Homestudio flush mount speakers

[Soundman2020]

Also concluded that he speakers are a little bit to high,

The correct height is where the acoustic axis of the speakers is at exactly the same height as your ears are, when you are seated at the console, or maybe a little higher. In most cases, that's about 120 cm above the floor, or maybe a couple of cm more.

- Stuart -

[DYSTONIA]

Source of the post if you're not soffit mounting the subs, then the best bet is to place the subs slightly off center and pick one to move slightly more towards a side wall. that's a starting point. next up sweeps from each to determine the room response. somewhat different than the normal in the corner to sweep. identify the largest anomalies. then select one, and set the frequency generator to the anomaly and place the subs side by side at the listening position. next up, getting down on all fours and listen for the best response (prefer using something like the REW app to watch via a meter as well as ears). once you have the spot, put one of the subs there. re-sweep. next anomaly, generate, crawl around and monitor. move the second sub there.
repeat as needed to fine tune. with some luck it will go fast unless the room response is really bad.

Hey, I did it and the funny thing is; I almost came across the same point in the tests I did before. Even when I move the speakers that is still the area where the bass is the most present. It's sounding ugly of course because no treatment done. About 120 to 130cm from the backwall. So that is 38% from the Blackwall. Confuses me a little bit. Even that the sub frequencies are going through the whole house confuses me a little bit more. Oke I don't finish the soundproofing project at all. But I can feel the sub ringing when im down stairs. But soundproofing sub frequencies is the most difficult thing to do ofcourse. Listening about 103dB is also not a good reference haha. But in that spot I feel the bass ringing through the floor into the chair into my 'body'. Now let's see how to do a 2.2 meting in REW.

[DYSTONIA]

Source of the post

Also concluded that he speakers are a little bit to high,

The correct height is where the acoustic axis of the speakers is at exactly the same height as your ears are, when you are seated at the console, or maybe a little higher. In most cases, that's about 120 cm above the floor, or maybe a couple of cm more.

- Stuart -

Stuart, oh it's exactly 120cm (tweeter). Funny haha.

[Soundman2020]

Hey, I did it and the funny thing is; I almost came across the same point in the tests I did before. Even when I move the speakers that is still the area where the bass is the most present.

It's not really "presence" that you should be looking for, but rather "flat balance". Meaning that all frequencies should be there at the same level, in both intensity and time.

As Glenn mentioned, the best way to do that is by using REW to generate frequency sweeps across the low end of the spectrum (up to about twice the Schroeder frequency for your room), and make sure that you are getting all frequencies at the same level (dB), and with same decay times (you can see that on the waterfall plot, for example).

That's a no go for me because I'm not gonna work with panels etc.. I want the room as death as possible because im used to it and it feel's more like a workplace instead of a living room with some panels on the wall. A good sounding room is amazing

Then there's a problem. A good control room should NOT sound amazing. In fact, it should not sound like anything at all. Rather, it should sound perfectly neutral, with no sound of its own. The reason is simple: only in a room like that is it easy to produce mixes that translate well. If your room has a sound of its own, then it's much harder to create mixes that sound good in all other locations. You can certainly get a mix to sound good in YOUR room, but that's not the point of mixing. The point of mixing is that your mix sounds good anywhere it is played: in a living room, kitchen, car, club, mall, church, performance hall, ear buds, headphones, etc. If your room is not neutral, you'll find it much harder to do that. It will take longer, and you'll be more fatigued by the process.

Thus, a good control room should not sound like anything. Not lively, not bright, not dead, not harsh, not dull... not anything. Rather, it should sound like no room at all. That's the goal of control room design. Absolutely neutral, flat response. Anything else just makes it harder to mix.

There are several documents that define what the acoustic response of a control room should be. The two best ones are ITU-BS.1116-3 and EBU Tech3276. You can find them both here on the forum, in the reference materials section. Useful reference documents for designing and building a studio (about half way down the list). Many studio designers aim to build control rooms that meet all of those requirements, or at least get as close as possible.

So maybe it's a dumb question; why doing treatment first and then speaker placement?

Well, maybe I didn't explain the process too well. What we normally do is to first just predict the room response, using software tools and typical "average" treatment values. Then we adjust the speaker locations within that simulated room, to find the best theoretical layout.

With that layout, set up the speakers and mix position in the real room, at those theoretical best positions, then do real measurements with REW, like this; How to calibrate and use REW to test and tune your room acoustics and also like this: The "walking mic" test, using REW

That gives you real data for the room, and you can use it to adjust the mix position to a better location (if there is one). You can also adjust the speaker locations using a similar "walking" procedure, and at the same time adjust the toe-in angles of the speakers, for the smoothest, flattest response. It is better to do this with equipment, since your ears and brain don't have the precision to judge the differences in response. You can only remember what one one setup sounds like for a few minutes at best, so its not possible to compare multiple setups with just your ears. It's much easier and more accurate to do it by examining the data that REW gives you.

It's a slow tedious process, yes, but if you want your room to be as good as it possibly can, then this is the best way to do it.

Now, that gives you the best spot in the untreated room. Based on that, you can start the treatment, which usually begins with the speaker soffits. Build those first, mount the speakers in them, add some initial treatment on the back wall, and repeat some of the REW tests, to see if there might now be a better spot for the mix position. You can't change the speaker positions or angles now, of course, since the soffits are built, but you can move the mix position forwards and backwards in the room, looking for improvements.

The add more treatment to the room, and repeat the process. Each test you do with REW will show you if your previous treatment is working as designed, or not, so that you can either modify if it it didn't work as planned, or just carry on with the next step in treatment.

To decide on each "next step" in treatment, you also do that using REW. Look at the data to see what it is telling you, then design treatment to deal with the biggest remaining problem in the room. Install, test, design, install, test, design... Continue doing that until you can't improve the acoustic response any more, no matter what you try, or you run out of space to install more treatment, or you run out of money(!). Whichever comes first.

When you get to that point, with the room fully treated acoustically, then you could maybe consider digital tuning of the room. That's when you would start working with the subs: You can sometimes use a sub to deal with a low frequency acoustic problem in the room, or you can set up several subs in a "plan wave bass array" and use that to get some really good control over the low end. That's not so easy to do, but it is possible.

And when that process is completed, the room should be "as good as it gets", with basically flat response in both frequency and time domains, closely matching the ITU or EBU specs. Once you get to that point, then you can apply the final "icing on the cake", which is to superimpose the "room curve" on the flat response. Personally, I usually use the famous B&K room curve from way back in 1974. Even today, it is still the best curve for a control room or other listening room. It gives it just a touch of warmth, and makes it just "sound right".

Once you have the room curve applied, you are done! It won't get better than that.

That's the process that I normally use, and several other studio designers follow a similar process. Others do it differently, but the end goal is the same: get the room sounding like it isn't even there, totally neutral, transparent, then apply the selected "room curve". And your mixes will magically "translate" without any effort! When you take your mix out to the car, or put it on your ear buds, or play it in a club, or on the radio, or TV, or anywhere else, it will just "sound good", without needing any further tweaking. That's the entire point of having a good control room.

- Stuart -

[DYSTONIA]

THANKS again Soundman!

A busy weekend so I'll pickup the build Monday. My best sweet spot is my living room right now. I'm so confuuuuuuuused haha. I move my setup to the living room and believe it or not I can hear everything; low frequency's are great. And I can hear every detail in the mid/high range. Maybe just sitting here

I'll do a REW metering (when I found out how to do it in 2.2) later on but see the attatchment

[gullfo]

yeah the only issue may be that the symmetry will be off in the mids and uppers due to the proximity of one wall versus the other.

[DYSTONIA]

Source of the post yeah the only issue may be that the symmetry will be off in the mids and uppers due to the proximity of one wall versus the other.

Haha Glenn, hope u understand that this is an temporary setup.

[DYSTONIA]

Thanks for all the information so far!!!

So after a few days of rest I came to the conclusion that I maybe make a big mistake on the soundproofing side. The floor is concrete and the floor is resonation as F#... At this moment I change it because the drywall is not glued or whatever. Honestly I don't know what to do at this moment. It's about 12cm's high and I can do metering etc but I've put my setup in the living room just because i also need to "work" and I got better results then I thougt. I can hear the all the sub frequencies flat. Everybody is talking about TL etc.. I think I was trying to fix a 'problem' that not even was/is a problem.

Any thoughts about this? Because I'm really frustrated that I read so many stuff on the internet and maybe did that before started even building.

TL is of course really important, but if I can get it about -20/30 (low-end) I'm happy.

[Soundman2020]

Source of the post The floor is concrete and the floor is resonation as F#

So your floor is a concrete slab, but it is resonating? What is under the slab? Is there another room down there, or is it laid directly on the ground?
How did you determine that the concrete is resonating?

because the drywall is not glued or whatever.

Drywall should never be glued, if you want good isolation. Gluing sheets of drywall together makes it into one solid chunk, without any internal damping. That forces the coincidence dip down to a lower frequency, which can reduce isolation. Never glue drywall sheets together in a studio. Only nail them, or screw them to the studs.

- Stuart -

[DYSTONIA]

So your floor is a concrete slab, but it is resonating? What is under the slab? Is there another room down there, or is it laid directly on the ground? How did you determine that the concrete is resonating?

Yes there is a floor above and under. My main goal was to isolate that floor from the concrete to tackle most of the vibrations. But somebody told me that you need to do that correctly because it's all about mass. (See attach). The concrete is not resonation but the "studio floor"/house is resonation/vibration as hell. Nothing is touching the wall, but as mentioned before. Everybody is saying something else...

Drywall should never be glued, if you want good isolation. Gluing sheets of drywall together makes it into one solid chunk, without any internal damping. That forces the coincidence dip down to a lower frequency, which can reduce isolation. Never glue drywall sheets together in a studio. Only nail them, or screw them to the studs.

Sorry, I explained that not very wel. Not being glued but I can take them down really easy right now because the construction is not finished.

[gullfo]

you'd want more insulation between the sleepers. you really want that OSB panels damped so having an extra inch (25mm) above the level of the sleepers would be the minimum. otherwise you're just building a drum head.

[DYSTONIA]

Source of the post you'd want more insulation between the sleepers. you really want that OSB panels damped so having an extra inch (25mm) above the level of the sleepers would be the minimum. otherwise you're just building a drum head.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

I've seen the term 'Drum Head' come up before. Since I can still take everything apart, as I said, I better do it right the first time. Without asking another 100 'dumb' questions what is the best thing to do right now? I now understand that mass is important.

I'm starting to feel a little stupid. It's all a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. But I'm doing it right or I'm not doing it.

EDIT: A friend did send this link to me and he told me that this is a really good solution. It's confusion me because another 'advice' how to it. I'm not affright to start again from the bottom. The only thing what holds me back is that I 'damaged' the Rockwool insulation by adding 'no making sense' holders to hold the OSB in place/more screw options. But can I even damage rockwool? Check out the attachment, I think I understand what you mean by damping the OSB. https://www.dhpsoundproofing.co.uk/floating-floor/

I need some motivation and advice to go further instead of spending more money on things that probably make no sense at all.
Still thinking about hiring someone. Not because im not handy but I have nog clue what to do right now. If the fundamental is not good at all then I the wall construction on top of it make no sense at all...

Still a few short questions:

- Do i need resilient channel? It is extremely expensive and now uses rubber which is flexible.
- Is it a good idea to do a few steps back and redo the floor construction?
- Did i damaged the Rockwool?
- The floor is now 12cm's high. There is concrete underneath so there must be another way, right?
- Im running out of budget and got depressed because of this stupid flooring I did...

[Soundman2020]

OK, now I understand. It's not your actual concrete slab studio floor that is resonating, but rather the light-weight wood assembly sitting on top of it. That's quite common. It happens all the time to first-time studio builders. Any time you put a thin, flexible sheet of material (such as OSB) over an air cavity, it does, indeed, create a resonant system, and any resonant system will NOT isolate the room. In fact, at the exact frequency of peak resonance, that system can amplify the sound going through to the other side. So if you are hearing an F# in your room, then whoever is down below you, is also hearing it, and loud!

I'm starting to feel a little stupid. It's all a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. But I'm doing it right or I'm not doing it.

Great! So you should first investiage this a bit, to find out how to do it right. There's three things here on the forum that will help you to get your floating floor right:

The first one is a research paper with results of extensive testing of various floating floors, some of them similar to your. This paper basically demonstrates that it is really, really hard to get a floating floor to work without creating a resonant system: https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php ... g+floor#p4 Look for the document title "IR-802 - Floating floors", about half way down that list. It's a very interesting paper, and fairly easy to follow.

The other two, are articles I wrote about floating floors a few years ago:
What is a floating floor? How to do it wrong, and how to do it right:

Floating your floor: How and why... and why not.

Those should give you a good idea of what the real issues are here, and how to go about building your floor correctly... if you even need one!

That's the basic issue here: whether or not you actually need a full floating floor. That's why I asked what is below your studio. If there is another important down there (a parking garage, laundry, bathroom, or some such) then you might not need one. It might be simpler just to mount any noisy instruments on Glenn's "drum riser", if you plan to track in that room, or just do nothing at all if you only plan to mix in there (as long as you isolate your speakers from the soffits!).

But if there is something important down there as an angry neighbor's bedroom, or something like that, then you might need one. Maybe. It does depend on what you are going to do in your room! If you are going to play live acoustic drums, bass guitar on a big amp, or anything else that makes a noise and also causes vibrations in your floor, then yes, you would need to do that, and you are right: it is NOT easy to do. See the links above.

You would first need to determine how much of a problem you are causing, and that would involve going down into that room under yours and doing a spectrum analysis while someone else is making that annoying noise in your room. That way, you can determine what frequencies are causing the problems, and ho loud each of those is. Based on that, you can "tune" your floor to reduce those frequencies as much as possible, to acceptable levels. It might be possible to adapt Glenn's Drum Riser concept to cover the entire floor, if the problem isn't too serious.

In the worst-case scenario, your "loud noise" would also be causing "structure-borne" vibrations in the building structure itself (eg, from kick-drum impact sounds, or bass amp vibrations, or stomping musicians with clogs on....). In that case, you would, indeed, need to float your floor properly, which would imply that you'll need to hire a structural engineer to make sure the existing floor is capable of supporting the large additional weight of a properly floated floor.

The diagram you posted that your fried sent to you, is not an option. That is a three-leaf system, which would likely make matters WORSE in the low end of the spectrum. It might do something of the mid range and the highs, but it would resonant at two different frequencies in the low end, perhaps even in the low mids, since it doesn't have anywhere near enough mass, and the are gas are very tiny. To understand the concepts involved here, especially the issue with 3-leaf systems, I'd strongly suggest that you should read this article about how studio isolation works: What is MSM? How does it work? That's mostly about walls, but the same principles apply to floors as well.

Unfortunately, floating a floor is a big deal if it has to isolate the entire audible spectrum by a large amount. If you just need some reduction at certain frequencies in the low mids or mids, then there are simpler alternatives. But not that system that your friend suggested.

Isolation is a science. It is well understood. Sound follows the laws of physics, and is therefore easy to predict. There are systems for creating isolation, and equations for calculating things, such as the frequencies that will be isolated, the frequencies that will not be isolated, and how much isolation you will get. Unfortunately, many well-meaning people on the internet do not know this, and think you can just sort of cobble together bits and pieces of things, and keep on trying until it works. Or they heard about an uncle of their wife's second cousins boss, whose son's girlfriend once worked in a studio, and he thinks the did it like XYZ... Reality is a bit different! Isolating a studio is simple in concept, because the laws of physics are well understood. I can design you an isolation system for as much isolation as you need, at any frequency where you need it. The design isn't a problem. It's the implementation that is a problem, because the laws of physics dictate the, in order to get isolation, you need mass. The more isolation you need, the more mass you need. Major mass takes up space. Major mass is expensive. Major mass is hard to handle in practice, and can easily overload whatever structure that it is sitting on. High isolation at low frequencies also implies a large air cavity (because small cavities resonate at higher frequencies). Large cavities take up space. ANd high isolation also implies acoustic damping of the right type, the right amount, and in the right place.

That's why your current floor is resonating: it is light-weight (low mass), and the air gap is small, which implies a relatively high resonant frequency, and there isn't enough damping of the right type.

The articles above should get you on the right path for doing this right, if indeed you need to do it.


EDIT: I did take a look at the link you posted... that's not a floating floor. You cannot build a successful studio floating floor like that. Way too little mass, way to little air gap. That floor is going to resonate, just like yours, but perhaps at a slightly lower frequency. See the above articles to understand why. Any company that uses the words "soundproofing" in their name, probably isn't going to be a good source of reliable information (with some exceptions). Professional acousticians and acoustic designers don't use that word, because it has no meaning. There is no technical definition for what "soundproofing" is. We tend to use terms like "isolation" and "transmission loss", which are real technical terms that do have meaning, and can be measured.

- Is it a good idea to do a few steps back and redo the floor construction?

Yes, definitely! You certainly do not want to have your studio sitting on top of a resonant cavity!

- Did i damaged the Rockwool?

Probably not. It's probably OK. Mineral wool is pretty tough. Once you get it out, measure it to see if it is still roughly as thick as it was originally. If it is, then you are OK. It's pretty hard to damage mineral wool!

- The floor is now 12cm's high. There is concrete underneath so there must be another way, right?

Right! I suspect that you might be better off without that floor at all! Then you can re-use those materials for the walls, ceiling, soffits, acosutic treatment, etc. But if it turns out that you do need something down there, then there are still options for you that don't need a full floating floor, which is expensive to do, and complicated. Those options aren't as good as a floating floor, but might be enough for your case. And they also don't cause strong resonance!


- Stuart -

[DYSTONIA]

That's a lot of info, needed some time to understand it... So the conclusion is no floating floor? The floor and outside walls are indeed very massive! I've a few question though to make it even more clear for me, if I mind;

- Build the inner walls straight on the concrete? Or maybe create a little 'floating'? (Glenn's Drum Riser concept)
EDIT: So I can screw into something. The concrete is not ideal for that.
- Let the inner walls not touching the concrete walls? (air gap)
- Low vibrations going into the floor. Then it vibrates to all the walls? What is the advantage of build a box in a box straight on the concrete? I can feel the bass vibrations on the concrete when I'm upstairs.
- I now have wall with 5cm Rockwool and 1 layer of drywall. Drywall only on the inside. If i build 2 walls with a gap in between (5cm for example). No drywall in between them? Only on the outside. (EDIT: I didn't read the MSM/MAM yet)

My idea was/is if I build two walls I can shape the second wall more to my roommodel because I soffit the mains. I did read so many things that I maybe ask questions that I've already the answer for, but better that then doing it again again again and again...

Thanks in advance! I learned more then I ever did at school lol.

[DYSTONIA]

Done for today. Screwed out a few hundred screws and tomorrow I can remove the Rockwool/OSB. Everything is unscrewed so take's me about half an hour. I hope. I'm happy that all the Rockwool is still in a really good shape. Some damage on the drywall and wood. But that's not a problem at all because 95% is still fine. The only problem is that I can't use any room upstairs lol. My bathroom is now a really dead room

Feels kinda strange. Building and calculating for two months and take everything down in a few hours... e
Now I've to figure out what I'm going to when the room is empty.