Set Up Questions About This Space

[Muddy T-Bone]

I will soon have this room as my new studio. 14' X 15' X 8' height. My questions are-

1-Should the carpet be replaced with wood or any reflective surface? And why is carpet not ideal for a studio?

2-Should I install horizontal or verticle blinds over the windows to reduce the acoustic reflectvity of the glass?

3-Should the desk be in front of the windows

4-There are two walk in closets on the left. Each one is 6'W x 3"D x 8' high. Should I remove the doors? I was thinking about treating 1 closet and using that as a vocal booth. Good idea or bad idea?

5-My plan is to use this room for recording as well as mixing. As I understand it the recording room should have some liveliness to it, but the mixing room should be well treated and less reflective or lively. Understanding I can't have an ideal room acoustically for both recording and mixing, how do I go about treating it to get a useful compromize?

Chime in with any thoughts and considerations.

 

[Muddy T-Bone]

Any suggestions?

 

[warartistrecord]

Since you're going to be mixing in the room, the first thing to do would be to set up your desk so that your monitors would point towards the longest dimension of the room centered horizontally. Watch these videos on youtube. They offer some basic tips for setting up your room, etc. The episodes are all basically the same, but you'll learn some basic principles if you haven't yet.
Also, the person to as in this forum about acoustics is Ethan Winer, he offers a lot of good advice to people. He knows his stuff too: he owns an acoustic treatment company.

 

[Ethan Winer]

1-Should the carpet be replaced with wood or any reflective surface? And why is carpet not ideal for a studio?

Carpet is fine, but it's not needed.

2-Should I install horizontal or verticle blinds over the windows to reduce the acoustic reflectvity of the glass?

3-Should the desk be in front of the windows

Yes, put your desk in front of the window, and then you won't need to worry about reflections from there.

4-There are two walk in closets on the left. Each one is 6'W x 3"D x 8' high. Should I remove the doors? I was thinking about treating 1 closet and using that as a vocal booth. Good idea or bad idea?

Symmetry is important, so probably best to leave the doors as they are and think of that as the left wall. I'm not a fan of vocal booths unless they're really needed:

Do I really need a vocal booth?

5-My plan is to use this room for recording as well as mixing. As I understand it the recording room should have some liveliness to it, but the mixing room should be well treated and less reflective or lively. Understanding I can't have an ideal room acoustically for both recording and mixing, how do I go about treating it to get a useful compromize?

You can absolutely have one room for both recording and mixing. That's what I do, and so do many others. But the notion that a small room's ambience is useful for recording is misguided. You don't need to make the room totally dead, but it should be dead enough to not add a sound of its own.

More here:

How to set up a room
Acoustic Basics

--Ethan

 

[Muddy T-Bone]

Thanks Ethan.

The video's are quite helpful as were your answers. Do you recommend replacing the hollow cheap door on the room with a solid core door?

I noticed that the studio in you video had wood paneling on the walls. Is this an aestetic issue or to create a lively space?

 

[Ethan Winer]

Do you recommend replacing the hollow cheap door on the room with a solid core door?

For acoustic improvement? I wouldn't bother replacing the door unless it has an obvious resonance.

I noticed that the studio in you video had wood paneling on the walls. Is this an aestetic issue or to create a lively space?

Wood walls "sound" about the same as drywall, so the appeal of wood is mainly appearance. More here:

Surface Reflectivity

--Ethan

 

[Muddy T-Bone]

For acoustic improvement? I wouldn't bother replacing the door unless it has an obvious resonance.

Wood walls "sound" about the same as drywall, so the appeal of wood is mainly appearance. More here:

Surface Reflectivity

--Ethan

More great information, thank you Ethan.

I forgot to ask about the window treatment to cut down on reflectivity. Are wooden (horizontal or verticle) blinds a good solution? I use them in my current studio when I record, and I close them at about a 45 deg angle to cut some acoustic reflections from the glass. Does window treatment even matter?

 

[Ethan Winer]

Windows matter only if they're at loudspeaker reflection points, or near to microphones or instruments when recording. I wouldn't expect much benefit from wooden blinds, but maybe that would help a little. I think proper absorbers or diffusers are a better solution to avoiding reflections.

--Ethan

 

[Muddy T-Bone]

Windows matter only if they're at loudspeaker reflection points, or near to microphones or instruments when recording. I wouldn't expect much benefit from wooden blinds, but maybe that would help a little. I think proper absorbers or diffusers are a better solution to avoiding reflections.

--Ethan

Ethan,

The mixing desk will be right in front of the windows, which places the tweeter height perpendicular and maybe 16-24" away from the glass.

Since the room is 15'9" x 14'10" the mics and instruments will be near the glass, because the room is so small.

I will study what you have for absorbers and diffusers. Would you recommend both in combination or 1 over the other ?

 

[GIK Acoustics]

Ethan,

The mixing desk will be right in front of the windows, which places the tweeter height perpendicular and maybe 16-24" away from the glass.

Since the room is 15'9" x 14'10" the mics and instruments will be near the glass, because the room is so small.

I will study what you have for absorbers and diffusers. Would you recommend both in combination or 1 over the other ?

Considering the room isn't completely tiny, you can definitely get some great results with a mixture of both. Since its a recording room, diffusion would be great - or even absorbers with slats (or building your own with slats, something like this: GIK Acoustics Scatter Plate - GIK AcousticsAcoustic Panels | Bass Traps | Diffusors | GIK Acoustics) so you get bass absorption, scattering, and diffusion in the room. This way you can get clean recordings without killing the ambiance in the room.

 

[Muddy T-Bone]

Thanks Alex.

I watched all the videos and a much better understanding now of the various treatments and what they do.

Yes, I do not want the ambiance of the room killed, in fact one of the products seemed to give the illusion of a larger space.

Often, I will take my gear to the dining room/ family room to record. Its a wonderful sounding room , with nice natural 'verb. 28' X 16' with 14' ceilings. Acoustically the room, is much larger yet as its an L "shape". Point being the the sound of a large room is significantly better than my current studio. So if anything, the idea of killing off bass peaks and nulls while ehancing ambiance, and possibly giving the perception acoutsically of a larger room is appealing to me.

 

[GIK Acoustics]

Thanks Alex.

I watched all the videos and a much better understanding now of the various treatments and what they do.

Yes, I do not want the ambiance of the room killed, in fact one of the products seemed to give the illusion of a larger space.

Often, I will take my gear to the dining room/ family room to record. Its a wonderful sounding room , with nice natural 'verb. 28' X 16' with 14' ceilings. Acoustically the room, is much larger yet as its an L "shape". Point being the the sound of a large room is significantly better than my current studio. So if anything, the idea of killing off bass peaks and nulls while ehancing ambiance, and possibly giving the perception acoutsically of a larger room is appealing to me.

This "illusion" is usually referred to when talking about diffusion and scattering, but I'll elaborate in case anyone isn't aware of why its called an "illusion" and how it works.

Localization is our ability to pick out where a sound is coming from. If a room was 100% diffuse, completely, everywhere (which is impossible), and had speakers playing music, it would sound like it is coming equally from everywhere. This is the OPPOSITE of localization. You aren't able to pick out where the sound comes from.

The goal of diffusion is usually to "reduce" localization of reflections. This means you can hear the direct sounds from your speakers or from an instrument, but any reflections from walls don't come from a specific direction. This means you can still get great ambiance, but have it somewhat sound more like actual "reverb" instead of reflections, and is why it can give an illusion of a larger room.