Room EQ Wizard - Dealing with modes

[ClassicalGuitarGuy]

Hi,

I have a small homestudio in which I mostly record classical music (but also mobil in other places), mostly classical guitar.
My Studio Monitors are Neumann KH120 and I use a RME Fireface UFX.
I recently measured my Room and as you can see, the results are not so good...

The main issues in my opinion are the modes at 50 Hz and the gap at 114 Hz. Do you have any ideas to solve these? I know that the mode at 50 Hz is not easy to deal with.

Because I don't have to deal with deep frequencies most of the time, the Gap at 114 Hz bothers me the most... Is there a possibility to solve this (maybe just a bit) by putting the output signal of my RME through an external EQ?

I hope to get some helpful answers..

 

[Farview]

Eqing it won't work. You need acoustic treatment to absorb the sound so it doesn't bounce around and create the modes.
If you search for bass traps that employ Owen's corning 703 insulation panels, you will find info on how to build them or buy them pre built.

Don't bother with foam bass traps, they don't work well at the frequencies you are having problems with.

 

[Tadpui]

Eqing it won't work. You need acoustic treatment to absorb the sound so it doesn't bounce around and create the modes.
If you search for bass traps that employ Owen's corning 703 insulation panels, you will find info on how to build them or buy them pre built.

Don't bother with foam bass traps, they don't work well at the frequencies you are having problems with.

Definitely this!

One other thing you can do is experiment with speaker placement and your listening position within your room. Take the whole equilateral triangle and move it closer or farther away from the wall and see how it sounds. You can really flatten out some of those nodes/nulls by simply moving your speakers and yourself within the room. Doing this plus trapping your corners and points of first reflection with broadband traps will go a long ways towards flattening out your monitoring environment.

 

[Farview]

That is true. If you happen to be sitting in the middle of a node, just moving 6 inches in any direction will help, or at least change what you are hearing.

Remember, that room measurement is only measuring what is happening at the exact place you put the microphone. If you move the microphone, the graph will look different. So you want to put the mic right where you head will be when you are listening to the monitors. As Tadpui suggests, moving your listening position can help, but broadband traps will actually make the room better.

 

[ClassicalGuitarGuy]

Thans for your comments.
Unfortunately that was what I was expected to hear. In the first place I was trying out some different positions of course, but my room is just not the best.
I also have already some broadband absorbers. I think some serious bass trap will be the only real possibility...
I also tried out "SoundID Reference" from Sonarworks and could make some improvements, but of course you cannot correct a node...
Here is the improved curve:

 

[Folkcafe]

I took a very methodical approach to re-doing my studio. I started with John Brandt's room calculator to model room response but it also has a data on how much treatment is required across the various spectrum. Knowing that rooms and models don't always match, I also confirmed by measuring room modes using the enclosed RPG graph. Like many, my room is irregular in shape with windows and doors so measuring is important as there were some variation in response from the Excel model.


Once I had the room problems graphed out, working with an empty room I started with bass traps first, even mocking it up first and measuring at each step along the way. So bass traps, then ceiling cloud then front with the sides last. At each step I worked to figure out the amount of improvement and then the source of the remaining issues. Things like floor bounce and speaker boundary issues can be huge challenges. In the end I got a room that measures +/- 3db across the bass spectrum up to about 200hz. It was a lot of work but the room sounds great for monitoring and recording.