Ok so i measured my room..... erm... now what?

N

Neeps

New member
I got myself a radioshack spl meter and downloaded the free Room Eq Wizard software from Home Theater Shack after reading an article in Sound On Sound magazine.

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I think I followed all the instructions correctly. The graph above shows the results that I got. The straight line is something called target. The wavy line is the average response over 2 seperate readings.

I also managed to make Room Eq generate a waterfall thingy. It all looks very pretty but if I'm honest I have no idea what it all means!!

Can anyone enlighten me?

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The second chart (the waterfall) shows the decay times at the various frequencies where the first one is purely frequency response. Try setting the visible scale on both from 20-200Hz and the window depth of the waterfall to about 500ms.

When you have the room properly controlled, the peaks in the waterfall should be down at the base and disappear by 300ms or so in most rooms.

Bryan
 
Ok i changed the graphs to show from 20-200hz.

At the moment I haven't treated my room at all. Details and measurements to follow.
 
All rooms need help in the low mids. Your best places to aborb in that room would probably be the corners and the peak in the middle. If you placed a long line of 2'x4' absorbers down the center hanging a few feet it should help a lot.

Are you getting any weird reflections or ringy echoes off the angled ceiling? Putting the traps along the peak should help for that also.
 
The room is great fun to play in... but there is perhaps too much reverberation sometimes even just talking to each other can be a little difficult. I'd like to tame it a little without losing what is good about it at the moment. It's acoustic music so a bit of natural reverb is good right?

As it is now with no treatment it is impossible to monitor in this room because of the reverb. So while tracking we currently monitor with headphones and I'm happy with that. To compensate for the phones I make frequent checks against other material that I know has been recorded well. My main aim is to treat it to make it a great live recording room for tracking and worry about mixing later.

Is the acoustic treatment for a live room the same as for a mixing room? I'm guessing the answer is no. Well I only have one room so for now it's the tracking room and later it will be used as the mixing room... when that happens I'll be using the monitor speakers then and I'll make sure I buy some monitor stands to put them on!

I decided to post the pics right here cos the slideshow was a bit crap. Hope nobody is on dial-up.

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Looks nice. In a mixing room you usually want short reverb times of around 1/2 sec. For tracking you can you have whatever you like. The trick is to have the reverb be flat and not just a bunch of boomy midrange.

If you want to get really fancy you could place some 703 panels in a checkerboard pattern up on that lighting rack to create a "cloud". Then cover the entire area with some cloth to hide it.

You could use some baffles, large pieces of wood with fiberglass on one or both sides, that you can move around to help isolate stuff for when you need less bleed or a dryer sound.
 
bpape said:
When you have the room properly controlled, the peaks in the waterfall should be down at the base and disappear by 300ms or so in most rooms.

Bryan
Click to expand...

I seem to have peaks and troughs all over and they are still there after 500ms. And why is 60-200 hz much louder than anything below that? Less than 60hz is pretty low right? Does this matter for acoustic instruments? The bass might go in direct.
 
The .ms time is your reverb time and it's probably much longer then 500ms. That's just what your software is cutting off at. It's probably closer to 2 or 3 seconds.

A room is like a sound mirror and depending on the dimensions it will amplify or reduce certain frequencies. Your room, like most rooms, is amplifying the 60-200 hz range in comparison to the rest of the frequencies.
 
TexRoadkill said:
Are you getting any weird reflections or ringy echoes off the angled ceiling? Putting the traps along the peak should help for that also.
Click to expand...

No I don't hear any ringing. Just that the reverb time is too long.
 
Barn Owl said:
I was thinking of getting some readybags . Anyone had any experience with these?
Click to expand...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe those actually come with acoustic material. They're just 12 zip up bags worth 325 dollars.

Edit : Though if you have the money, and you're looking to buy bags, I guess they aren't bad.
 
eraos said:
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe those actually come with acoustic material. They're just 12 zip up bags worth 325 dollars.

Edit : Though if you have the money, and you're looking to buy bags, I guess they aren't bad.
Click to expand...

yeah, I think you're right...just the bags.

TexRoadkill-
I have a question...is there a suggested reverb decay time to try and get rooms to, or does it depend on the room and personal taste?
 
Like Tex said, it's about a half-second over the entire spectrum. Pro rooms can get down to less than a quarter-second RT-60.

I bet that is a fun room to play in. I wouldn't want to treat it. You're gonna need a pretty fair amount of 703 or Rockwool to tame that room. Is it finished in lathe&plaster or drywall???

You need some carpet in there as well. Like maybe a nice 8 x 10 or 9 x12 and then some small runners you can easily move around.
 
c7sus said:
Like Tex said, it's about a half-second over the entire spectrum. Pro rooms can get down to less than a quarter-second RT-60.
Click to expand...

oops, sorry I missed his first post. I just saw the last one. Thanks for that.
 
c7sus said:
I bet that is a fun room to play in. I wouldn't want to treat it. You're gonna need a pretty fair amount of 703 or Rockwool to tame that room. Is it finished in lathe&plaster or drywall???
Click to expand...

But I'm going to need to mix in here eventually cos it's the only room I have. So unless I mix with phones im's going to need to tame it for that part of the process.

It's mostly finished in lather and plaster. and behind that it's solid stone walls (apart from the roof), one side of the ceiling is pasterboard and one of the cupboards is plasterboard. Not sure why all the curves exist hope they aren't focusing the sound in a bad way. There used to be a big skylight in the roof and 50 years ago it was used as a photographers studio.
 
I can't believe nobody has asked about my pc monitor on wheels... I was quite proud of that! :)
 
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