Just plotted Frequency Response for Monitors, what's next?

  • Thread starter Thread starter aznwonderboy
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Rather than reiterate what others have said I will point out who really knows what they are talking about in this thread.

mshilarious - has provided you some excellent guidance and closest to your acoustic needs.

Ethan sells bass traps, but he is 100% correct.

Chessrock has directed you to the lowest cost solution. Get the speakers out of the corner and away from the walls. At least your midrange will be somewhat accurate.

The only thing I will add, having used those speakers for years before upgrading is, they will never provide you the whole picture but just a small window on the entire range of what you need to make a decent mix. You can stick them on the roof outside and you will still not have enough information to make a translatable mix. Actually the roof would be better, no room nodes or nulls to mess you up.

Regarding learning the monitors, I have used these monitors, you better pick up Har-Bal because it will dial in the mix you need faster. Just so you know, these are excellent second check monitors but as primaries they will be challenging. You really need the sub that was made for these speakers to have a close-to-full image.

Let's see what else?

Those beds are not the best bass traps but those mattresses are helping somewhat. Pickup some 2x4 foot foam at GC and place them about 3 feet out from the front of the speakers on the left and right wall to cut down on fluttering.

Best of luck.
 
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COOLCAT said:
wild, frkn crazy bass electrons and protons everywhere, i don't know how loud it was maybe 86db!! it had the chart noding out, man!!
and then i felt a cold chill!!!
and when i looked down at my feet one of my socks were gone!! :eek:
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Maybe this is one of the reasons why Mixerman likes to buy socks in bulk.


sl
 
Your low frequency response is much worse than what's shown, and you need to measure at 1 Hz resolution to see the true response. Your LF graph appears to be at 5 Hz intervals, and that's just not enough.
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Actually, I did measure the bass frequencies at every 1hz interval. In fact, I downloaded those files from your site, Ethan. I have the numbers of all the frequencies in between. Most of the times, they only vary 1 to 2db from the intervals. So I excluded them from the chart for simplicity.
Great rooms assist in great recordings, but less-than-great rooms do not exclude them. They can be, and are, engineered around all the time with excellent results.
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That's very comforting to hear, SouthSIDE Glen.

I really doubt they are damaged. I'm not sure what to make of that--pink noise, not white noise, right?
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That's right. It's the only "pink noise.wav" file that came along with Ethan Winer's test tones for bass.

i modified your room pic, with one option you could try.
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Coolcat, thanks for the new drawing. In one month, 1 bed will be gone. Then, I will rearrange my room.





So far, all your posts are very educational, instructive, and right to the point. I hope future posts will not side-track. For a newbie like me, it's very frustrating to read a thread with good advice and then find out by the second page that the posts begin to go off topic and/or become flame wars.
 
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SouthSIDE Glen said:
regularly doing the kind of "ear reps" described above with a variety of music styles and recordings is the best thing any of us can do.
G.
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this is really is the most over looked & best advice, imo.

often it takes some blind faith, you just do a few things that are suggested, like moving the triangle from the corner. thats free, easy to do, and recommended several times.

rereading this, you've done alot already. and are already aware of all the triangles, spl, trapps and stuff.

so how did the speakers wind up in the corner? jus kidding.

Room Acoustics and monitors..
great HR thread.


Someone told me hitting the BACK-ARROW on the internet tool bar,
takes you back in time, well, only a few nano-seconds..so you won't really notice it.
I tested this out and it might be true, because I hit it about ten times just now and i was back to a post I had already submitted!! freaky,man. :eek:
 
so how did the speakers wind up in the corner?
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Actually, it's there on the matter of convenience and visual impression. The desk is put in that corner because it's the first thing everyone see when they enter the room (entrance to the room is on the upper right corner of the room drawing).

According to the oriental culture, this placement is good because the first impression one will have upon entering the room and see a desk is that: "ah...this person focuses on his studies/work." Kinda like feng-shui. Plus, it seemed like the desk would be most out of the way if I put it there in the corner. And so, I couldn't avoid putting one monitor near the corner. That monitor is not exactly in the corner, but near the corner.
 
well, you can't have your feng shui and eat it too. :)

in other words, you'll have to decide what you want.
i think Ethan-san is more appropriate for room acoustic issues. ;)

you always have the last option like G said,
just learn your monitors as they sit.
i don't know what else to say..good luck man.

dang, you did put some time in those plots...thats alot of points!
i got it the second time...one chart upper freq's , the other chart Lower freqs.

noticed you mentioned you don't trust your ears, me too.
so rearrange the room, slap on a decent spl/rta and you'll have a better idea of where your at...then get down to learning the monitors sounds like good advice. like tuning your guitar before playing.

listening to other people babble about "i owned these speakers once! and their too trebly!!" will be the biggest waste of your time, imo.
or worse some salesmen in GC pitch..."get the Behringers their the best."
especially if you don't have the money anyway.

but these opinions are weak, only because it's not your room, and it ain't your ears.
you'll get alot of opinions....but if your like me and want data thats why i hooked up the rta, spl. gets confusing and maybe too many articles and opinions. :confused:

with mshilarious help on the RTA.....it's frkn awesome. the SPL sets the 85db, but then you do the RTA thing, pretty cool..realtime response.
its my first go around rta, but i've been calibrating electronics of 20 years...data is usually less-subjective than someone elses ears and can offer a baseline..AND great if doing it in your room!
 
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looked at your plots again which showed huge variations, you can probably do better. go for flat from the center freq out maybe? you can get better results, i wouldn't expect the low end to be there...maybe down to 100hz, 80hz? what are the SP 5B specs in an anechoic chamber? if they only get 80hz there, don't expect yourself to get flat 20hz in your bedroom, may help.
speakers design= physical limitations, like the smaller woofers, just can't move the air a 15"can.....fact.

i'm tuning up my room 2nd time around. Maybe you can buy a measurement mic, or trade for one? the Nady is ~$40, ECM8000 $50, dbx $99. like a guitar tuners you can spend $14 or $4000.

i'm really starting to think i don't like mixing much!
maybe too close to my own songs and I get really burnt out with them fast.

i actually enjoy the tweeking and room freq stuff tho and speaker designs physics....and song writing.
 
Glen:

> There are a half-dozen people on this board who, right now, could walk into aznwonderboy's room with good tracking and come out with a very good mixdown <

I agree, and I was mainly addressing the attitude of "I don't need no steenkin' acoustic treatment." Every day I see people ask why their mixes suck, or why their mixes sound good in their room but way too bassy in their car. I am not suggesting that getting bass traps will turn a newbie into a pro overnight! But it helps a lot, and makes the mixing process much easier and more pleasant.

Snow:

> Certain frequencies will almost double, then almost cancel depending on where my head is. <

Exactly. This is not only common, but typical.

Az:

> I have the numbers of all the frequencies in between. Most of the times, they only vary 1 to 2db from the intervals. So I excluded them from the chart for simplicity. <

That's surprising. Is your room very large? Most small rooms look more like the graph linked below.

--Ethan

art_response.gif
 
Ethan Winer said:
That's surprising. Is your room very large? Most small rooms look more like the graph linked below.

--Ethan

http://www.realtraps.com/art_response.gif
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Um...no..it's about 10'x10' and about 8' high. Maybe the fact that I put my monitor so near the ball (to enhance bass) makes it different from your graph.

I have attached my graph with every point plotted out.


anz..here's one down your alley.

very good article.
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_speaker_setup_acoustic/
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Good article indeed. Thanks a whole lot! I added it to my favorites. I'll follow that instruction after I get the second bed out of my room; that'll leave me more space to work around.
 

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I have the same chart for my room and its 10x11. The two charts are very similar so you can attack the 100Hz null and 150Hz node with bass traps. You might even get some smoothing action in the 200-300 zone.
 
Middleman said:
I have the same chart for my room and its 10x11. The two charts are very similar so you can attack the 100Hz null and 150Hz node with bass traps. You might even get some smoothing action in the 200-300 zone.
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Is there a simple calculation/reasoning to find out where exactly to place the foam? Plus, how big should the foam be? I have a couple of 2' x 2' foam pieces that were used for cushioning (the soft foam...not styrofoam.) Will those work?
 
Forget foam it’s a lousy bass trap material.

Pick up some rock wool, which is cheap. You can use upholstery glue to attached burlap fabric to the rock wool and you can make some very functional bass traps; about $30 apiece when you are done. You will need 4 of them 2-4 inches thick and 2x4 feet in size. Put one spanning each corner of your room. This should pretty much fix the 80-300Hz problems. Put your 2x2 foam on the side walls to cut down on flutter and that is about as good as its going to get in that size space.

If you have more money hit the ceiling corners with bass traps and put one on the ceiling above your mix position. The final results will at least give those speakers a fighting chance at translation.

Another low cost alternative, if you are not the do it yourself type are these
http://cgi.ebay.com/GIK244-4-Acoust...oryZ3278QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
Az,

> I have attached my graph with every point plotted out. <

I see now that missed something very important the first time I saw your low frequency graph: I missed that each vertical division is 20 dB! I'm still not sure why you don't have more peaks and nulls. But it could be as you suggest, due to the speaker and/or microphone placement. Either way, clearly you will benefit from bass traps! :D

--Ethan
 
Anz another setup trick I always find to be consistent with a good speaker placement is the MONO check.

Once you think you have your speakers tweeked ok, triangle etc. Then while your listening you mixes or your favorite CD's...
you go into Mono from stereo mode.
And the sound should be, like the Mix article said, "Collapses to the center"...or like a vacuum to the center...you should almost be able to feel it, man!!
its like in Star Wars when they hit hyperdrive.

It will always go to the center, but what i've found is when it's tweeked tight, its EXtremely noticeable.

I have heard this before, and then lost it by moving sht around.

But now with some simple measuring tools,spl/rta,
we can quantify the setup & make it repeatable, instead of just getting lucky by moving sht around and gluing foam on my walls blindly, hoping its correct.

Mono mode is like a proof's in the pudding, ear test.
 
COOLCAT said:
Anz another setup trick I always find to be consistent with a good speaker placement is the MONO check.

Once you think you have your speakers tweeked ok, triangle etc. Then while your listening you mixes or your favorite CD's...
you go into Mono from stereo mode.
And the sound should be, like the Mix article said, "Collapses to the center"...or like a vacuum to the center...you should almost be able to feel it, man!!
its like in Star Wars when they hit hyperdrive.

It will always go to the center, but what i've found is when it's tweeked tight, its EXtremely noticeable.

I have heard this before, and then lost it by moving sht around.

But now with some simple measuring tools,spl/rta,
we can quantify the setup & make it repeatable, instead of just getting lucky by moving sht around and gluing foam on my walls blindly, hoping its correct.

Mono mode is like a proof's in the pudding, ear test.
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I don't really understand. Do you mean: convert a file to mono and play both monitors at the same time? or play a stereo file with one monitor at a time?

So, can you summarize the steps to do this with SPL/RTA ? Someone just said that it's best to use an Omnidirectional mic to do this analysis. I just bought a SP-B3, which can do omni, cardiod, and figure 8. Do you think it'll be sufficient? By the way, I need to get a shockmount for it since I got it on eBay in "used" condition; after reading some topics on shockmount, someone said to call Studio Projects and they might even send the shockmount for free. Can anyone confirm this? I called the number on the website, but the number is non-functional. I even looked on eBay, but the shockmount for $15 seems too similar to the Marshall MXL-57, which is just a little too small for the SP-B3.
 
If you would look at my room again, there's a closet on the right side. It has sliding doors along the longer length. When closed, they are like another wall. So, how should I do the measurement for my room in order to place the monitors correctly?

Plus, should I open them during mixing/mastering so that my hanging clothes can act as traps?
 
forget the mono, for now. the mono collapsing,as menitoned in the article is after your done and listening to the setup...with a big ol' smile on the face! :) :D

if you are recording with a pc?
man if you can get this mic or one similar...its a friendlier world of measurements!
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/search/detail/base_id/120059/src=00631

I'm liking this stuff, more and more. i mean, with realtime, you actually watch the setup get flatter as you move your speakers or acoustic panels.
within reason, it really helps.

problem is I don't have anywhere else to use it! :(
 
aznwonderboy said:
If you would look at my room again, there's a closet on the right side. It has sliding doors along the longer length. When closed, they are like another wall. So, how should I do the measurement for my room in order to place the monitors correctly?

Plus, should I open them during mixing/mastering so that my hanging clothes can act as traps?
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i would think closet would be open.

think of the energy building up in such a small room....molecule over excitment! bumping into each other causing nodes and bad things.

so we have two friends, the Absorber and the Diffusor.

you can turn sht into Heat by trapping the energy in 703 fiberglass and kill the bouncing molecules with Absorption.
Or you can reflect them, defelct them, swat them down, the molecule loses huge amounts of energy everytime it hits something of course,
so with odd sizes, bookshelfs full of books, and other angles..we again kill the energy of the unwanted out-of phase molecules.

until finally enuff nodal molecules fall dead into your carpet! :eek:
its also wise to vacuum every now and then and get those bad molecules outta there. :p

a third friend to the small HR room may be lesser volume? my tests today showed the freqs were fine at lesser volumes which may help some at moving the nodes away from the mixing seat at the least? i don't know.

have you plotted one speaker at a time and see if the corner is hurting you?
 
Your frequency response plot of your room looks pretty much like mine before I treatet the room. Get some bass traps and wall panels, play with your setup, move the stuff around, and do the same plot over & over again until you see and HEAR an improvement.
 
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