Monitoring in a cubicle?

[willowhaus]

EDIT: OK, after reading this again I guess this post may have seemed a bit dumb, and didn't really conform to the READ BEFORE POSTING! criteria. (Sorry about that.) Filling in a bit more detail now...

My little home studio space is pretty ghetto, at the moment:

Raw basement, 7' open joist ceiling, which my wife covered in old shower curtains; concrete floors & walls. We've thrown a few rugs down on the floor, & there's lots of stuff in the basement (books, boxes, kid toys) so there's a minute amount of breakup/absorption there.

Thankfully (?) it's a mostly open, irregular space. The rear 1/6 (approx) is walled into a storage room, but the rest is open. I'm set up in front of the storage room along the front wall of the house (my back to the storage room), about center of that half of the building; the other half, to my left, is completely open to the back wall. A partially open staircase comes down from behind me, perpedicularly, to the right wall where it meets the ground floor door, then does a left turn to come down 3 steps into the space (the basement is partially below ground).

Pity me.

ANYWAY: stuck with this for the moment, my current arrangement with my DAW is in a wraparound cubicle that I got from my boss' old building. Walls are 5' high, 5' wide in the back with two 3' sides. The monitors (Samson R5a's) are on Auralex MoPads on the desk (2' deep, hooked to the back wall & supported underneath with a 3' floor jack) with the LCD monitor in between (actually mounted on a wooden box the size of a CPU tower...). The monitors are angled up towards my face.

It's fairly small, but I can actually achieve a pretty fair triangle between the monitors & my head. sitting in a chair just outside the side walls. It actually seems to be a halfway decent solution for an ugly situation.

I guess what I'm wondering is does this setup in & of itself seem to present any problems that I might not be aware of? I realize the space is far from optimal - still, I'm hoping that by essentially gobo-ing the monitors & working in close that I might minimize the (probably) bad effects of the environment. Am I completely off-base here?

[willowhaus]

Hmm...I'm starting to think that either my question is unanswerable, or even dumber than I thought...

[redear]

do you have a picture?
How does it sound?
How do mixes translate?

[JWL]

What you are describing is actually sensible.

The office dividers you have are mostly effective from the midrange upwards, not much effect on the low end. So you've created a small space that has decent imaging from a mid and high perspective.

The low end is still effected by the entire room, the large size of the room. The fact that it's irregular probably helps too.

The first thing I would do in that room is to stuff some kind of insulation between the ceiling joists. You can use fluffy fiberglass, but then you have to make sure it's well-covered; breathing fiberglass fibers is not my idea of fun. I prefer Ultratouch cotton for this application because it's non toxic, and it's removeable/reusable if you ever change your space. I'd then cover the insulation with cloth over critical listening points, like over your mix position and over any prime recording spots you have where acoustic instruments are recorded. The other parts of the ceiling you can cover with the shower curtains (these are plastic, right?) This step will add a fair amount of bass trapping and will control the room somewhat.

Beyond that, start adding bass traps as more effective versions of the office divider gobos you have. Put as many bass traps into as many corners as you can.

[willowhaus]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! Yeah, it seems pretty workable to me, as a matter of fact - but I also don't want to have a false sense of security. I figured that the close-in absorption would help with a lot of the reflections, and the irregularspace itself didn't seem as conducive to resonance issues as a rectangular box would be.

There is, in fact, insulation in the ceiling already - that's why she put the shower curtains up, to cover it. Point taken about the listening space - I can pull them out & put up some fabric there. (Recommendation about the type?)

I have been trying to figure out bass trapping too - definitely high on the to-do list, although I'm not sure where to start. I would like to get a sub in the picture too - the R5a's are not real bottom-heavy, although I'm really pleased with the way they represent mids & highs. Very nice for real inexpensive monitors!

Maybe I'll post a pic when i find the camera...

Was wondering about another thing - treatment of the underside of the stairs? I'll need to record things in that area - would it make sense to treat them like the rafters, with a little insulation & a fabric cover? Does the shape present any particular weirdness, as opposed to a flat surface?

[gullfo]

as JWL points out, the cubicle dividers are only going to affect the mid-high ranger stuff and not provide any isolation value. the plastic shower curtains on the ceiling joists - what is their flammability rating? almost nothing worse than 3rd degree burns and losing your home insurance from a fire spread by flammable plastics... if you're going to cover the ceiling joists and underside of the stairs, consider 4" 3pcf rigid insulation and flame retardant cloth. better overall bass trapping plus it will add mid and high.
depending on the size of the room the irregular shape may or may not be helpful but the cube dividers may be giving you come space coupling effects which could be giving you reasonable response within the cube.

[willowhaus]

The plastic wasn't intended as a permanent solution. It's what was on hand, and it serves to keep the fiberglass dust down.

The room itself is about 29' front to back, and 27 1/2 side to side. I'm in the front right quadrant, standing in the basement & facing the front of our house. Distance to the wall of the storage room behind me is 20'

Here's an approximation of the layout:



Just to my right is a small rack of stuff (mainly preamps), on a rolling stand. There's a small keyboard there too.

The ugly squares are concrete support pillars. I'm thinking of wrapping those in scrap carpet or something.

You can see that the "Tracking Area" extends under the stairs a bit. Most stuff is done right next to me in the open space, but I'm looking at spreading things out a tad to accommodate a couple of extra people soon. Obviously I'm not going to get much separation, but I can do what I can at the time. I've had decent results sticking my small amp (a Fender Champion 600) behind an easy chair, for instance.

Like I said - it's pretty ugly. Still, it's the best I can do at the moment, so I get to be creative.

[JWL]

There are quite a few ways to accomplish bass trapping. The simplest way is to install bass traps to as many corners of the room as you can manage, including wall/ceiling corners or even wall/floor corners if it is feasible. There are many threads in various forums about how to DIY them if you wish to take the time to learn what to do and get busy with some fabrication. Alternatively, you can buy products designed to optimize bass trapping. Visit us at www.realtraps.com to see some great examples of these products, or if you'd like a more detailed explanation of this step you can read Acoustics: Facts & Fiction.

As far as under the stairs, more insulation with fabric is find. I'd lean toward deadening a small space like that, but use enough insulation that some bass absorption happens. Dead is good, dead and boomy is not.

Any breatheable cloth will work. Guilford of Maine is high-end (read: expensive) but nice-looking and common. Burlap or muslin will work too. Just about any kind of cloth will work, actually; take a sample of the cloth and breathe through it. If it offers any sort of resistance, it may not be ideal. But if you can breathe through it it should be fine.

[JWL]

Another suggestion I have would be to move the mix station you have set up. Ideally, you'll want to make things as symmetrical as possible, especially from the listening position forward.

Good rules of thumb on this are generally to make a symmetrical setup, particularly from the listening position forward, with the listening position 38% back from the front wall, in the center of the room between the side walls. The speakers should make an equilateral triangle with your head, ideally with the tweeters at the same height as your ears. This setup will give you optimum stereo imaging, and the placement within the room minimizes the effect of room modes on the bass. For more detail on this step, read How To Set Up A Room.

You could also have a corner setup, where your mix position faces the top right corner. You could make that work, too.

[willowhaus]

I've read the page, as well as some other stuff. I got the test CD & am going to check that out later tonight.

I'm still a little curious as to where to start with bass trapping. It's fine to say "get as much as you can afford", but coming at it from the other angle...if you only had ONE trap, where would you put it to be most effective? Perhaps that's a subjective question - I would think it is - but where might you start? Would that depend on what the biggest resonance is?

As for moving...what my mock-up doesn't show is all the OTHER crap in the basement. I'm pretty much in the best place ergonomically speaking, unless I do a 180 & stick the desk under the stairs (which might not be a bad idea, actually). I'll definitely have to treat that front wall, then - I'm sure it's less forgiving than the one behind me now.

Any thoughts on acoustical fabrics? I ran across a place in Richmond called Acoustics First, that sells something called Sound Channels, which is supposed to be applied to the wall like wallpaper. They don't list pricing - I sent them an email - but it sounds like it might be a good option for some of that bare concrete, like the support pillars. I'm not really intending to do major construction in there - I actually hope to find another location eventually, either moving to a different house or building an outbuilding dedicated to the studio. For the time being, though, I would like to do the best I can for the space, within reason.

[JWL]

One bass trap probably won't have a huge effect in a room of that size. Bass trapping/absorption is about a)mass of absorptive material; b)surface area of coverage; and c)placement within the room.

A. For mass I recommend at least 4" thick as a minimum for a straddling-the-corner absorber.

B. Surface area, cover as many corners as you can. 2 - 4" absorbers are better than 1 - 8" absorber.

C. Placement is simple (at least as a rule of thumb), treat as many room corners as you can. start with the ones closest to you and work your way outward.

Not sure what you mean by "acoustical fabrics." For the most part, fabric will be somewhat transparent, in that you cover your absorbers with them and the sound goes through the cloth to be absorbed by the material underneath (fiberglass, rockwool, cotton, etc).

If you mean covering a wall with fabric to "treat" the room, it probably won't do much except at very high frequencies. Cloth doesn't have much mass, compared to 4" of rigid fiberglass, rockwool, etc.

[willowhaus]

The stuff I was referring to is actually sold as wall covering. Seems to be polyester fiber stuff, kinda like carpeting with a backing of some kind. You install it with an adhesive. I saw another company selling a similar product after posting.

This is the stuff i mentioned in the last posting: http://www.acousticsfirst.com/sound%20channels-2.htm

I think you're probably right about it affecting mainly highs, though - I wouldn't expect it to trap bass. Just pondering the benefit, if any, over just slapping some carpet up.