My Room Sounds Terrible

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cylkk
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Cylkk

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So i moved house and my studio room became this little 12" x 6" concrete room.

I've done my research on acoustics, i've been mixing for a few years with decent results on decent gear (but not pro, it's just a hobby), and i understand the room needs to be treated correctly so i can start getting better sounds.

Is there anyway i can judge exactly where the problems are without having to shell out a couple of hundred bucks ordering an spl meter?
 
My room is slightly bigger than that, but similar dimensions.

You're biggest problem will be the low end - standing waves, dead spots, boominess. Bass traps in the corners are really the only way around it.

For taming high frequency reflections, a rug on the floor and a duvet on the back wall will go a long way
 
hm

The floor is carpeted, i've got some 4" foam from hsfacoustics on the way which should help with mids and highs, and lows to an extent. But you're right about the boominess :(
 
Room dimension ratios like that (A x B2) can be a problem, although not as much as a square room (A x A).

I'd try to alter the room dimensions and apply both bass traps AND diffusors.
 
i only rent the place, so i can't alter anything :/

i should have explained that shipping + conversion rates means $60 = a couple of hundred here
 
Myriad,

> What are the best dimensions to have in a room? <

See the Acoustics FAQ, second in the list on my Articles page:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

In particular, see the section about room modes and also the sidebar that describes the ModeCalc program (PC only) you can download.

--Ethan
 
Ethan your website is stunning. But if you don't put that cat down soon she's going to pee all over your elbow :)
 
ok, i've got an spl meter, hooray!

all the hi-fi articles i've found say to use slow response c weighting - i'm guessing you want a weighting for monitors? what about response?
 
results!

These are my results after setting output to 85db
my_room.jpg


Note that i didn't go above 5000hz.
I used a radioshack analog spl meter set to slow response & C weighted sitting on a trippod at ear position facing 45 degrees upwards.

does this look about right for an untreated small concrete room?
 
Garry,

> if you don't put that cat down soon she's going to pee all over your elbow :) <

Oops, too late...

BTW, Bear told me to let you know he's a male.

--Ethan
 
Cylkk,

> I used a radioshack analog spl meter set to slow response & C weighted sitting on a trippod at ear position facing 45 degrees upwards. does this look about right for an untreated small concrete room? <

C weighting is correct, but the response you show is not even close to what you really have. What did you use as a signal source? Here's what your room probably looks like:

art_response.gif


Note the peak/dip pair at 110 and 122 Hz where the response varies a staggering 32 dB across a range smaller than one musical whole step. This is absolutely typical of all small rooms.

--Ethan
 
oh

actually something similar to that did happen, i thought i'd taken the reading incorrectly because it was jumping up and down at tiny increments.

I only graphed the readings shown in jpg however.

I will post the full results soon.

The source was an exe i downloaded in the shape of spl meter that feeds sine waves at certain eqs. i saw it posted somewhere on this forum a short while back.
 
also why is everything on your image well bellow 0db?

i set my output to 85db using a white noise signil through both speakers - is this wrong?

lots of the sine waves went over 0 (85db) in my tests..
 
Cylkk,

> I only graphed the readings shown in jpg however. <

That's the problem, and that's why your response seems sort of flat even though it really isn't. Again, you need to measure at 1 Hz increments.

> why is everything on your image well bellow 0db? <

Decibels are relative. The top line could have just as easily been labeled -20, +17, or anything else. In this case, those numbers are simply what I read off Sonar's track level meter.

--Ethan
 
more

Thanks for you help Ethan, i appreciatre it.

Here is a slightly mroe detailed break down - i just need to find something that can measure in 1hH increments.

Again, the white noise output was at 85db.

50hz - 90.2db
65hz - 80.2db
80hz - 78.4db
100hz - 86.0db
125hz - 85.2db
160hz - 74.5db
200hz - 87.0db
250hz - 81.0db
315hz - 79.8db
400hz - 86.0db
500hz - 82.2db
630hz - 86db
800hz - 88db
1000hz - 74db
1250hz - 82db
1600hz - 79.5db
2000hz - 83db
2500hz - 83db
3150hz - 80db
4000hz - 86db
5000hz - 88db
 
another test

Here's a graph of results using your test cd Ethan:
my_room2.jpg


and here are the numbers (roughly):
030-039 Hz 67
040-049 Hz 73
050-059 Hz 94 92 90 88 85 82 80
060-069 Hz 80 90 87 86 84 83 82
070-079 Hz 80 80 79 78 80 80 81 81
080-089 Hz 80 80 81 81 82 82 83 84 86
090-099 Hz 86 88 90 92 96 96 92 90 88
100-109 Hz 88 87 87 87 87 88 89 90 90.5 92
110-119 Hz 92 93 94 94 98 100 106 104 108 106
120-129 Hz 93 92 90 89 88 88 88 90 91
130-139 Hz 90 88 88 86 85 82 82 80 78
140-149 Hz 76 77 78 79 82 86 90 92 93 95
150-159 Hz 96 92 84 78 80 79 76 76 76
160-169 Hz 78 80 80 74 69 65 72 77 82 85
170-179 Hz 96 82 82 74 77 86 90 93 95 97
180-189 Hz 95 96 86 83 80 85 88 88 89
190-199 Hz 88 89 89 89 88 88 87.5 89 89
200-209 Hz 89 90 90 89 88 86 84 83 82 80
210-219 Hz 79 78 74 74 76 79 80 81 82
220-229 Hz 82 83 83 83 83 83 82 81 81
230-239 Hz 81 81 81 81 80 80 79 80 82
240-249 Hz 85 85 85 86 84 83 82 82 84
250-259 Hz 85 86 88 89 90.5 92 92 91 91
260-269 Hz 88 84 82 80 79 78 78 75 77
270-279 Hz 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
280-289 Hz 90 91 91 92 90 89 87 86 83 81
290-300 Hz 82 83 85 87 88 87 87 85 82 80
 
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