir said:
..... So altogether there would be one bass trap in each corner, 6 2" panels with 2" air pocket on the walls and 2 4" panels on the ceiling (for early reflection points). How is that for starters? Do I need any additional bass traps for the corners? Should I look into getting diffusers?
Click to expand...

It's a great start! Diffusers; I don't know. What are shooting for? RFZ? if so, then yes. You should definitely trap the back wall as you do not want hard reflections from there. Definitely look to be putting up corner traps.
How far will you be from the back wall?

Cheers,
John
 
superelixir said:
Thanks, that makes sense.

Right now I have 4 GIK Monster bass traps as well as 10 2x4 2" OC703 panels. I am planning to make frames for the 2" panels so that they have a 2" air pocket in the back, and I might combine a few of them to make two 4" panels for the ceiling (since it would be lighter without the wooden frame).

So altogether there would be one bass trap in each corner, 6 2" panels with 2" air pocket on the walls and 2 4" panels on the ceiling (for early reflection points). How is that for starters? Do I need any additional bass traps for the corners? Should I look into getting diffusers?
Click to expand...

That's definitely a good start. I would look into doing some full thick traps in the corners like the TriTraps or Soffits to get under 80 Hz.
I would look to double up some of those traps to 4" thick - 2" helps with high end reflections a bit but really doesn't give full range treatment. The air gaps will also help a little bit. Diffusors can be helpful for breaking up flutter echo and other reflection problems without deadening the room, but can also be used to provide good diffuse returns to listening position depending on what you're shooting for and how far you are from them.
 
jhbrandt said:
It's a great start! Diffusers; I don't know. What are shooting for? RFZ? if so, then yes. You should definitely trap the back wall as you do not want hard reflections from there. Definitely look to be putting up corner traps.
How far will you be from the back wall?
Click to expand...

I am trying to create a reflection-free zone for the listening position, but also to deaden the room and tighten the bass in general, for tracking loud guitar cabs and vocals. The listening position will be around 9' or 10' from the back wall.

I'll definitely look into getting more bass traps, and maybe diffusers. I like the idea of fixing reflection problems without deadening the room, but diffusers seem to be less cost effective than panels (at least in terms of area per $)...
 
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