Monitor Placement Question

[getuhgrip]

Right now my recording desk is facing a wall, with drums and other instruments behind me. Drums are almost 20' away. This means that I'd have to have mic cables some 35' long to reach out from my recorder.

That said, I'm considering turning my desk around, pointing towards the drums to get me off the wall and minimize cable lengths. My thought is to build a short half-wall to butt the desk up against to hide cables and just generally look more finished. This wall would only be the width (5 feet) of my desk, and match its 32" height.

This would place my monitors in "open air" with nothing behind them. Does this create any serious problems?

 

[Weasel9992]

Right now my recording desk is facing a wall, with drums and other instruments behind me. Drums are almost 20' away. This means that I'd have to have mic cables some 35' long to reach out from my recorder.

That said, I'm considering turning my desk around, pointing towards the drums to get me off the wall and minimize cable lengths. My thought is to build a short half-wall to butt the desk up against to hide cables and just generally look more finished. This wall would only be the width (5 feet) of my desk, and match its 32" height.

This would place my monitors in "open air" with nothing behind them. Does this create any serious problems?

No, but you do have to take great care about where that positioning leaves your head. 5' in a 20' room would place you squarely in the 1/4 wavelength null, which is a bad thing. You're going to want your head at 7'4" or so. Also, though there is certainly some debate about this, positioning yourself so that your monitors are firing at a wall just a few feet behind you may not be a very good idea. You may be causing much bigger problems by doing that than you're solving by moving the monitors away from the wall to begin with.

Frank