John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hello guys
i am daniel from london, i have a room in my house which i have been mixing and recording vocals , i have done a bit of treatment with some bass traps, i need your help in
setting up this room to be a good mixing environment, the attached photo is a layout of how the room is setup now , the right bottom corner of the room there is a closet which i want to turn to a vocal booth 4X3 feet . so here are couple things that would be helpful if answered

1) the arrangement for this room
2) speaker placement
3) where to treat early reflections
4) where bass trap to be put up and what size recommended
5) how deal with door and window on the diagram
6) any suggestions about the roof

THANK YOU

Hi Daniel, and welcome!

About your questions:

1) Room layout.

The first thing I would do is to rotate your desk 90° to the left, so that it faces the wall marked "8 feet".

There are several reasons for this, but the big two are:

A) Symmetry: Your room MUST be symmetrical about the mix position, so that you can get a good stereo image that is properly balanced between left and right speakers. Without symmetry, your mixes will not "translate" well, and will sound unbalanced, lop-sided, etc. when played in other places.

B) Distance: It is important to put as much distance as you can between your ears and the wall behind you, in order to delay the early reflections for as long as possible, before they get back to your ears. So small rooms should be set up with the speakers firing down the long axis of the room, not across the short axis.


2) Speaker placement: On massive, very heavy, very solid stands, set up against the front wall of the room. Use a sheet of thick Sorbothane rubber between the speakers and the stands, for good isolation. The height of the acoustic axis of the speakers should be 1.2m above the floor. They should be set at about 25% and 75% of the room width, and toe-in (angled to face the mix position) at an angle of roughly 30°. Set up your chair so that your ears are about 4' 2" from the front wall, then fine tune the location and angle of the speakers so they are pointing roughly at your ears, and the imaginary acoustic axes intersect a few inches behind your head. Then play music and fine-tune again, with very small movements of chair position, speaker position and angles, to see if you can tweak things even more.

3) Early reflections: treat with thick absorption, at least 4", on all first reflection points:

On the front wall, right behind the speakers: A large panel going across the room, 4" thick, extending a couple of feet above and below the speakers.

On the side walls: use the "mirror trick" to found out where the panels need to go.

On the ceiling: Hang a large hard-backed cloud above the desk and mix position, angled at least 12°. Your room has a square section: it is 8 feet wide and also 8 feet high ( ) so you are going to have large modal issues in the vertical and width planes: That hard-backed cloud will help to control that a bit.

4) Bass traps: As many corners as you can spare, and as big as possible: It is a small room, it is square, so it will need major bass trapping. Put superchunks in all four vertical corners, 36" across the front diagonal face. If you can't spare the space for 36" then make them as big as you can spare, but not less than 24" across the front face. Also put superchunks in some of the other corners, if at all possible (there are 12 corners in a room).

5) Door: Build the bass trap for that corner on wheels, so you can roll it out of the way to get in and out of the room, and roll it into place for critical listening.

Window: It looks like some of it might be at your first reflection point, but you'll know for sure once you do the "mirror trick". If so, then build that absorber on a stand, so that it can be located in front of the window when needed, and move out of the way if you want natural light and are not doing critical listening.

6) "any suggestions about the roof". That depends! What do you want to know about it? You'll need at least the cloud, hopefully some superchunks up there in the horizontal corners, and maybe even some other stuff.

One more comment: I would not try to fit a vocal booth in that room: it is too small as it is. I would take that closet out, put a superchunk in that corner, and cover the entire rest of that back wall with thick absorption.

- Stuart -

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I want this studio to amaze people. "That'll do" doesn't amaze people.

thank you for a quick reply stuart. i am gonna get to work fixing the room according to ur explanation, i will keep you guys updated

thanks again