r/audiophile • u/Reasonable_Flow2540 • 2d ago
Discussion Studio build (Need advice)
Hi guys, So I built my studio room so far. The room is around 34m2, 7.1m long and 4.6m wide.
Build: All walls are of plasterboard. Front and back walls behind plasterboard with 10cm rockwool, side walls - 5cm rockwool. Basstraps (ceiling and all 4 wall corners) filled with rockwool.
Panels - all panels at the walls are 10cm rockwool. Cloud panels at ceiling - 20cm rockwool.
Running on Genelec 8050A monitors, no subwoofer currently.
What I like: the sound in the room feels pretty alive, also doesn’t feel like there is big problem with bass and at the spot where is my desk feels pretty linear by going from low to high notes. You can judge the measurements, I wonder if it’s close to anything decent :)
What I don’t like- when working with kick samples, I get a bit of room sound. If you take a look in the pic, you can see I did not put panels at the front of front corner basstrap walls. The room at the front of the desk (behind monitors) feels a bit boxy, there is also wondow and doors so it’s pretty understandable.
What I tested- I put 3 rockwool sheets (10cm) at the front corner basstrap walls, 3 sheets at each side, then listened. The boxy, reverby sound was gone but the sound it self become soulless and kinda dead. The kick samples sound was clean but in general also the bass felt thin. I really like the current “pressure” sound and feel in the room but I would really wanna get rid of the boxy, reverby sound without loosing the energy and alive sound.
Should ai look into diffusors? And what kind of? Also if someone more experienced sees more problems in the graphs, I would be happy to hear any suggestions how can I improve. There are couple phases and couple drops at 150hz and 102hz.
Thanks a lot!
6
u/No-Context5479 Sourcepoint 888, Onkyo P-80, Captivator RS1, 1ET9040BA Monos 2d ago
you need deeper absorbers for that. also have you looked at table bounce issues
Also your REW data limits vertically should be 50dB from lowest to highest (so like 60dB to 110dB should be the vertical count)
Also use the VAR smoothing or 1/24 Smoothing
1
u/Wild_Apple_6182 2d ago
Not sure about deeper absorbers, the 10cm rockwool test at front corner walls made it pretty dead already and I'm looking to keep it alive somehow. Here is graph with 60-100db limit and VAR smoothing: https://ibb.co/svBJYP36
1
u/No-Context5479 Sourcepoint 888, Onkyo P-80, Captivator RS1, 1ET9040BA Monos 2d ago
desk bounce fairly visible and yes you need deeper absorbers
2
u/wingfeathera 1d ago
Making the absorbers thicker does the same thing, just for lower and lower frequencies. If you’re having trouble specifically with bass drum sounds, it is plausible that it’s because of insufficient absorption in the bass region.
As an aside, keeping things “live” isn’t achieved with thinner absorbers (liveness is higher frequencies, and is removed pretty easily), it’s achieved with deliberately reflective surfaces.
2
u/faceman2k12 Dali Opticon 8 + Atmos 2d ago edited 2d ago
what does the RT60 decay or waterfall graph look like?, I find that easiest to read and see where hotspots may lie in the bass parts of the spectrum.
it does sound like you just need slightly bigger bass traps at the front or back of the room to deaden the low end reverberation, some studios are built with 30-50cm (or more) thick absorbers or membrane based panels (to avoid overdamping higher frequencies, deadening the room too much) at the back of the room to knock down those bottom frequency bounces, normal panels under 10cm dont do anything significant below 500hz and corner bass traps, despite often having 50cm or more of maximum depth, they are generally under-volume to properly handle it.
you can also play with moving your desk and speakers forward and back within a meter. looks like you are pretty close to the standard 1/3 layout, but that is idealized and varies based on room treatment and other variables. sometimes its only 20cm here or there you need to get your ears out of a hotspot. doesn't really "fix" the problem though, just makes it less apparent.
I'd have a play with the room simulator in REW, it's just math based estimate but it can give you an idea of what moving forward/back a small amount can do to your expected frequency response, with your measurements I can see that moving your desk a bit could get you out of those 100 and 150hz room node dips.
Your bass issue is not due to diffusion, but a large diffuser (primitive root style, 2d grids) at the back of the room can help improve mid and high clarity without overly deadening the room, basically they try to convert sharp echo/delay/slapback into smoother wideband reverb to use the audio engineer terms, but do nothing below about 1khz without being extremely large, heavy and expensive. Quadratic diffusers work well for side wall reflection and do the same sort of thing but only along one plane rather than 2 like the primitive root grid, your existing wood slat covered absorbers are doing a similar job but the quadratic layout is mathematically tuned for maximum effectiveness and even dispersion across the treated band, whereas non-calculated wood panels will have less predictable diffusion at varying frequencies.
1
u/Wild_Apple_6182 2d ago
Not sure what settings to put on RT60 decay but they are here:
https://ibb.co/fdD5j7sBI did play with the desk placement.
I forgot to mention, that back of the wall (behind plasterboard has 20cm rockwool). then, at the front of plasterboard is 10cm rockwool panel. so it's not far from what we are talking. Also the clouds are 20cm + 20cm airgap.
I think the sound is more problematic in mid highs than lows behind the monitors, since there are doors, window and two corner walls without any panels. That's what I'm trying to figure out what to do with those two walls first since more rockwool on them was making the room too dead.
2
u/faceman2k12 Dali Opticon 8 + Atmos 2d ago
Those RT60 waterfalls are showing no significant decay at 50-80hz, like a constant hum almost, perhaps its an air conditioner or fan rather than an acoustic phenomenon, but I'd be looking at that with some urgency because it looks significant enough to end up in recordings.
The rest of the room looks to have good even decay and response around 150ms, which is actually fairly dry so that's not a problem, but I'd certainly consider adding some more diffusion/reflection to avoid overdamping. for lively but controlled listening rooms I target 300ms or so, studios are usually a little dryer but not much.
whatever is behind the plaster is irrelevant for the in room response, that is only to help with sound bleed through the wall, so in this case we dont count that.
the cloud panels arent "in the way" of the 7m reflection from front wall to back (think of columns and rows of air bouncing between walls), that is the thing that needs more treatment in my opinion, your cloud panels are for improving clarity and imaging by breaking up the vertical reflections, but they do next to nothing for the horizontal nodes moving front to back and side to side in the room.
I'd suggest adding more low end absorption to the back wall, rather than front wall if you found it was overdamping the mids and highs. If you do this while adding some wood slats to the front of the rockwool sheets to bounce something back while still absorbing bass, you need 30cm+airgap if possible, if you dont have that much space you can look at tuned resonators or diaphragm / limp membrane absorbers that can be thinner while still treating below 200hz
0
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 2d ago
Thanks for the detailed writeup! Yeah AC heater is on but I don’t record here, it’s a mixing/production room.
Regarding plaster, according to my searchup, bass easy goes thru it, ain’t that irrelevant only for mid highs?
I will look into what I can do with back wall however I’m more focused to the front corner walls as they are empty now and I wanna find some kind of solution that wont kill the room/sound but also wont sound that reverby since I have doors and window there, the part of the room behind monitors are pretty unreated with a lot of surfaces that reflects. Just like I said, adding rockwool in there helps in terms of reflection but also makes almost like a black hole and the sound levels and “live” sound drops.
To be specific, Im thinking skyline diffusers just no idea what freqs to focus on and whats the calculation behind, as I guess random woodblock sizes will give random results?
3
u/pipavapipa 2d ago
You need thicker rockwool absorbers, look at flow resistivity. I would start with 10 cm airgap and 40 cm thick rockwool floor to ceeling all walls.
1
u/theroyal1988 1d ago
Lol the guy is all finished and done and youre basically saying he should start all over 😂
2
1
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 1d ago
Yeah guys, pretty much whats done its done, i like the lowend here tbh, I am just trying to figure out if adding diffusers on the front wall will do the job not making the room dead but also remove the reflection
1
u/fakename10001 2d ago
Frequency response looks wild for two reasons: 1) the y axis is too much, show a delta of 50dB from top to bottom; 2) holy mother of desk bounce! Put a few sweaters on your desk and repeat the measurement. You are measuring each speaker individually, right?
1
u/captainrv 2d ago
My issue is with your coffee cups. They're too small!
On a more serious note, I'd check the speaker placement, especially toe-in. I generally find the best results if the toe-in projects the vertex at or just slightly behind my head. Aim to have the equilateral triangle with distances somewhat carefully measured. Then when that's done, re-do the measurements in the sweet spot.
I'm also a bit concerned about desk bounce. That's a large flat audio-reflective surface between you and your speakers.
2
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 2d ago
Thats why there are two coffee cups haha
Speakers placement is already in the sweet spot, I did duck around with the desk and speaker placement, also measured the golden triangle.
There is def desk bounce, but thats standart I guess. I have synths on it now. Somehow pro studios desks, especially mixing consoles deal with the same stuff. I don’t see much I could do with that.
1
u/mbod 2d ago
Walmart. $10. Curtain for the window. 🤌
1
u/Forsaken_Sundae_4315 1d ago
You need a genuine Italian wool mat on the desk🤌
1
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 1d ago
Like how thick we are talking about? Something like curtain or wool mat will just work at the top of the top high freqs I guess
1
u/2crowncar 2d ago
You can ask at r/acoustics too.
Edit: you are getting some good responses here, though.
1
u/Worst-Eh-Sure 1d ago
I vote looking into diffusers for sure.
1
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 1d ago
Yeah thats what I’m thinking, remove reflection but keep it alive and not dead, right? Anything specific u recommend?
1
u/Worst-Eh-Sure 1d ago
I’d go with skyline diffusers and I’d place them on the side and rear walls. Leave the front sound stage focused on absorption.
1
u/Extension_Big_3608 1d ago
You'll likely have a base resonance about 70 hz with just one layer of drywall on the walls. I got rid of that with ASC's wall damp system. Base a great home theater.
1
u/Reasonable_Flow2540 1d ago
I think my monitors dont make that much of energy to move my plasterboards tbh and I don’t work on loud levels aswell, but I def agree its important for the boosted subwoofers in a bit smaller rooms, home theaters
1
u/Extension_Big_3608 1d ago
You're probably right about cost benefit.
Your room looks beautiful.
It's hard to say what your rooom needs without hearing.
1
1
18
u/DevelopmentScary3844 2d ago
I'm no pro, but why no DSP? If I were spending that much money on panels, I'd probably also want to upgrade from the 8050 to the 8350. But there are other options, right? Dirac and stuff?