Help setting up this room.

[Slowjett]

Hey guys, we moved so now we are in a new (old 1880) house. We took the upstairs down to the studs, removed all the plaster. I ran eletricty and lights, insulated (all of which these rooms did not have) drywalled, added windows ect. ect.. and now Im using one of the newly renovated (but not finished) rooms while the studio is waiting to be built.

This room is 12'x10'7" here is a drawing of the layout.

 

[Slowjett]

 

[Slowjett]

I will be using this room for mixing and recording vocals/acoustic guitar. That desk will suck for DAW usage so I will probably have to come up with something better. Any recommendations of layout and absorption would be awesome.

I dont want to go crazy, and I wont to avoid putting a lot of holes in the wall /ceiling. I just want to get a decent situation to get this album finished.

All your advice would be appreciated!

thanks,
Josh

 

[obsidian3d]

Don't put the desk in a corner. I'd recommend putting it in the middle of the wall opposite the door (the south wall in your drawing). You'll also probably want to cover the windows with something on the inside.

 

[Ethan Winer]

All your advice would be appreciated!

A room like that gets the same general advice I give everyone else for every other such room.

Here's the short version which will get you 99 percent of the way there. All rooms need:

* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps straddling as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners. More bass traps on the rear wall behind helps even further. You simply cannot have too much bass trapping. Real bass trapping, that is - thin foam and thin fiberglass don't work to a low enough frequency.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.

* Some additional amount of mid/high absorption and/or diffusion on any large areas of bare parallel surfaces, such as opposing walls or the ceiling if the floor is reflective. Diffusion on the rear wall behind you is also useful in larger rooms.

For the complete story see my Acoustics FAQ.

There's a lot of additional non-sales technical information on my company's web site - articles, videos, test tones and other downloads, and much more. In particular, see this article:

How to set up a room

--Ethan