Monitor placement and mounting

  • Thread starter Thread starter gdgross1978
  • Start date Start date
G

gdgross1978

New member
Forgive me if this is a stupid or repetitive question.

I have a 10' x 14' mini-studio that my band uses to rehearse in. I'd also like to use that space to do some mixing for small projects. There are drums normally set up on one end of the room, on a 4" platform that's vibration mounted and filled with sand, and guitar amps all over as well as guitars and basses hanging on the walls. I did put some homemade corner bass trapping in 3 out of 4 corners when I put the room together in a haphazard attempt to get a tolerable sound in a small space.

It is absolutely not an ideal mixing environment at all, but I'd like to set up a pair of monitors somewhere in the room and get the best results I can. I'm not even sure where my mix position would be, to be honest. All the mixing I've ever done thus far is on my in-ears and a macbook.

First of all, what are some rules of thumb for monitor placement and setup? I'm guessing it's not the best sonically, but purely from a space standpoint, I'd like to mount them to the walls a little higher than people's heads. Don't laugh - it gets really crowded cramming five guys into this space, and I want to fight for every inch!

Secondly, what might you recommend for getting a passable sound out of a air of monitors given the space constraints?

Thanks guys.
 
Welcome dude!

Generally speaking, the monitors would be on the the narrow wall. Put your back to the length of the room. And hang a pair of bass traps in the corners to your left and right.

Optimum would be to pull your mixing desk into the room a little over a third of the way. This gets your monitors away from the wall. I don't think hanging them on the wall is gonna help very much when it comes time to mixdown. Hard to get em to translate to other systems when ya can't hear em right.

I understand about cramming a bunch of guys into a small room. I just decided what my priority was. The guys are even more cramped now but I spend WAY more time in there than anyone else so ....tough shit says I.
:D
 
Oh yeah...
a good rule of thumb is to set your monitors at about a 60 degree angle, roughly 3 feet from your head. Set the height (or at least the angle of the speaker) so that the tweeters are ear level, not the woofers.

I'm not positive about the 60 degree number but it's close.

Peace............Kel
 
Last edited:
Thanks Kel. I think I could do okay with placement and the angles and such, after sitting in the room last night, and I do know about the mirror trick to find all of the first reflection points.

I'm a little concerned about how to actually mount the monitors. As I mentioned, space-wise I'd like to just get some home-theater style speaker mounts and mount them to the wall, but I'm concerned that that probably isn't the best option sonically. Having space in the room to rehearse is important, and we will be doing more of that than I'll be mixing.
 
No worries then. ;)

Just set up your room and speakers for a rehearsal space. It is gonna be a trade off but you'll still be able to mix some decent demos. You just won't be able to hear it as clearly.

I'd be interested in what you've got when you can get something burned.

Cheers mang......Kel
 
Hmmm, I forgot who said it on these forums, but what I heard was:

1: Your head should be 33% away from the wall, facing the closer wall (in a 9x12 room, you should be facing the short wall, sitting 4 feet away from one)
2: Monitors should be more than 1-1.5 feet from the wall (so in this same room, the monitors being 2 feet in front of you will be good, as they have 2 feet of clearence behind them)
3: The two monitors and you should form a perfect triangle, so the distance between the two monitors should be the same as the distance you picked in front of you. In this case, the monitors should be 2 feet apart.
4: Monitors shouldn't be pointed directly at you, but a little bit behind you
5: High enough to where your ears are level with them
6: Bass traps and other broadband treatment a must, but don't make the room completely void of life
 
Thanks guys.

The monitors arrived yesterday; I'm going to try and set them up this weekend. They are KRK passive monitors that were relatively affordable from musicians friend, so I thought I'd give them a try.

I'll probably have to build some shelves on the wall and mount them that way. I know it's not ideal to have them right next to the wall, but I can't afford to give up the space. I'm not making any platinum records in this room, though.

BTW, Kel, you can hear a mix of a some recordings of my band at myspace.com/northern45. Everything except "Forever" was mixed in Logic on a macbook with headphones. :-) Not the greatest mix, particularly in the vocals, but it was a live recording and there was so much bleed into the vocal mic that it was hard to do anything with it. I'm hoping that moving away from headphones, even in an imperfect room, will help out a little bit.
 
Cool...I'll check it out when I get home tonite.




Luck wit da monitors mang...
:cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top