New room, mirrored wall behind desk; how much trouble is this likely to cause?

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DrewPeterson7

DrewPeterson7

Sage of the Order
Hey all - haven't posted over here in a couple years, but I just moved to a new place, and I'm in the process of setting up a new studio. The room wa formerly used as a fitness room by the house's old owners, and they'd installed large mirrored panels along one of the short walls. We're not even close to fully unpacked (I also had a daughter about a month before our close date, which trying to have a kid, buy a house, and sell a house all at once was, well, dumb :LOL:), but I figured I might as well start thinking about room design, even if it'll be a while before I can do more than set up my desk and amp.

So, from everything I know about room optimiztion (not nothing, but a lot less than a whole lot of you), your priorities in room treatment, after bass traps in the corners, are going to be your first reflection points in front of the speakers, followed by the reflection point behind the speaker on the wall behind the desk/that you're facing into from a seated position. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that mirror is probably not the surface you want here, haha. At a minimum it also means your cable management game has to be on point, since you can pretty much see it all reflected back at you.

Curious though if anyone's had success with rooms with relatively reflective surfaces along a back wall like this - again, I'm nowhere near a point where I can play back a mix and hear what IO'm working with (and I'll be doing that before making any changes to the room, if nothing else because we have a lot more "necessary" projects before I can start in on "optional" ones like doing anything beyond throwing bass traps up to a room that I'll barely have time to use with a two month old, haha. But, as one single and not-especially-useful data point, pulling mu acoustic out of the case and jamming along a little, the room actually didn't sound all that bad, with nothing else in it. And, as a guitarist, having a mirrored wall to rock out in front of IS kinda fun and absolutely stokes my vanity, haha.

Anyway, I was always more active in the guitar part of this forum, but I'm sure there's a few regulars here I know as well, so... hi everyone!
 
Any way to remove the mirrors? If it was me, I'd build Rockwool-filled panels to hang on the mirrors, if that were feasible, if the glass would be too difficult to remove.
 
TimOD said:
Any way to remove the mirrors? If it was me, I'd build Rockwool-filled panels to hang on the mirrors, if that were feasible, if the glass would be too difficult to remove.
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I think so - I haven't done more than eyeball it (I can't stress how bad an idea it is to buy a house and move one month after having a baby, in your 40s, while trying to simultaneously ready your old condo for sale), but it looks like the panels are held on by two little mounting tabs a side, eight total, just off the corners. Presumably just removing those tabs should do it, though I suppose it's possible they're also glued underneath that, and I'd need to resurface the wall somehow. Which, certainly I could do - I dont think we're moving again for a LONG time, so I don't mind investing some real work in this space to bring it up to par.

Reasons I haven't done more than that yet:

  1. See parenthetical statement. I'm going to try to force myself to unbox one box a night for a while to try to keep chipping away, bt holy $@!#& have I been busy. busy time at work too, which doesn't help. :lol:
  2. Honestly, it IS kinda cool to strike a pose in front of a guitar with mirrored walls.
  3. Ditto for getting in trainer workouts on my road bike, which is the other thing I'll be using this space for.

But, it's a lot easier to at least gather input and figure out what I SHOULD do before I tackle any projects, hence the thread. My goal is to have my studio unboxed before Thanksgiving at least, and have this much of it done before New Year's, if that gives you any indication of my timeline. After that, I have a certain amount of trapping I can put up by then, but I'll be investing in/building better treatment as well, as a 2025 project.
 
Mirrors and glass surfaces of any kind are a major headache. Really disappointed about this, I have mulled over the theory of placing mirrors in a similarly theoretical studio and so far I have found no way to make it work out.
 
Yeah, kinda my fear, SR. I'll tke a look at how hard it'll be to take them down the next time I have a free 20 minutes, I guess. Thanks!
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Hey all - haven't posted over here in a couple years....I'm sure there's a few regulars here I know as well, so... hi everyone!
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Hey !
I remember you well. You were one of the major contributors when I landed here in 2009. Always enjoyed your contribution and if I remember rightly, you had a guitar with 7 strings. Or maybe I imagined it. I know someone played a 7-string guitar.
 
grimtraveller said:
Hey !
I remember you well. You were one of the major contributors when I landed here in 2009. Always enjoyed your contribution and if I remember rightly, you had a guitar with 7 strings. Or maybe I imagined it. I know someone played a 7-string guitar.
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Yep, that was me! One of my main players is still a seven string, though the only two guitars to make it out of their cases so far since the move are my acoustic and my strat.

I'll try to be a little more active around here, but life has kinda gotten in the way lately... I've been fired up to make more music for a little while though so hopefully at least an EP will come out of it.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
life has kinda gotten in the way lately... I've been fired up to make more music for a little while though so hopefully at least an EP will come out of it.
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I know what you mean. Although I did some recording in July and August {including a friend of mine on vocals while I was in Minnesota in August}, it's only this month that I've gotten back into it and am now on a roll.
 
Awesome to hear, man! I've been listening to some of the demos for this project (probably going to be an EP just for the sake of getting something out) I've been working on, and the playing and writing (I've tried writing solos for the first time ever) is SO close to where I want it to be, that it really does have me energized to get this wrapped up and out there. I'm not playing a ton, but it's all been on my acoustic, and I figure if I can rip off fast scale runs on 12s or 13s and higher-than-electric action, it'll be a cakewalk when I plug in again, so I'm hoping I haven't lost much ground...
 
Just bumping this to update that the mirrors are down and while it'll be a while before I can spackle and repaint, I'm at least moving in the right direction and have a lot of my acoustic trapping temporatily mounted, pending repainting.

Honestly, though, I think the biggest improvement here is that I can't see all the cabling running behind my desk anymore. :laughings:

Pleasant surprise - there was an exposed junction box under the mirror that had clearly previously held an outlet (which makes sense, code would dictate one per wall), so the next time an electrician buddy of mine is in town I'm going to have him add one and that'll vastly simplify all the power wiring.
 
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