Mixing board facing center of room

[witchfeet]

Hey guys! I'm building a small analog studio in a large room in my new pad. The room is about 500-600sf. Anyways, I'm tracking and mixing in the same room as the instruments. It'll be loud rock stuff mostly. I've found that the most comfortable setup for me is to have the mixing board facing the center of the room and the area for my recording gear taking up about a third of the room. This way I can face the instruments and it just feels better this way and more interactive than facing the wall. Are there any issues with having no wall even close to the back of my monitors?

[Ethan Winer]

Unfortunately, that's not a good way to set up for monitoring. The problem is having a reflecting wall close behind you. The closer that wall is, the worse the bass response will be. You could improve matters with a lot of bass traps. But in the big picture, it's better to just swing your chair around when you need to see the talent. Or get a big mirror (I'm serious). More on mix room setup here:

How to set up a room

--Ethan

[witchfeet]

Well, that wall is actually at least 8 feet behind me, so it's not all that close really. The room is rather large. I'm sure there are plenty of studios with this back wall much closer. I'll read up on the link you provided. Thanks for the response!

[thethingwiththestuff]

Well, that wall is actually at least 8 feet behind me, so it's not all that close really. The room is rather large. I'm sure there are plenty of studios with this back wall much closer. I'll read up on the link you provided. Thanks for the response!

sorry, 8 feet's pretty damn close.

[0-it-hz]

Please enlighten me: Are you trying to convince us or are we trying to convince you?

If you choose to set-up your board this way without a MASSIVE amount of trapping and reflection control you are fucked for mixing.... but it might be a fun way to track.

But consider this: With the board & speakers in the proper positions you and the talent get to experience the monitors without shuffling everyone around... anyway.

[ott0bot]

Yeah....fine for tracking....but mixing will stink. As stated, you really don't want this type of set-up for a number of reasons, mainly I think that you'll be making mixes that won't translate. I've seen set-ups like that work...but only in much bigger rooms. And even then, they were usually doing mixing in another studio.

Here's an idea. Have your board facing the wall a the proper distance for accurate monitoring. Then set up some temporary gobos in between you and the musicians while tracking and move them when mixing. You can monitor quietly on monitors or with headphones and it shouldn't cause any real issue.

[Waltz Mastering]

What Ethan and others have suggested is based on experience and has proven to be successful when implemented correctly, but having said that, and if you have your mind made up it wouldn't be to much harm to experiment with what you feel you would be comfortable with. The worse that could happen is you would have to re-arrange things if your mixes weren't cutting it.

Having a flat wall behind you isn't going to do you any favors, so look into diffusion and absorption there and anywhere else direct reflections and build up will be a problem. If it doesn't work out, you can't say no one told ya.':twisted:'

[JWL]

If the back wall is 8' behind you I'd use lots of thick absorption on that back wall. There are likely to be 2 problems with the wall behind you: high frequency reflections, and a bass buildup (though if the room is big enough this might be less of an issue).

Put on some music with good, complex bass and go to the back wall to listen for bass buildups. If you have them, trap the heck out of the wall.

Also, experiment with exactly how far from the back wall your speakers and your head are. It might that 7'6" (or 8'6"... or whatever) sounds better than 8'. Use the 38% rule as a starting point....