Finally, a decent sized room...

[M1Fanatic]

The room below used to be my workshop. I've built so much in there I've forgotten half of what it was already. I used it to finish one room in the basement that I've already posted photos of, but it was way too small for the gear and recording.

After two weeks of cleaning, throwing out stuff I just thought I better save and never used, a little re-arranging in a different part of the basement, I have a 10'x20' room. The ceiling is only 7' and it's going to get about 2" lower after the sub-floor is laid.

In the latter part of July, all of this will be moved once again so I can stud out the foundation walls and build the floor. In the mean time, since the room is far from treated, I can fool around and just have some fun before doing any serious recording again. In the months to come before starting to build, I'll be studying up on acoustic treating and find out how little I can get away with before taking a second morgage on the house.

It's not nearly as live sounding since the gear was moved in, but it has serious problems in the midrange and bass with the way it is now. Probably HF problems too, but I just can't tell.

Anyway, it's better than being cramped up in a 12x14 room no matter how good it sounded, but I have a long way to go.

 

[Weasel9992]

Several things before we start:

1.) Don't smoke around your gear.
2.) Don't lay your speakers on their sides. Chances are that they're not designed for that kind of placement.

After you handle those two little items, do the following:

• Make sure you setup so that you’re firing down the longest dimension of the room.
• Your head should be placed 38% of the way into the room, centered between the left and right walls
• Your head should also be located at the tip of an equilateral triangle with your speakers. Start at a 5’ width and go from there.
• Use at least 4” bass trapping in all the corners, floor to ceiling if possible.
• Use 4” or 6” bass traps on the back wall; the thicker the better basically.
• Use 4” panels behind the speakers on the front wall
• The reflection points to the right, left and above your head can be treated with either 2” or 4” panels. I prefer 4” panels personally; you can never really overdo bass trapping.
• In the case of larger rooms you can use diffusion on the right and left walls near the rear of the room, between your bass traps on the back wall or on the ceiling to the rear of your ceiling panels.

Frank

 

[M1Fanatic]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Regarding the 38% rule, That will put me 7'-6" from the back wall. This sacrifices a lot of space. I had thought about this before even cleaning out the shop area.

One solution I see is to move the keyboard stack to the back side of the mix table. However, I don't know how much room this will leave for actually sitting at the keyboards. The table is three feet deep, and the keyboard stack is about another two feet.

Another solution is to place the table legs on dollies and roll the table out from the wall to the mix position when that time comes. It can be left against the back wall for tracking and keep the space available for musicians/equipment.

The speakers will be turned 90° when I build some stands for them. Right now the bridge seems the best place for them and keeps them at ear level.

Lot's to do yet.

 

[Supercreep]

Sounds like a good compromise. I had to do that in my old studio as well, have a different setup for different phases of the record. The only issue was getting my ears used to the new setup. It took a few weeks each time.