Room acoustic treatments vs room correction plug-ins

I have been browsing various forums in search of possible (low budget) improvements to home studio acoustics. I found lots on theory but little user feedback on how effective those measures were in home studio environments ... and since this forum is the place where I've found most practical advice in the past half year (thanks guys!) I dare to post this question here, even though it might not be quite the right place. Maybe some of you guys still want to make a comment or share what helped you the most ...

I seem to have similar problems like many others out there like e.g.
 - bass seems to be amplified and sort of boomy
 - my mixes do not transfer well onto other systems
 - when mixing I don't seem to hear the subtle differences + need ear phones as magnifying glass a lot

My situation is pretty basic:
 + Sonar X1 based home recording studio, no commercial ambitions
 + located in basement room (5 x 3.5 x 2.4m) that's still totally untreated (painted concrete walls, laminate floor)
 + it's my creative retreat, recording and mixing happens in the same room; hence, there's all sorts of (electric, non-resonating?) gear including a large e-drum kit in the room
 + mixing desk + speakers are placed symmetrically in the room
 + monitors were rather inexpensive (Roland MA15D)

Most of my signal sources are digital as I'm quite happy with the amp sims and drum module that I own. So apart from recording vocals (and soon maybe some brass instruments), my desire to improve the room relates mostly to achieving better mixes.

My main questions are ...
(A) What's the best thing to try in a budget range (anything above a grand I need to file a request for ... with my wife)
(B) Should I dare to invest in expensive speakers? Most web posts say not unless you have a proper room ...
(C) Is anybody using tools like 'KRK Ergo Room Correction' or 'IK Multimedia ARC Plug-in'?
(D) Any experiences with bass traps et al. ?

Any comments & suggestions are much appreciated.

Rob

Greetings, Rob!

First off. I don't have any experience with room correction software.

I too have a basement studio and I will say that installing bass traps and sound panels have made a huge difference
in the quality of my recordings and mixes.

I constructed basic panels using rockwool (most people use Owen's Corning 703 or 705) with plans found on the internet.
The price for the materials were relatively inexpensive.   I personally would not invest in expensive speakers if I did not
have at least some room treatment. 

Good luck with your work!

NW

That was a great job of listing the solutions Bristol!

Just saying.

My main questions are ...
(A) What's the best thing to try in a budget range (anything above a grand I need to file a request for ... with my wife)
(B) Should I dare to invest in expensive speakers? Most web posts say not unless you have a proper room ...
(C) Is anybody using tools like 'KRK Ergo Room Correction' or 'IK Multimedia ARC Plug-in'?
(D) Any experiences with bass traps et al. ?

A) Least-expensive first steps:
    - become proficient with visual spectral aids such as SPAN, to help with objectivity
    - take measurements of your room to identify problem frequencies, so you can avoid being deceived by them and have a basis for evaluating subsequent remedial efforts
    - experiment with different speaker positions, using your objective measurements to see what really helps and what merely changes the problems.
    - get a good book on acoustics. There are several (and I think I've read them all!) but my favorite is The Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest.

B) short answer: no. Upgrading to high-end speakers is the last step, not the first. Most of the benefits of high-quality speakers will be lost in an untreated room.

C) There are plenty of fans of ARC on these forums. It does some good, but just like buying expensive speakers, room correction software falls under the category of "finishing touches". It treats a small subset of your acoustical problems and therefore should not be your primary strategy.

D) Bass traps are difficult to implement properly, nearly impossible in a small room. It is possible to spend a lot of money and effort and still not have effective traps. It is also possible to cause more problems than you solve. Not that you shouldn't employ them, just be prepared for some frustration and don't expect them to solve all your problems.

And as with any remedial steps, confirmation by objective measurement is key. An easy and free place to start is with Ethan Winer's stepped sine sweep, a SONAR project containing 1-second sine waves from 40Hz to 300Hz. You play it and record it with an omnidirectional microphone. The result is by no means a complete picture of your room's problems, but it's a good start.

Next step is to download a copy of the free Room EQ Wizard (REW) and learn how to make and interpret waterfall plots.

If you decide to do a bit of DIY acoustic treatment there are a few things that can be easy and helpful:

• Bookshelves, DVD racks, etc are an easy way to add diffusion, which is often most useful behind you. Simply arrange books/DVDs so they are at different depths instead of being uniform and "flat." This helps to spread the sound around instead of shooting it back at you in a uniform way
• If building your own acoustic panels, try to source material locally. I found I paid less per panel (before shipping) buying fiberglass from an HVAC company (E.J. Bartell's) near me. As a general rule, buying online you'll pay almost as much in shipping as you pay for the materials as they are large, so not efficient for UPS. E.J. Bartell's had a $10 delivery charge in lieu of shipping. I bought all the materials for 36 2'x4'x2" fiberglass panels with nice fabric covers, plywood back, and mounting hardware for less than $500. I built my panels to hang like picture frames so I could take them down easily if I wanted to modify the acoustics for tracking
• Try isolating your monitors from any stand/desk using firm acoustic foam. This will help keep the rattles and sympathetic resonance down
• Laminate wood flooring can be a good way to make your floor more reflective for recording instruments like acoustic guitar, rugs can make it deader if you have hardwood or concrete and want the floor more dead
• Adding some foam on the top surface of your desk will help kill the first reflection there
• Tweeters for your moniotrs should generally sit at ear level
• When recording vocals you can use a couple of acoustic panels or foam to "hide" the ceiling and walls behind mic so those reflections aren't heard as much
• In general, the more well treated a room is, the more easily you can add microphones without making the mix muddier. This is especially noticeable with drums. Each mic "bleeds" less because it has less reflections from the room competing with the sound you want to record

There's always more, but that should help quite a bit. :-)

Peace,

Joshua

tunekicker

Also- the easiest way I've found to "make" bass traps is buying fiberglass insulation from Home Depot.

Simply buy 2 of them, bring them to your studio and place them in the corners closest to your speakers.

You forgot to mention the face mask he'll need so he doesn't breath in the fiberglass.

If you have a small room, here's what you do ... go to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any other *-Mart and get some foam mattress pads. Cut them in half so you have big squares and place them in various spots of your walls, especially over windows.

It's the cheapest and safest way to deaden a room. Just hang them up with thumb tacks (use tape for the window). The ones I got look like giant egg cartons but they are made of soft flexible foam. They are similar to the color of my walls and you really don't even notice them once they are up.

I did this and hung some heavy curtains on the wall behind me (the one the speakers are pointing at) and it made a huge difference.

foam mattress pads

Sorry, Bub, but even though you are not alone in thinking this, it is actually bad advice.

Mattress and packing foam isn't the same stuff as acoustical foam. In the latter, the walls between the individual air pockets have been chemically eaten away so as to form a labyrinth for sound to travel through, exhausting its energy along the way.

By contrast, in foam that's meant to be squishy, the air pockets are not connected and the squishiness comes from compressing the air in those pockets that has no place to go. The main difference between packing foam and mattress foam is the size of the air pockets.

Packing/mattress foam does have an acoustical effect, though. Unfortunately, it's not a desirable one, because it only absorbs frequencies from around 3 to 4KHz and up.

That band encompasses part of the critical upper midrange we depend on most for speech comprehension and directionality. Because those frequencies are dampened, we perceive the room to sound "dead". But it isn't really dead - measurements will reveal that the foam has almost no effect below about 2 or 3KHz, and does not help with room resonances, comb filtering or ringing. Even if you make it really thick.

Acoustical foam looks nice but it's expensive. Compressed fiberglass insulation, however, has virtually the same acoustical properties as acoustical foam for a fraction of the price. You just have to figure out how to make it not look ugly (or in my case just not care if it's ugly).

Wow, I could have bought a book on the topic and not learned as much as I did in this thread.  Thanks

listen to quality reference mixes and mastering in your environment and get used to how that sounds. In fact this could be classed as step 1

+1!

After reading Dr. Toole's superb book (multiple times!), especially the chapters on the adaptability of hearing, I am convinced that the single best thing anyone can do - which costs nothing - is to spend time listening to well-made records on their own studio monitors. No analysis needed, just listen and enjoy the music for half an hour every day. You will be training your ears without even knowing it.

I think Jeff and Dave are very correct. I believe they are concentrating on play back not recording. I think recording does need a good acoustical space to get a high quality recording. Play back is not so demanding.  Don't forget, with good near field monitors set properly the room should not be as influential as it is in recording.   

If one is recording and is playing back in the same space than it is possible to get twice the room coloring in the play back.

Lets face it this is a massive problem for just about everyone. Its not going to be resolved here on this forum.  But the advice given by Jeff and Dave should help enormously.

I have the most elegant and unique sound treatment for my room - all of my fiancée's stage clothes and dresses (hundreds of them) hanging on racks running along the walls. The best part is, I didn't even have to do it. lol 

I know, this wouldn't qualify as room treatment but it's probably the best sounding room I ever worked in nevertheless. :)

Agreed that listening to music on your working setup helps. I'm living in hotels and suites these days  and my setup meets all the don'ts - desk is in a corner, monitors are near the wall plus they are small and shy on bass so I spend a lot of time monitoring bass w/ cans and using my eyes and a frequency analyzer a lot. I'm not really mixing, just writing, but heck, why not try to make it half decent. 

So the first thing I did was to grab a few records I know well and and listen to them on this system. And I still try and listen to at least 3 or 4 songs everyday before I start working. It helps (I think :s)

if somthing is wrong with the mix ...  it aint coming from the room..

Thanks a lot, guys, I just got through reading all this and I'm totally impressed by your feedback. This is an incredible compilation of to the point advice.

Some of the recommended measures I had come across, but what I was definetly lacking was a sort of prioritization and feeling of what results to expect.

I have tried a few things since I started putting all this gear into my basement last year and I think I just share my experiences through some replies to individual posts as there might be other amateurs like myself traveling down the same road ...

Jeff Evans


And even if you do nothing at all and this has not been mentioned, listen to quality reference mixes and mastering in your environment and get used to how that sounds. In fact this could be classed as step 1. Then all the points that have been mentioned here will only improve on that.

If you are not regularly switching over to quality reference material (during mixing and mastering) even in a great room, you are still stabbing in the dark to a certain extent. People just don't do it for some reason yet they already have the music to do it with.

I think I start to understand this more now ... I admit I haven't done it at all because I considered myself more productive writing songs, recording and mixing and neglected any benefit from listening to songs I already know by heart ... so I reckon the first investment should be comfortable chair and a CD rack ...

I might be wrong, but I think the ARC correction is best applied after you've done all you possibly can with trapping/absorbtion/diffusion, then run the analyzer again to see what progress you've made.

Your room ratios don't suggest you've got modal buildups anywhere (1:1.46:2.08) so you should be able to tame it using the combination of techniques outlined above.