Soundman2020 - Studio Design Forum

Hey crew, hope you're all well, it's been a long time.

I tried to salvage my JLS threads awhile back, to transfer here, but was unsuccessful. Pretty bummed about it, as there was an abundance of gold in those posts.

Thanks to you beauties, I've learned sooo much about this field of study over the past few years (i.e. planning, building, testing, troubleshooting, etc.), and have attained amazing results. I will admit, my approach was quite discombobulated - I certainly would've went about it entirely differently today, but here we are...

...by the way, the functionality of my iso room turned out far beyond my expectations. I do need to wrap up some finishing carpentry and treatment details, but wow is it quiet.

Sooo, with your help, I'm back to scrape up some new information and get things in my control room dialed in, or "tamed," if you will.

Unfortunately, the excessive duration of my build has reduced my demands and I'm at a point now where I just want to achieve some "basic" goals...haha, yeahhhh rigghhtttt.

I did a few REW tests finally, but as you'd likely expect, I don't know of the order which to approach what I'm looking at. Furthermore, my C/R is furnished, as I've been lipsticking this pig for more years than I want to admit (been mixing with ZERO translation). I'm talking masochist levels or torment.

I was given a boatload of treatment from a guy whose studio closed, where it has sat in my garage attic studio for years. Having come across Rod's closing section on treatment approaches, I sprung to get this treatment mounted somewhere/anywhere (hastily) to not only get some space back, but to see if I could flatten the response at mixing position...which did help some.

Since my C/R is so long/large (cubic ft. etc.) and has a gable ceiling, it seems less than ideal for a truly accurate C/R, if I'm thinking about this correctly.

I, in my sudden and needless hurry to make my translation situation a smidge less annoying, decided to try a LEDE approach, where I deadened my front end wall but have a completely untreated rear end, no diffusion, nor have I traced rays as of yet.

Before I upload files, pictures, etc., I suppose it is critical for me to understand whether my current REW results are 'flawed' or of little worth, due to my C/R being furnished?

Obviously, any thoughts, links, and/or advice is welcomed.

Thanks in advance good people, talk soon!

the REW w/ furnishings will be the current state of the room. how much that will differ from an empty room can only be identified with REW measurements in an empty room. as a general note - distributed absorption around the room generally contributes to overall improved response and diffusion effects.

Hey Glenn, thanks for the reply.

I've been sleuthing the forum for hours on these topics and have recognized that eventually, REW tests will have to be conducted in a furnished/treated room, obviously.

I think that after reading Stuart's REW calibration post, I took some statements a little too literally, in that he mentions doing tests in an empty room first, then more tests, etc.

I expect that I'll be doing a lot more reading on C/R treatment methods for the next few days, at least.

I hope you have a good weekend, thanks again.

-Chris

As Glenn mentioned, doing tests in the empty room reveals the basic, underlying response of the overall room, which gives you good hint on what treatment you'll need in the low end, and some hints on where to put it.

But you are beyond that now, as your room is mostly complete and furnished. Thus, your best bet is to do a few REW tests in the room exactly as it is, at a few key locations, and based on that figure out what treatment you will need, and where to put it.

About LEDE rooms: they were all the rage 40 to 50 years ago, but the design concept was later abandoned as it was found to not be that accurate for good transaltion, and to be mentally fatiguing, since it creates an environment that doesn't sound "natural" to your ears and brain. Working in a true LEDE room will leave you feeling tired at the end of the day.

The basic idea was good, but the "hard" implementation proved to not be so good. Thus, various extensions were born, such as the "non-environment" room, and the "reflection free zone", and "controlled image design", as well as a few others. They take the basic original concept, and improve on it in different ways by making the response cleaner, more accurate, more natural sounding... and much less fatiguing.

Personally, I prefer the "Reflection Free Zone" concept, for many reasons, so most of the rooms I do are loosely based on that basic idea, but with several modifications. With this concept, the parts at the front of the room that matter are hard, solid, rigid and reflective, from the point of view of the speakers, and shaped such that no early reflections arrive at the mix position within at least 20ms of the direct sound, and the ones that do get there are at least 20 dB lower. Hence, my handle: Soundman2020. It's all about psycho-acoustics, not the pandemic! Those are the minimum conditions for getting a decent environment in which to mix accurately, and get good translation. There's a few more things that are needs, such as low level diffuse field arriving ideally after about 30 ms, etc.

But the biggest issue in any room, regardless of size or shape, is the low end. Studios are "small", acoustically, and have natural resonances in the low end that greatly interfere with the overall sound clarity. The dimensions of the room dictate what frequencies those problems will occur at, and thus also dictate the location, type, and amount of low-end treatment that will be needed. You need a VERY large room before you can escape from this low-end resonance issue. Way, way larger than any room in a typical house.

Also regardless of size and shape, the single most important wall in the room, is the rear wall: the one behind your head, as you sit at the mix position. The speakers are facing directly at that wall, so the majority of their energy is bouncing off that huge surface and heading right back at you, as well as resonating due to the length axis of the room. So that rear wall should be the number one priority for treatment. Number two might be the front wall, if you don't have an RFZ style room, but is most likely the floor. You can't realistically treat the floor in most rooms, so your only option is to lay out your room to minimize issues from the the floor. Number three is probably the ceiling in most home studios, which can often be dealt with using an tilted, hard-backed cloud over the mix position (or rather, over the floor between the mix position and the speakers). Number four is the side walls in most home studios, where treatment is relatively simple: absorbers at key locations, and perhaps diffusers further back, if the room is long.

So that's what I'd suggest: start with some REW tests to get an idea of what you are dealing with, then concentrate on the back wall to get your low end and major specular reflections under control, then work on the other areas. Do additional REW tests after each major step in treatment, to check what is working, what isn't, and what still needs ot be done. Often you find that treating a big problem in the room will then reveal other problems that you hadn't noticed yet, as the big problem was overwhelming them. It's an iterative approach, for most home studio builders. The Holy Grail is nice shaped frequency and time response that is mostly flat, but tilted to something like the famous B&K curve. If you can achieve that, your job is done. Most home studios are too small to be able to achieve that completely, but getting close is still good. +/- 5db is great, but many rooms are more like +/- 8 or 10 dB

- Stuart -

That's an amazing response, Stuart, thank you so much!

You have given me more than enough to think about, I will get back to the drawing board in the next few days and update the thread moving forward.

Happy weekend you guys, thanks again for your time and attention to detail!

-Chris