Unless you’re working in a very large space, you should avoid facing the long wall of your studio.įigure 7: Listening position correctly placed 38% away from the front wall, following "the 38% rule." Rather than trying to deal with resonance using acoustic treatment, you can try to avoid it all together.įacing the room’s short wall will give you the most flexibility to move your set up forward and backward as needed, in an attempt to avoid placing yourself in a spot that lacks bass or has too much bass. Moving your listening position forward or backward in your room can help you avoid an area with too much bass or too little bass. Treating low-end resonance with acoustic panels can be difficult, so it’s best to minimize bass resonance by positioning your set up appropriately. The more space you have to move forward and backward, the easier it will be to deal with room modes. Room modes, which are the build-up of resonant frequencies in your room, can be overcome by moving your station closer to, or further away from the wall you’re facing. Stay away from corners at all costs.įigure 2: Desk incorrectly placed asymmetrically in a studio.įacing the long wall in your room isn’t necessarily the best idea either because you aren’t taking advantage of the room’s full length in the most efficient way possible. When you play the song on a different system, you’ll realize your bassline is too quiet. If your bassline sounds too loud on your studio monitors, your natural inclination will be to turn the bass down in the mix. Bass gathers in the corner of rooms due to room modes, and the result is that you may end up mixing songs that are bass deficient. Placing your battle station in the corner of your room is a surefire way to guarantee bass buildup. The main components that most home studios include are a high-quality office chair, music production desk, and a pair of studio monitors there are some cardinal sins that you’ll want to avoid when setting up this equipment to prevent acoustic problems. I'll be showing you how to take the first step in this process by arranging your studio in a way that minimizes acoustic problems and prepares your room for the application of acoustic treatment.Īs a disclaimer, this guide assumes that you already have some essential studio equipment like a chair, desk, speaker stands, and speakers. Although, getting the acoustics of your studio to this points takes time, acoustic treatment, and room calibration software. In this situation, working with speakers may very well be "better" than working with headphones. The benefit of working in a properly sound treated studio is that you can avoid the issues inherent of headphones, while not having to worry about acoustic problems being introduced by your room. Headphones take your problematic room out of the equation, while introducing their own, potentially less damaging issues. In this case, working with headphones, and software like Sonarworks' Reference 4, can be much more beneficial than using speakers in a sub-par room. If you're working in a studio that hasn't been treated correctly (and not just by slapping some acoustic foam on the walls), then your mixing environment can do more harm than good.įor example, if your room is boosting your low-end 12 dB around 44 Hz at your listening position, that's a huge problem you'll likely end up mixing your basslines too quietly. but there's a deal breaking point that tends to get omitted from this statement far too often. To make use of your room, along with your speakers, you need to get the acoustics of your room to a level that produces a sound quality equal to, or better than, that of your studio headphones.Ī lot of people have been told that working with speakers is better than using headphones, and for various reasons. Controlling the way sound interacts with your studio can minimize acoustic problems, and allow you to effectively create songs that consistently translate well to other playback systems. Why bother with tackling room acoustics at all? Sound produced by speakers, in an untreated room, can interact with the space in a way that causes you to make uninformed mixing and mastering decisions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |