Home Studio Recording and Mixing Studio Setup Acoustic Design
You might have read before our tutorial on “How to Improve Home Studio Acoustic Treatment” .The solution to the problem is not yet provided, below is the suggested room set up that can be applied to any home studio:
Some very important things you need to know:
a. length x = length y = length z , so it means that x , y and z formed an equilateral triangle.
The purpose why this should be an equilateral triangle is for optimal stereo listening. Of course, you should point the monitors to you in such a way that it forms a triangle like what is shown in the above screenshot.
b. The optimal length e can be calculated as: 38% x length h. length e is the distance from the engineer to the wall facing him. The reason for the 38% is discussed here thoroughly: http://www.realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm
c. The blue colors on the corners are the “bass traps”. The overall purpose is to absorb low frequencies and to prevent reflections which will distort the “real” bass sound level.
d. The green are the sound waves reflection absorption panel, Their main job is to absorb mid range to high frequencies.
If this room design will be implemented, what will happen is that the undesirable standing waves or reflected waves will be drastically minimized. Thus the only sound in the room should be coming “exactly” from the monitors and does not include the reflected waves.
Finally, since what will come out of your studio monitors are exactly what you will hear, you can used this to create a fairly accurate mix that will translate to various hi-fi monitors or even a normal speakers.
For placing subwoofers, you might refer to this following tutorial:
a.)http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb05/articles/studiosos.htm
b.)http://www.gearslutz.com/board/rap-hip-hop-engineering-production/197461-where-do-i-put-subwoofer.html
So in summary you need:
1.) A nearfield monitors that are properly placed in the room. (x=y=z).
2.) You will need to buy or create bass traps.
3.) You will a sound wave reflection absorption panel.
4.) Rearrange your room in such a way it reflects the studio design above.
Do more research on how to create bass traps and absorption panel by yourself without necessarily buying the expensive ones. You can do this by carefully examining the acoustic property of the material (carpet for example can be used as good bass traps).
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August 3rd, 2010 at 4:52 am
Hi Emerson! Again thank you so much for sharing you knowledge. Guess what right now im moving to a new house, and actually Im trying to set up one of the rooms as a recording studio… I have to tell you I’m tryint to reduce as much as waves reflection as I can, but here in Mexico we don’t have so much providers for lot of stuff
So far, I covered the walls with “felt”, as a first step, and set a carpet for the floor, I really hope to reduce the noise an waves reflection as well, and bought sound absorbing foam, im planning to set the foam today.
Do you think this set up could help reduce the waves reflection? The room is so small like 3×4 meters.
how could I create bass traps from carpet?
Thank you again
August 8th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
carpets are not a good choice for a bass trap: it has 0.08 sabin for 125 hz, 0.28 sabin for 250Hz and 0.38 sabin for 500Hz.. but they are good for mid-high (0.70 sabin for 4kHz)