room layout?

I

IanW-UK

New member
Hi all, I'm pretty new to acoustics and am wondering about my current room layout and If it may be causing problems even before I start treating the room. From what I've read so far symetry, it would seem, is important. Here's my current layout. I use the room for both recording and as a control room.

roomlayout.gif


As you can see the room is pretty small, and because the listening position is on a sofa, everything is quite low. Will that in itself cause problems? It also puts the listening position and the monitors below the bottom of the window. I'm going to move the table to the other side of the room so I can move the sofa more into the middle.

Anyone got any suggestions as to how I could make this better?

Cheers,

Ian...........
 
Ian,

Your current arrangement is about as bad as it gets for a room that small. Here's how you can fix it:

Put the speakers right in front of the window so they fire the long way into the room - facing right as per your drawing. Put the speakers about 4.5 to 5 feet apart centered on the wall. Then sit about 4 to 5 feet in front of them.

Once this is done you can add bass traps and other acoustic treatment, and be able to have a room that's pretty decent.

--Ethan
 
Thanks mate, I thought someone might say something like that :(

Could you tell me what the "scientific" reason for not having the monitors pointing at the wall is? I'm very unknowledgeable about such stuff, just curious. I put em like that basically to make more space in the room. I will move them like you say though. I guess I can always move the sofa out of the way whenever I need to get a drum kit in there :).

Cheers, your faq is very informative btw thanks,

Ian........
 
Go here

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/titles/Plans.htm

scroll down to the "Bedroom Studio" drawing - this is more where things should be.

Symmetry is important, especially in the front half of the room. You definitely want your speakers closer to the front wall, and placed on the SHORT wall instead of the long one. This is true up to room sizes of maybe 30 feet in the short dimension. Above that, you're into different designs altogether.

Being set up at that low an altitude isn't bad by itself, but if your room is carpeted it may deaden high frequencies somewhat. The one altitude you DON'T want to set up at is 50% of the distance between floor and ceiling, or any other distance that is close to a simple fraction of the height (1/3,2/3, 1/2, 3/5, etc ) any of these will put your head/speakers in either a peak or a null of the modal frequency related to ceiling height, and you'll either get peaks or cancellations at the set of harmonic frequencies related to that dimension.

Hope that helps... Steve
 
Man, you guys are quick - two posts while I was typing (yeah, I know, get faster fingers)

You don't want your speakers firing into the wall because you'll get reflections off the wall and back to your ears (called early reflections) these happen too close (in time)to the direct sound to be distinguished by your brain (needs to be at least 20 milliseconds or more) so the stereo image is destroyed (more or less) - a lot of stereo information is time/phase related, and these early reflections smear that information... Steve
 
Thanks Steve :) Makes sense now. I'm gonna be buying some rockwool slabs this month so hopefully I will be able to get this room sounding half decent :cool:

Cheers guys,

Ian.......
 
Ian,

> Could you tell me what the "scientific" reason for not having the monitors pointing at the wall is? <

Because there's always a deep null in the frequency response at 1/4 wavelength from a boundary. So near the rear wall the frequency response has huge holes in the bass region. If you sit at least six or more feet in front of the wall behind you - farther is better still - the first response null is lower in frequency.

Just for reference, you can determine how far away from a room boundary the primary null exists for any frequency with this simple formula:

Feet = 280 / Frequency

Likewise, you can determine the null frequency for any spacing like this:

Frequency = 280 / Feet

As Steve explained, these nulls also occur near the floor and ceiling. Not just the walls.

--Ethan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top