I've changed my room layout for monitoring

[Mornats]

I've been meaning to sort out the sound in my room for ages now. I had my studio monitors (a pair of M-audio BX5a Deluxes) sat on top of my Tannoy E11s (my hi-fi speakers) which were sat on my computer desk. I had these positioned in the corner of my room based on advice I got to help with the stereo image. I struggled with getting accurate sounds out of them for a while, in particular the bass frequencies.

Here's the before shot:

[attachment=229133:studio-before.JPG]

So today I popped down to PMT and bought myself a pair of Samson MS200 speaker stands and decided to rearrange my room.

I've positioned my monitors on the narrow wall facing down the length of the room (room setup 101 - check!) and sat my chair in what I thought was a good position - turns out it's bang on the recommended 38% rule. Result. Both speakers are equidistant from the left and right walls and are sat 14" from the back wall.

Here's the after shot:

[attachment=229134:studio-after.JPG]

I had a good read of this article: [url="http://arqen.com/acoustics-101/room-setup-speaker-placement/"]http://arqen.com/aco...aker-placement/[/url] which pointed me towards a handy spreadsheet that simulates the influence of wall reflections based on your speaker distances. Of course it can't guess what type of things in your room frequencies will be bouncing off but I popped in some measurements. I was quite pleased with the results. No big dips anywhere. I'll try out a room EQ wizard at some point so I can get an accurate measurement.

Here's my results from the wall bounce spreadsheet:

[attachment=229135:wall-bounce.PNG]

The result? Everything does sound better, clearer and I'm noticing things in my tracks that I should go and fix, mostly around certain sounds at certain frequencies that are standing out a lot more than they did previously. It seems to lack a bit of bass but I put this down to the monitors as they have a 56hz cutoff and 5" drivers. Listening to Blood Sugar Sex Magick (the song) I found the bass hard to pick out. However on Portishead's Glory Box, it sounded perfect. I still need to do a lot more listening to find out if I'm getting an accurate enough sound.

I'm unsure about what height I should have my speakers at. Sat in my chair I've positioned them so that me ears are just above the woofers. This puts the base of the speakers at 98cm from the floor. The article above recommends at least 120cm but that would put them way above my listening position (do studio engineers sit on high chairs?!).

Next step will be acoustic treatment. I can get away with a panel on either of the side walls that I should be able to prop up on top of existing furniture and put them away when I'm done. That's all depending on where they should go but's doable. Bass traps will be tricky as like most home studio people this is my living room and it's pretty full. I'd find it very difficult to pop big bass traps in the corners.

You may have noticed one small problem... when I'm listening to these speakers in this position I'm not at my computer and can't see the screen that well. I don't thing this is a bad thing. I spend most of my recording and arranging time sat in front of my Komplete Kontrol keyboard and Maschine, at least at times when listening to an accurate sound is important. I think it's also an advantage to just sit and listen and not be watching faders or EQ graphs when deciding what needs to be tweaked.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with how I spent my Sunday afternoon

[HowieBass]

I've read, at least for domestic hi-fi setups, that you normally try to have the tweeters at ear level. My speakers are a bit different as they use Mission's inverted driver design where the tweeter is supposed to stay below ear level (I can't adjust my Atacama Nexus 6 stand heights in any case).

[Mornats]

Yeah that's what I've always been told too. The tweeters on my M-audios are just above the woofers (as most are) so I guess the article saying that having the top of the woofer at ear level isn't much different to having the tweeter at ear level. There's less than 2 inches in it on my monitors anyway!

[HowieBass]

I've no idea how small the sweet spot is in your set-up nor how far you can move your head about (before it leaves the sweet spot) so maybe speaker height is okay to within an inch or so. I also don't know how many pro engineers mix/master through headphones vs speakers (though I expect you'd want to listen to your final mix through a few sets of speakers anyway). I've only just bought myself a pair of decent open back headphones for general music listening (Sennheiser HD 558) after years of using budget brands and I'm hearing stuff in old material that's completely new to me so I can see why people do end up spending a lot of money on them when they want the ultimate studio reference headphones.

[Skol303]

Looks great Paul and you're following all the right advice

Bass traps are always what's needed in home studios to help improve the 'neutrality' of your monitoring. These guys are a small, friendly firm that makes excellent products and are full of good advice (I used them myself):

http://www.bluefrogaudio.co.uk

A pair of movable 'gobo' traps might be just what you need. Alternatively you can make your own with sufficient planning and patience.

Avoid the cheap foam panels get sold as part of 'home acoustic' kits. They do next to nothing when it comes to taming bass frequencies and will most likely just make your room sound boxy.

Good luck and keep us updated!

Edited October 3, 2016 by Skol303

[Mornats]

I got myself a pair of Audio Technica ATH M50x headphones and they're fantastic. I find that room reverb sounds totally different on cans than on monitors so it's best to mix on both. I've made a mix sound good on headphones only for it to sound like I'm stood at the back of a long room when I put it on my monitors.

Thanks for the link Paul. Those gobo traps wouldn't actually fit in my living room I'm afraid. I'd have to put one over the living room door and another where my desk sits. I have my TV in another corner and a door through to my kitchen in the fourth corner! Not ideal! I'd have to move them out of the way when not is use and there's no space to store them. That's the trouble with living room studios, the first sound treatment you need to apply are bass traps and a lot of rooms just don't have the space for them.

Speaking of bass, my M-Audios don't pump out a lot of bass. It's audible of course but not booming.

[Mornats]

Having had a look round at different bass traps I found these: [url="http://www.auralex.com/product/cornerfills-cornerfill-cubes/"]http://www.auralex.c...rnerfill-cubes/[/url]

I reckon I could easily fit some of the smaller ones in the corners of my room but it would have to be 2-3 inches thick at most to fit behind my door. I have no idea whether that would help at all or if it would be far too little.

** Edit ** a bit of Googling says no no no no no

Edited October 3, 2016 by Mornats

[Skol303]

^ Nah... if it's foam then most of the time it's pointless. You want a dense Rockwool-like material and lots of it!

But ultimately, most domestic spaces - like my own - are [i]never[/i] going to be ideal in terms of acoustics. They just tend to be too small and/or too regular.

Doesn't mean you can't make the most of it, however. I've recently started using [url="http://sonarworks.com/?gclid=CP6sw6Oewc8CFRS3GwodPYIESA"]Sonarworks[/url] (took the plunge after trying out the demo) and for me it's very useful; certainly worth the investment. I use 8" monitors in a smallish room - mainly because I want the low end sub-50Hz for a lot of the electronic stuff I produce - and with that set up I'm always going to have problems with bass nodes. Sonarworks has tackled many of the problems I was having and I'm finding that my mixes translate much better now that I've started using it (less time faffing around playing mixes on various sound systems and scribbling notes).

Could be a good solution for you if, like me, worthwhile acoustic treatment isn't a viable option.

[Mornats]

That sounds like the ideal option I reckon. I recall trialling their headphone calibration software and finding that it turned my headphone response into a nice flat response. How loud is the calibration tone on it by the way? I know it's a minor consideration but one review said it was fairly loud!

If I still wanted to go down the treatment route, is there a way to find out what problems my room has so I know what to prioritise fixing? That would help me decide.

On another note, you may have noticed that with my new setup my listening position is away from my desk. I've been looking at Android OSC apps such as TouchOSC and OSC Commander to give me remote access to the faders in Reaper. OSC Commander seems to be the best but the demo doesn't want to install on my ageing LG G Pad. Maybe it's time for a new tablet - perhaps a switch back to Apple so I can grab iMaschine and Sampletank for iOS (sadly missing on Android due to Apple having better support for low latency music "stuff" apparently). Any experience of using an OSC app at all?

[lowdown]

I use TouchOSC on iPad Air 2. This is with Cubase 8.5 and Studio One V3.
It works an absolute treat with them. You can create custom maps, but if you look on the net
there are plenty of folks uploading their maps for use with various DAW's.
Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty easy to create maps for yourself.

My maps are mostly aimed as a MIdi controller for CC#'s, along with Key switch maps.
I have the basic transport stuff for Audio, but you can pretty much create anything you want for your work flow.

Highly recommended, but you would more than likely need the larger screen tablets for the real estate.

EDIT: I nearly forgot. Lemur is also a serious app for controlling, both on Android and iOS.
https://liine.net/en/products/lemur/

Edited October 5, 2016 by lowdown

[Mornats]

Thanks Lowdown. My main requirement is to be able to control the faders but if I could tweak EQ plugins too that would be awesome. I feel like i'm not too far from detaching myself from my PC when I'm recording and mixing! Ideal for my new room setup

[ras52]

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1475432136' post='3145870']
I think it's also an advantage to just sit and listen and not be watching faders or EQ graphs when deciding what needs to be tweaked.
[/quote]

Absolutely! On a Mac there's a handy keyboard shortcut (typing this on a PC so can't visualise it!) to switch off the display, which I try to do when I want to stop "listening with my eyes"!

[Mornats]

[quote name='ras52' timestamp='1475684625' post='3147961']
Absolutely! On a Mac there's a handy keyboard shortcut (typing this on a PC so can't visualise it!) to switch off the display, which I try to do when I want to stop "listening with my eyes"!
[/quote]

My monitor has a hardware version of that

I've just installed the demo of TouchDAW on my LG G Pad. Bit fiddly to set up as I had to install rtp drivers and a third-party Mackie driver (Klinke) but once set up it's superb. I get my fader controls, but I can edit any of the effects parameters too. I'd like to be able to expand the screen so that I've only got faders as I'd like more than 8 on screen at once. The scrolling through the tracks could be smooth so you can visually how far you've gone. Custom or third party skins/interfaces would be nice too. Overall though, the proof of concept works. IT's only £3.99 compared to Lemur's £18.99! Lemur may have that added functionality though. It does have a lot of templates available though.

So, for £3.84, I'm going to grab TouchDaw. That's less than a pint. There's a chance I may splash out on a larger tablet for this if it suits my workflow.

[Mornats]

I've just spent around 40 mins playing a few reference tracks through my monitors and moving around my room, listening to the bass. If I stand in any of the corners I hear more bass so there's definitely a build up here. If I stand in the dead centre the bass dips off noticeably. Interestingly, the bass sound in the corners of the room sound about the "right" amount of bass for the tracks. I tried moving my speakers and seating position around to get what I think is enough bass and I found that if I put my speakers right up against the wall then I get just enough extra bass for them to sound accurate.

So in lieu of trying to fit bass traps into a space that can't fit them I'll go with this and make more use of reference tracks.

[Mornats]

I've been doing a bit more work on this. I'm trying to find out where the sound problems are exactly and I've been playing some test tones through my speakers:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8&index=4&list=PLzFvCAfIq7a2SIBfDhpCytfJ4RHVb_KLY[/media]

I've positioned my speaker the best I can to even out the changes in volume from the tones (I've been using the 25-150 hz and 60 - 6000 hz ones mainly).

Up to around 40-50 hz - nothing. But my monitors low end starts at 56 hz so that's expected.

50 - 80 hz - very low bass.

90 - 100 hz - big spike in bass.

115 hz - small dip in bass.

140 hz - big dip in bass.

200 - 300 hz moderate dip in bass. Lasts longer than other shorter dips already mentioned.

Small variations from then on.

I did a test with just a 95 hz test tone as this is the biggest problem from what I can hear. It's amazing just how different the volume sounds when I move around the room. Standing in the middle and turning 90 degrees to my monitors caused the tone to almost disappear entirely!

I placed some Thomann speaker isolation foam things under my monitors which helped a bit with the 95 hz issue but I think this added to the 200-300 hz issue.

I'm almost tempted to get some new speakers. Yamaha HS7 or some front mounted ones like the KRK Rokit 7 or the Presonus Eris E5. The latter two are front-ported but that's not going to solve the problem with my room and the Presonus, despite it's good reputation has a similar frequency range to my M-Audio BX5a Deluxes. With the 6.5" speakers from the Yamaha and KRKs I should be able to hear bass better but again it's not solving the problem of the room! I've hunted round for bass traps that could fir and work in my living room but I'd be blocking doors into the room and I'd have to move my computer desk out - which would then rule out the room for audio work completely! I also have the problem of renting and not being able to attach anything like bass traps to the walls anyway because my landlord would not be pleased.

My best option then is to try Sonarworks, perhaps with a nice pair of Yamaha HS7 monitors. My bank balance won't be happy about that as I'd be looking at around £650! Add in the fact that my time spent monitoring on speakers is fairly limited due to living in a flat in a Victorian terrace with paper thin walls means decent speaker monitoring is probably out of the picture completely. So, I think I'll mix on headphones only use my monitors for things like stereo imaging and reverb. Which leads me to the cheapest option (other than doing nothing) and going with the Sonarworks headphone product.

I placed some Thomann speaker isolation foam things under my monitors which helped a bit with the 95 hz issue but I think this added to the 200-300 hz issue.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I couldn't hear anything over 15 khz on that test video! Old age...

Edited October 15, 2016 by Mornats

[HowieBass]

I did wonder if for critical monitoring you might have to mix on a good set of reference headphones but I reckon it'd be better money spent than buying new speakers and trying to position them correctly and tune the room acoustics. BTW you've got a repeated section of text in post #15 at the end of the main block of text, beginning "I did a test with just a 95 hz test tone... ".

[Mornats]

An editing fail on my part! I've taken the repeated bit out - cheers!

I've got a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones which are great so I'll most likely mix on those. I can combine those with Sonarworks to get a completely flat response too. Having done some analysis on my room now I think this is the best option if I can't put in the right acoustic treatment.

I think I've just saved myself several hundred quid then