Acoustics Small Room Which wall is best for a back wall ?

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clean_and_humble
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Acoustics Small Room Which wall is best for a back wall ?

Post by clean_and_humble » Sun Aug 25, 2013 11:16 am

Hey All

This is an acoustics question. I have to move out of my studio and I am setting up a mix room in a secret location. Formally a laundry room this room will become the next phase of my studio until I find another space. I am not sure how long that will be so I want to set my speaker placement right and get optimal sound. Based on the pictures of all four walls. What do you think my best back wall would be? I am leaning toward putting my monitors in front of the brick wall and placing absorption panels on the brick at speaker level behind the monitors and having the recessed glass brick window and sheetrock wall as my back wall. I would make a difusor pannel that can be placed in front of that glass brick when mixing and treat the back wall with a little absorption. The floor is tile and will be covered with carpet. The ceiling is drop ceiling tiles and I am going to insulate behind that and hang some absorption panels from it. The room is small 7ft X 16ft on the narrow side. My back wall choices are !. A sheetrock wall with a recessed glassbrick window 2. A brick wall 3. A tile wall 4. a sheetrock wall.

Let me know what you all think

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Post by Snarl 12/8 » Sun Aug 25, 2013 2:18 pm

Can you set up a pair of monitors and a chair on wheels and move them all around whilst blasting some tunes? I think an hour of doing that would be more illustrative than an hour of perusing messageboards.

That room is so quirky and small there's really no way to tell in advance. Could be that one of the drywall walls has a nasty resonance, or what have you.

Do the moving around experiments with the room as untreated as possible. Find the best posish in that condish and then treat to make it even better.
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GIK Acoustics
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Post by GIK Acoustics » Mon Aug 26, 2013 6:09 am

Is the "laundry" part of the room going anywhere? The best set up seems to be against that wall. If that's not possible, then I'd probably do as you suggested. Trying different set ups is always beneficial, as the poster above illustrated. You could always get out a microphone and run tests to decide as well. Treatment will be pretty difficult to have done properly in this room without removing the laundry machines and cabinetry, etc.
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clean_and_humble
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Post by clean_and_humble » Mon Aug 26, 2013 7:42 am

Yes
both the washer dryer and cabinets are going.
I'm also carpeting the tile floor. putting film grade moving blankets over the tile wall
and insulating under the drop ceiling. Thing is I'm gonna be putting a lot of gear into this space but hoping to retain some of the acoustics. I'm gonna test it like my man said just to see what I'm working with but I know this room well as it was my first studio. The tile makes it very live and ringy which is why I want to carpet. It's only a temporary holding place but I want to mix some unfinished projects while it's here. My last space the live room and VO booth had a nice sound but the control room was imposible. This room seems more managable and able to produce a unique sound in it's smallness

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Post by roscoenyc » Mon Aug 26, 2013 12:14 pm

clean_and_humble wrote:Yes
both the washer dryer and cabinets are going.
I'm also carpeting the tile floor. putting film grade moving blankets over the tile wall
and insulating under the drop ceiling. Thing is I'm gonna be putting a lot of gear into this space but hoping to retain some of the acoustics. I'm gonna test it like my man said just to see what I'm working with but I know this room well as it was my first studio. The tile makes it very live and ringy which is why I want to carpet. It's only a temporary holding place but I want to mix some unfinished projects while it's here. My last space the live room and VO booth had a nice sound but the control room was imposible. This room seems more managable and able to produce a unique sound in it's smallness
My bet the liveness/ringy sound is more from the ceiling/walls than the floor. You can always put an area rug down but if you go carpet it's very difficult to change.

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Post by JWL » Mon Aug 26, 2013 1:54 pm

It's tough to tell based on the photos. In general, you want to achieve left/right symmetry from the listening position forward, which looks to me like facing the wall with the laundry machines is your best bet. Any irregularities should be behind you if possible, where they can actually benefit you by breaking up some low frequencies.

Also make sure you can treat the corners and the reflection points with appropriate panels.

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Post by jhbrandt » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:17 pm

My recommendation is also to face the laundry machine wall.

Can you post dimensions?

Cheers,
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clean_and_humble
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Post by clean_and_humble » Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:46 am

The demensions from brick wall to glass brick wall
is 7ft
From laundry wall to tile wall 16ft

The only drawback to using the laundry wall
is I will have to cut my current control room desk down
and as I said I am going to be filling this room
with a lot of gear from a room that had a lot more space

I will try and post a picture of my old room

thanks for all the help

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Post by jhbrandt » Wed Aug 28, 2013 5:27 pm

YW.

7 feet is just too narrow to sit any other way. You'll need to treat this space as much as possible. Bass trapping and reflection points are priority.

You will find that it is worth the trouble to make the desk smaller.

- Ideal mix position (to start with) will be about 6 feet from the front wall (laundry wall).

Cheers,
John
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