At what point is a room too small to accurately mix in?

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DrewPeterson7

DrewPeterson7

Sage of the Order
Ok, I'm condo shopping right now, and I found a place that I kind of like and has a "study" room that I would turn into a proper studio room (right now, I have a bedroom studio). However, I know smaller rooms can cause problems with bass response and comb filtering and whatnot, so is there a threshold past which I'm just asking for trouble?

The room in question is 10'x8', and would have a desk, 8" driver monitors, and a rack of guitars and my half stack. Acoustic treatment would be part of the plan for the room, for what it's worth.
 
I don't know if there is an absolute good/bad threshold....but yeah, the smaller you go the harder it is to properly treat....though I have seen some very pro mixing setups where the room wasn't really large and the walls were all right there up against everything, but it's hard to see what treatment they did when you just look at a picture in a magazine.

You'll probably have to almost line it with trapping.....
 
So I'm definitely in the problematic zone here? I mean, everything in Boston is small (or ludicrously expensive, lol) so there's only so much I can do here, but I'd sort of like to know how many problems I'm likely to have at the outset. :)

It's a pretty cool place otherwise.
 
The problem with an 8'x10' room is that by the time you put 4" bass traps everywhere you've got less than a 7'4" x 9'4" room! Get out of the city for more room (and more quiet!) But it does seem to be typical in New England that these condo or apartment complexes have a second bedroom designed only for small children's use.
 
Hey, living in the city is awesome, man. :laughings: I've done the long commute thing before and hated it - being able to walk to the T and take the T downtown to work (I work in the finance industry, so like 85% of the jobs I'd ever actually want are located in a six block radius downtown) is awesome. A bunch of my friends within the past couple months have started moving to the suburbs to settle down and start families, and without exception they're all regretting it and really hoping I do stay where I am (cambridge/somerville) so they all have a place to hang out after work. :laughings:

This particular place is a no-go; I got an email from my realtor at 10:50 today that the broker had unexpectedly told him the client had decided they wanted offers by noon, and all in it'd have been too much of a rush job on a place I wasn't 100% on. Still, this is good information. :)
 
MINIMUM ROM SIZE RECOMMENDATION:

1500 cubic feet - or - 42 cubic meters.

cheers,
John
 
jhbrandt said:
MINIMUM ROM SIZE RECOMMENDATION:

1500 cubic feet - or - 42 cubic meters.

cheers,
John
Click to expand...
I bet if you did a poll here, more than half the folks would not have that much space! I don't,
Surely you jest!

I'll do the 45 minute drive to be out in the country any day....
Click to expand...

Some people just like city living (although Somerville ... well it does have a newly revitalized downtown area with clubs, etc). Damn Somerville Theater's seats are still way too cramped!
I'm less than 25 miles from downtown Boston and can be there in under half an hour (except at rush hour or Friday night). When I lived in Boston I learned to sleep with a heavy pillow over my head - great thing to learn for later in life! ;)
 
mjbphotos said:
I bet if you did a poll here, more than half the folks would not have that much space!
Click to expand...

You're probably right...1500 cubic feet would be about a 14x14x8 room (of course, a square room is not good, but that's just an example).

I have about about 2600 cubic feet, and lately, it's starting to feel small, but that's mainly 'cuz I keep bringing more "stuff" into the studio. :D



mjbphotos said:
Some people just like city living...
Click to expand...

I know...my sister loves Manhattan....but I don't think I've ever enjoyed any trip into NYC, but that's just about personal comfort preferences. There are certainly more things to do in the city, but you also pay a price for that.

The country, and even more so the high country/mountain vibe, is what's always appealed to me, and I've lived in that environment the last 30 years...so for me any big city is somewhat of a rude, slap in the face. It's a 15 minute drive to the bigger town where I can find most anything....so I like that distance.
Like a friend of mine once said..."when you can walk out naked and pee in your back yard without anyone seeing you...". ;)
 
Guys,

GREAT engineers can get GREAT mixes just about anywhere. However, the laws of physics prevent the development of uniform low frequency waves in small enclosures. That's a fact. If a room does not have the 'proper' boundary distances to support the LF under 100Hz, you have to 'guess' at what it is on tape. You'll need to check with headphones, open the doors and walk outside while it's playing, listen in the car, etc. But like I said, some of you guys truly amaze me!

You can't 'count on' what you hear in a room that is too small. I'm only stating physics facts.

I have, however, designed quite a few rooms that fall into the category of 'too small' and they worked well for the owners... Many of my peers create an aire of mystery around acoustics design - especially recording studio design. But our job is to simply make YOUR job easier, faster, and more productive. That's the bottom line. That's it.

Cheers,
John
 
Bumping this thread - first, thanks for everyone who has replied so far!

Since posting, I had an offer accepted in early October and will close on a different, bigger place in December. It sounds like I'm right at about the threshold where I may be a little small but not horribly so - widest points, the study/bedroom which will become my studio are 11'7"x12'8". I don't know what the ceiling height is off the top of my head, but if it's 10' then that comes up to about 1480 cubic feet.

Of course, the room is somewhat irregular in shape (which could be a plus if I'm careful with positioning and ensuring I have a near-symmetrical airspace behind me), so the actual airspace is likely smaller - probably 1200-1300. And certainly my amp, a rack of guitars, my desk, and trapping will take up some space as well. But it's not a bad start.

I'm thinking my best bet will be to have the desk facing into the corner at about where home plate would be if the room was a baseball park, which gives me a pretty symmetrical room behind me (as well as a nice view what would be to my left through some really cool vintage decorative windows, the three black bars in the picture). I can start working that out once I get my desk up there, though.

Then, comes acoustic treatment. THAT will be fun. :lol:
 

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That room has a very odd layout. Placing yourself in the corner would make it more symmetric for high frequencies, but since it's mostly windows on the one wall and mostly drywall on the other, you likely wouldn't have low frequency symmetry, which is a good deal harder to fix. There isn't really any placement that negates this issue, but there are a few other options which have similar pitfalls that would all be worth comparing. I would try these different set ups in the room once you get in there:
Facing the windows, with the closet door to your left.
Facing "home plate" as you put it.
Facing the "west" wall in the drawing, so that the window wall is to your left, closet is back to the left.
The room is still quite small but when there's nothing you can do about it, there's well, nothing you can do about it! The problem when it comes to typical small rooms is that, sometimes they behave entirely as predicted, and sometimes not. Because there is so little volume for the sound to travel; things that normally wouldn't make huge acoustical differences do. Moving the speakers two inches forward in a 10,000 cubic foot room doesn't usually make a massive difference. Moving the speakers two inches in a 1,000 cubic foot room definitely does! This is why most designers 'spec' a minimum size; it's the minimum size to which success with treatment is entirely possible and predictable.
 
So I'm going to have a lot of experimentation onmy hands, huh? Thank god the desk I have has wheels. :laughings:

I'm asusming I'm going to need to trap the hell out of this space - unfortunately, if you want to live in Boston, you have to deal with small spaces. The street I'm on is pretty quiet at least, which is a nice perk (especially because the location is otherwise super convenient).

Straight at the windows would actually be a pretty cool view - stereo imaging might suffer, but it's a cool set of windows.

Thanks!
 
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