Built my own Wall Panels

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Giganova

Giganova

gimmi your mic!
hey guys --

wassup? I had a lot of problems with standing waves in my new apartment, so I just built my own wall panels. Its basically fiberglass on wood, with white curtains wrapped around so it blends into the walls (a requirement from my fiance). Now the room sounds siginificantly better!! Ahh, and the blue dots are from a light installation under the ceiling from accross the room (for the "vibe").

Just thought I'll share my joy :D
 

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I found the chair in the junk and painted it. Its very comfty :)
 
Very nice.

Now when are you gonna get those monitors out of the corner?
 
Yeah, you should - I did a crude ray trace of a room I was considering for a while - ergonomically, putting the desk in the corner was a good idea in that case, but acoustically it's about the worst place you can be.

In order for there NOT to be serious early reflection problems, it would have taken 'way too much absorbent in the room to keep any live feel whatever - it needed 4-6 inches of 703 across the corner behind the desk, also extending that corner absorbtion along each front wall (front as in, the direction you face when mixing) and then the entire two rear walls absorbed with more corner traps - this, in addition to ceiling absorption, having to cover windows (more reflections to wrong places), and I finally ended up scrapping the project til I can come up with a decent ergonomic NOT in a corner...

Geometrically, any sound you "fire" into a square corner, will be reflected back exactly parallel to the arriving sound - so any square corner will be a mass of unwanted reflections at a wide range of frequencies, which is likely the main reason why placing absorbent across corners does so much to clean up a room.

I was going to post a copy of my "geometry lesson", but apparently I haven't yet converted it to jpg from the cad format - main thing, though, is C7's right - corners aren't a good place for a mix setup... Steve
 
hey Nightfly and c7sus --

I am aware that placing the monitors in the corner is far from ideal. However, since I live in a rented apartment and I don't have a lot of space, it was the only solution to keep my studio. The wall panels help solving the problems so some extent. though. Also, I'd never get a 90 degree desk again, coz it limits monitor placement too much. Guess I have learned my lesson.
 
I didn't say you couldn't make it better - if you're up for it, just making the mix position more symmetrical acoustically would help a lot. If you could do two more panels like the lower and upper ones you have behind the right monitor, in front of that window, for example - you could maybe do the upper (sloped) one fixed, and if you like, do a "gobo" type panel that's removable for in front of the window - you'd only need it there when mixing, so you have more balanced response coming back from both speakers -

Wish I had a dime for every wrong move I've made over the years - only sane thing to do is consider it the cost of education... Steve

BTW, is that mini-keyboard one of the Oxygen series, or what? I'm looking for a "road warrior" controller to use with my laptop away from home...
 
c7sus said:
Very nice.

Now when are you gonna get those monitors out of the corner?

Im going to disagree with this. In a square room you need to move your mix postion away from the center of the room and get rid of as much parallelism as possible. In a square room thats treated the best place is usually the corner. I was involved with this type of discussion before with Bob Katz, Bob Olhsson and even John Sayers. If the room was not square or really large then the corner is less optium. Notice that the monitors are not really in the corner but perpendicular to the walls. The monitors should be closer together with then sitting up instead of their sides. Sometimes putting the monitors close to a wall can give you a faux sub woofer if your careful about learning how they translate. It would be important to bass trap the corner behind the mix position as well or a gobo tht you can move around behind you.

SoMm
 
That kinda leads to another question:

What is the best position for a subwoofer?

My setup is scattered all over the house right now, strung across 3 rooms.

When I get it back together ( like maybe in 2007 or 08 when somebody decides to build something around here bigger than a house:rolleyes: ), I'll be in an L-shaped room, approx 436 sq ft, with the biggest (24' x 14') area behind me. The room is my living room and dining room areas, and has a vault ceiling from 8' to 11'.

Directly in front of my listening position is a 6' x 6' window. I figured on using my gobos to re-shape the room, and plan to be at least 3-feet away from that wall with the windows. The gobos will cover about 2/3's of the window area when "deployed".

But where should the sub go???

I'm using Event Trias, and the speaker leads from the sub/amp are only about 10' long. Making new speaker leads is an option.:)

Is centered on the wall, right under the desk okay, or should the sub be behind me? Or somewhere else?
 
c7sus said:
That kinda leads to another question:

What is the best position for a subwoofer?

On the floor :)

I think your going to have to make sure where its at is solid ground and then move it around until your low end translates. This can take awhile though.

SoMm
 
Son of Mixerman said:
Im going to disagree with this. In a square room you need to move your mix postion away from the center of the room and get rid of as much parallelism as possible. In a square room thats treated the best place is usually the corner. I was involved with this type of discussion before with Bob Katz, Bob Olhsson and even John Sayers. If the room was not square or really large then the corner is less optium. Notice that the monitors are not really in the corner but perpendicular to the walls. The monitors should be closer together with then sitting up instead of their sides. Sometimes putting the monitors close to a wall can give you a faux sub woofer if your careful about learning how they translate. It would be important to bass trap the corner behind the mix position as well or a gobo tht you can move around behind you.

SoMm

I think there is an old TapeOp article where Eddie Ciletti did this for his square-ish room. Or at least he talked about it at the first TapeOp conference. If you're in a small, square room I think it makes sense to be in the corner. Otherwise, the corner is probably one of the worst places to be. You should try to make the treatments symmetric though.
 
SoMM, the key word here is "treated" - without it, there is NO good place to be in a square room IMO - with it, I agree that a corner setup can work as good as anything in a small room. My original study showed that front wall early reflections were easier to take care of in the corner, directly behind the mix desk was actually better that way (4" 703/705 across the corner, directly behind the desk, for bass trapping and smoothing out SBIR on the front walls (stood off 4" extending the corner treatment, out another 4' or so) - then, the rest of the two front walls can be live but cross-fire from the speakers will require about half of each rear wall to be absorbed (at least for the middle third of their height) in order to control less than 22ms reflections off the rear.

It seemed possible to get a decent sound out of such an orientation, but not without serious thought as to treatment location/amount. I will still very likely end up doing that project, but have a few ahead of it in the list (finishing a drainage system, new roof/siding on house, new 40 x 60 shop) so probably won't get to this one til next year, when my old studio will be gutted and become part of a general 36 x 48 storage building (now a small shop and studio, but definitlely NOT sound proof by any stretch of the imagination)

C7, you want a sub to be neither at a peak or a null of any of your room dimensions (other than sitting on the floor, it's hard to stay out of floor/ceiling peaks :=) - If you place the sub in a null, no amount of increase in power amp size will sound good, it will only blow your woof from trying too hard. If placed at a peak in modal response, those modes will be over-excited and turning it down will then give you dips in response at non-modal frequencies.

There are some good white papers at

http://www.harman.com/wp/index.jsp?articleId=default

on speaker placement, written by Dr. Floyd Toole - unfortunately the site isn't responding for me at the moment. Basically, the simplest way to place a sub is to put it in your chair, then move around the room til the bass sounds the most balanced, (kneepads help for this part :=) and finally, put the sub where your head was when things sounded the best. Done.

There is an axial mode spreadsheet at that same link that shows you the first 4 modes for each room dimension - it does a peak/null graph for each axis, so you can find distances in all three planes that are at neither peak or null - these places work out to be (usually) best places in your room for either your head or speakers (or instruments when tracking, for that matter)

Gotta go for now, hope some of this helped... Steve
 
In simple terms

knightfly said:
SoMM, the key word here is "treated" - without it, there is NO good place to be in a square room IMO - with it, I agree that a corner setup can work as good as anything in a small room. My original study showed that front wall early reflections were easier to take care of in the corner, directly behind the mix desk was actually better that way (4" 703/705 across the corner, directly behind the desk, for bass trapping and smoothing out SBIR on the front walls (stood off 4" extending the corner treatment, out another 4' or so) - then, the rest of the two front walls can be live but cross-fire from the speakers will require about half of each rear wall to be absorbed (at least for the middle third of their height) in order to control less than 22ms reflections off the rear.

It seemed possible to get a decent sound out of such an orientation, but not without serious thought as to treatment location/amount. I will still very likely end up doing that project, but have a few ahead of it in the list (finishing a drainage system, new roof/siding on house, new 40 x 60 shop) so probably won't get to this one til next year, when my old studio will be gutted and become part of a general 36 x 48 storage building (now a small shop and studio, but definitlely NOT sound proof by any stretch of the imagination)

C7, you want a sub to be neither at a peak or a null of any of your room dimensions (other than sitting on the floor, it's hard to stay out of floor/ceiling peaks :=) - If you place the sub in a null, no amount of increase in power amp size will sound good, it will only blow your woof from trying too hard. If placed at a peak in modal response, those modes will be over-excited and turning it down will then give you dips in response at non-modal frequencies.

There are some good white papers at

http://www.harman.com/wp/index.jsp?articleId=default

on speaker placement, written by Dr. Floyd Toole - unfortunately the site isn't responding for me at the moment. Basically, the simplest way to place a sub is to put it in your chair, then move around the room til the bass sounds the most balanced, (kneepads help for this part :=) and finally, put the sub where your head was when things sounded the best. Done.

There is an axial mode spreadsheet at that same link that shows you the first 4 modes for each room dimension - it does a peak/null graph for each axis, so you can find distances in all three planes that are at neither peak or null - these places work out to be (usually) best places in your room for either your head or speakers (or instruments when tracking, for that matter)

Gotta go for now, hope some of this helped... Steve


Where would you place the desk/monitors in that picture? In the middle of the room, or along a straight wall?
 
I'm putting the desk about 3-4 feet away from the front wall & window.

I'll have 90" tall gobos extending about 6 feet down each side, with panels angled at about 30-40 degrees at the corner.

The area is behind me is pretty good sized open space, like close to 20 feet behind the listening position, and the ceiling vaults rising behind as well. So rear reflections shouldn't be a big problem. Some clouds may one day be in order, but not anytime soon.

Hopefully the gobos take care of the issues on the front wall.
 
Steve, can we get that geometry lesson??

T
knightfly said:
Yeah, you should - I did a crude ray trace of a room I was considering for a while - ergonomically, putting the desk in the corner was a good idea in that case, but acoustically it's about the worst place you can be.

In order for there NOT to be serious early reflection problems, it would have taken 'way too much absorbent in the room to keep any live feel whatever - it needed 4-6 inches of 703 across the corner behind the desk, also extending that corner absorbtion along each front wall (front as in, the direction you face when mixing) and then the entire two rear walls absorbed with more corner traps - this, in addition to ceiling absorption, having to cover windows (more reflections to wrong places), and I finally ended up scrapping the project til I can come up with a decent ergonomic NOT in a corner...

Geometrically, any sound you "fire" into a square corner, will be reflected back exactly parallel to the arriving sound - so any square corner will be a mass of unwanted reflections at a wide range of frequencies, which is likely the main reason why placing absorbent across corners does so much to clean up a room.

I was going to post a copy of my "geometry lesson", but apparently I haven't yet converted it to jpg from the cad format - main thing, though, is C7's right - corners aren't a good place for a mix setup... Steve
 
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