How to design the control room?

T

THD

New member
The room is 10x17 what would be a better design...

THE WIDE ROOM...

set up so that the monitor postition is in the center of the 17ft wall

or

THE LONG ROOM...

set up so that the monitor postition is in the center of the 10ft wall
 
Most would suggest to keep the back wall as far away from the mixing position as possible to help keep the early reflections down. So thats means setup shop on the short wall.

Ron
 
Until your longest dimension is at least 24 feet, I'd agree with everyone so far... Steve
 
After reading this, I have ambivilant feelings....here is a little bit from it in case you don't want to read the whole thing. This IS from a listening perspective, but it still makes me wonder.

The close proximity of the head to the rear wall has two effects. At the room boundaries (walls) the room nodes are suppressed - because the sound pressure is high
and the velocity is low. Sitting in the maximum pressure area gives the best perception of deep bass. Secondly, the reflections are shorter than the circumference of
the head, so the brain cannot measure the time delay between the ears. When the brain cannot localize reflections it ignores them. Here is a simple example of how
the brain ignores unwanted or unessential information. Imagine the situation of being in a noisy public place and conversing with the person next to you. Even though
a recording made from your listening position would sound like random noise, you can follow the conversation. If you hear your name spoken several feet away, you
can change your focus, and “listen in” on the other conversation. Our brains do this automatically all the time to, for example, filter out the annoying natural resonance
of a room to facilitate speech, or to identify potential dangers.
To sum up, it is usually best to locate the listening position so the first information to arrive at the ears is from the speaker and the secondary reflections arrive much
later and at a much lower volume. Place the listening chair near the rear wall, because the distance ( 1 to 3 feet ) is too short for the brain to measure the time delay
and locate the source of the reflection. Also, it places you at the room boundary where the perception of bass is greatest. In regards to the bass reinforcement
advantage, we will expand on that in the next section.
Click to expand...

http://www.immediasound.com/Speaker_set-up.htm


Whats the difference?

fitZ
 
Between listening to mics in another room, and pre-recorded material. This concept of early reflections has bothered me for a long time. And I've said it before. I see arguments about reflections off the console, sidewalls etc, but if the mind integrates direct sounds and reflections that arrive within, what is it, 20ms or so?, then what are they talking about? A side wall 5 or even 10 feet either side of the engineering position, would still create reflections within this time frame. A rear wall within 10 feet of your head, would too. So IF this is true, then it would seem to me that the axis of the room makes no difference, as long as the side and rear walls reflect sounds that arrive at the engineering position within this frame. Now remember Steve, I'm only looking for logic. Its the only thing I have to dispell myth.
So following this logic, if the point of Time Delay Gap is to create a time gap between direct and indirect sound longer in the control room than in the studio, then unless you have two rooms for your studio, there is no merit to it for one room home studios. If you are trying to create a RFZ, which is only effective at mid and hi Z anyway(guessing) then in small rooms with walls within 10 ft of the monitoring position, you can't do it anyway. So why would axis make any difference? This article tells me, in VERY small rooms, such as a 9x11 ft, it makes more sense to make the axis on the short dimension. But you tell me. All I know is I had a bedroom studio that size, and I DID monitor on the long axis, but hated it. As soon as I moved everything to the short axis, whereby the rearwall was within 4' of the back of my head, and the side walls were a foot farther, imaging and overall sound to my way of thinking was WAY better. Of course, I'm no experienced engineer, or did not have a 2 room studio. I recorded in the same room as I listened to the recordings in, and had to monitor live in headphones. But I sure liked the sound of speakers on the short axis.

fitZ
 
Rick, my answers to this will end up longer than I have time for right now, but I'll try to get back to it when I can - basically, just because your brain integrates info that happens within 20 ms does NOT mean that it's a GOOD thing - summing and canceling still happens, which screws up percieved frequency response and affects decisions on EQ, balance, etc -

WSDG recommends speakers on the long wall in order to lengthen the reflection time to side walls, but that's in a bit larger than "home recording" sized rooms. John recommends the opposite. I think there's quite a bit more to it. That's the part I'll have to "raincheck" you on, slap me with a dead skunk if I forget for more than a day or so... Steve
 
long room or wide room? I still don't know which one to pick.
Click to expand...


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:rolleyes:


fitZ:p
 
Are you building everything in place, or can you change things around later?

In that size room, I'd put the speakers on the short wall, absorb the front heavily (the wall that's in front of you when you're sitting in front of the speakers) , put some angled baffles at either side of the mix position with their front-most edges closer together by about a foot on each side, and absorb the rear wall. Preferably no carpet around the mix position, and a 2-3" rigid fiberglas or rockwool "cloud" over the mix position.

If the side baffles interfere with vision lines through the window, get a piece of 1/2" plexiglas and position it on the window side - that way, you can see through it but it will still improve speaker imaging by re-directing early reflections... Steve
 
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