Hello board,
I have a home studio and a set of Mackie HR824s. My room has really weird bass response. Whenever I'm sitting at the standard typing/mouse using position at my computer, there is a huge bump in the 160-250 Hz range. If i take a few steps back, that disappears but the 80-125 Hz range takes over. I've also noticed when I reference my mixes on other speakers, the 2-3.5 kHz range is ridiculously more pronounced, and things like high guitar notes and cymbals completely take over a mix in a way that is absent on my speakers in my room.
SOOOO I have a series of questions and concerns or ideas or whatever:
-Any suggestions to treat my room, or general treatments to help those specific ranges. It's a 10 x 10 room with slants going up to the ceiling. I have some foam on the slants as well as some DIY bass traps. There's also a couch in there, I can post pictures if that would help.
-I'm wondering if the Mackies are right for me and my situation. I'm considering swapping them out for a set of NS10's, since it seems like the general complaints about those - shrill high mids, understated lows - may balance out my issues in a way the Mackies don't. I posted on the buy/trade/sell about a trade and somebody recommended I keep the Mackies and invest in some Avantone cubes. I love the way the Mackies sound but I find them inaccurate in real world settings. I got an awesome deal on the speakers so I'm not really concerned about the financial aspect of this trade
I've been working with a post rock band, Explosions in the Sky/Mogwai style instrumental stuff, and we just finished tracking and I'm about to start mixing. My temporary solution is just obsessive referencing on as many speakers as I can find, but I'd appreciate any advice for the long term.
thanks so much for reading this far and any comments would be appreciated.
Bass-heavy mixing room
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Ryan Wasoba
- ass engineer
- Posts: 49
- Joined: Wed May 16, 2007 3:15 pm
- Location: Edwardsville, IL
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Bass-heavy mixing room
http://birdcloudrecording.tumblr.com <-- stu stu studio. oh oh.
The main problem is that your room is 10x10. If you have 8-10' ceilings, then it means your room is nearly a cube. You will need a ton of bass trapping in a room like that to level things out, and a room of those dimensions will never be ideal.
You also want to set things up so that neither your listening position nor your speakers are in null points (or so that null points are minimized). See this article for more detail: http://realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm
You also want to set things up so that neither your listening position nor your speakers are in null points (or so that null points are minimized). See this article for more detail: http://realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm
It's been my experience after a ton of experimenting and problem solving, that you really need to take your 90 degree corners out of the equation.
These might be your ceiling wall and floor wall joint, they might be your vertical wall joints. But without treating those areas.. you're really playing a losing game.
Secondly..... the biggest bang for the buck bass managers are helmholtz slat resonators. If you build your corner bass management with a very little extra care, you can add wood slats and dramatically improve the effectiveness of your bass trapping.
If it's at all possible, that's the first line of attack I'd recommend implementing. You'll see results with any treatment, but none will be as effective either cost-wise or result wise.
These might be your ceiling wall and floor wall joint, they might be your vertical wall joints. But without treating those areas.. you're really playing a losing game.
Secondly..... the biggest bang for the buck bass managers are helmholtz slat resonators. If you build your corner bass management with a very little extra care, you can add wood slats and dramatically improve the effectiveness of your bass trapping.
If it's at all possible, that's the first line of attack I'd recommend implementing. You'll see results with any treatment, but none will be as effective either cost-wise or result wise.
Not sure I agree with this, at least not as a general rule that is always true in every situation. Helmholtz resonators are very effective, but over a much narrower bandwidth. This may or may not be useful.norton wrote: Secondly..... the biggest bang for the buck bass managers are helmholtz slat resonators. If you build your corner bass management with a very little extra care, you can add wood slats and dramatically improve the effectiveness of your bass trapping.
In addition, Helmholtz resonators require a lot more precision in construction, so you have to budget for the time/craft involved in making them. You also have to accurately measure your room ahead of time, so you know which frequencies to target with the resonator.
That said, helmholtz resonators have been around for a long time, and have their fans and their place. But there is a reason we stopped making/selling this type of trap in favor of tweaked broadband absorbers.....
True..
However, helmholtz (HH) traps can be made to cover a much greater bandwidth by varying the depth of the cavity.... like in a corner trap situation.
In addition, it's easy to manipulate the width of the "q" in a box of uniform depth by using slats of different widths, and depths, and varying the width of the slots.
With even two different slat dimensions over an 8' tall trap you can achieve a pretty broad zone of bass sucking goodness.
As far as difficulty in construction goes...
It is very true that if you are attempting to construct a HH trap at a specific frequency you'll want nice and tight tolerances.
However... if you're targeting low end in general - or a broad range of low end frequencies - and not 87hz specifically.... the margin for error becomes much more forgiving. While the performance of the now semi-bastardized HH trap is still above and beyond what the rigid fiberglass absorber alone can provide. And in a small space, you need the most effective low end sucking machines you can get... Once that's under control, then you can start making some headway.
What's the "tweak" in your traps JWL?
However, helmholtz (HH) traps can be made to cover a much greater bandwidth by varying the depth of the cavity.... like in a corner trap situation.
In addition, it's easy to manipulate the width of the "q" in a box of uniform depth by using slats of different widths, and depths, and varying the width of the slots.
With even two different slat dimensions over an 8' tall trap you can achieve a pretty broad zone of bass sucking goodness.
As far as difficulty in construction goes...
It is very true that if you are attempting to construct a HH trap at a specific frequency you'll want nice and tight tolerances.
However... if you're targeting low end in general - or a broad range of low end frequencies - and not 87hz specifically.... the margin for error becomes much more forgiving. While the performance of the now semi-bastardized HH trap is still above and beyond what the rigid fiberglass absorber alone can provide. And in a small space, you need the most effective low end sucking machines you can get... Once that's under control, then you can start making some headway.
What's the "tweak" in your traps JWL?
The tweak is the limp mass membrane... we spent a lot of time researching different materials that would give us the performance we were looking for. The limp mass membrane increases the amount of bass absorption, and decreases the amount of treble absorption. The idea being you can get enough of them into the room to help the bass, without making the room too dead. RealTraps are also available without the membrane (the "HF" version), that gives you the more-or-less flat absorption curve out past 20k.
I've been wondering about the effect of mixing up slat/slot dimensions. Rod Gervais claims in his book that it doesn't matter, you simply average out the slat widths to get the calculated answer. Yet I know many people advocate for varying the slats as you describe.... I've never measured 2 HH traps side by side, one with uniform slats one with varied, to see if there is a difference.
'Twould be an interesting experiment....
I've been wondering about the effect of mixing up slat/slot dimensions. Rod Gervais claims in his book that it doesn't matter, you simply average out the slat widths to get the calculated answer. Yet I know many people advocate for varying the slats as you describe.... I've never measured 2 HH traps side by side, one with uniform slats one with varied, to see if there is a difference.
'Twould be an interesting experiment....
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