My New Music Room., "Studio" Options

[Gilmore]

Hi

I just moved to a new place, and I decided to upgrade my gear a little bit and create a home studio in a small spare room we have.

I bought some accoustic treatment from Auralex, the Alpha Roominator kit. I also added KRK Rokit 6 studio monitors, but until now I have only used headphones for mixing.

This weekend I installed all the accoustic foam and put up all my guitars, and placed all my music gear in the room.


Here are some pictures.

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[dark dude]

Should've spent the money on more guitars instead

The setup looks awesome!

[Ramiro Delforte]

Beautiful man!

Congrats!

It's amazing how you've organiced the little studio room

[Fran]

Sweet man, so neat and tidy, lovely gear too. Love the double monitor thing

As I ignore everything about acoustic shielding, is it any reason to put the material just in some places of the walls and not others? How do you know where to place it and where not?

[Todd Simpson]

Nicely done I"ve got a pair of KRK monitors myself and LOVE em Your setup is quite spiff and Ithink you are gonna love spending time there. Many congrats!

Todd

[Gary]

Suuhhweeeet!!

The only changes I would make.. looks like you have phone in there, that's an annoyance

I would take the arms of the chair, I have done that with all of mine and now I can comfortably play guitar everywhere in the house

How to you like the KRK's? I keep thinking about buying a set of those (looking at the 6's mysefl)~

Gary

This post has been edited by Gary: Mar 8 2011, 05:40 AM

[Todd Simpson]

Sweet man, so neat and tidy, lovely gear too. Love the double monitor thing

As I ignore everything about acoustic shielding, is it any reason to put the material just in some places of the walls and not others? How do you know where to place it and where not?

FRAN: The Accoustic Foam is mostly for dealing with what are called "First Order Reflections". Typically, you want to break up the high frequencies a bit to keep them from bouncing around and jacking up your perception of the mix. In a home studio, you can get some sonnex panels and start a mix playing and try positioning them on the walls and keep returning to your main mix position. At this level it's not an exact science but more trying to get the room from being as bright and bouncey as a normal, square, boxey room with no absorption on the walls can be.

One of the big problems is something called "Standing Waves" or resonant low frequencies and foam won't help much with that. You need bass traps or you need to "tune" the room using an RTA, a nice mic and some software. For home studios though, typically you just want to make sure your main mix position isn't too "boomy". If it is, you usually move your speakers a way from the wall, or find a new angle for the desk. I"m moving to a new place but here is my old mix position.

[Gilmore]

Thanks guys.

I have promiced not to buy any more guitars, so I can´t spent money on that.

Fran: Like Todd said it´s not excact sience, but you can find alot of information about the subject online, and Auralex provides ideas and basic rules also. The most importand thing is to treat the area around the mixing area. It´s also importand not to use too much foam in the room but then it will sound dead unless you are going for that vibe. some reflection is neccesary to keep the sound alive.

Gary: No other place for the phone in the house, but it´s a old house. I probably get another chair, but this one is not very comfortible and it will be without arms of course, the are annoying when you are playing, but I use the other chair in the room when I play the guitar.

The KRK are very nice and I think you can´t do much better then the Rokit line in that price range. It´s more than enough for home use. I bought Rokit 6 with 6" woofer, and I think it is perfect size for a room like this, but if it were bigger I would have taken the Rokit 8".

KRK has also more expensive monitors the "V" line, but they cost alot more. You can´t go wrong with the Rokit series.....highly recomended. But to get the best out of any monitor you have to accoustically treat the room in some way.

[Fran]

Oh I understand now, thanks Todd & Gilmore

[Ivan Milenkovic]

That's an awesome setup, you did a great job man!

[tonymiro]

Sweet man, so neat and tidy, lovely gear too. Love the double monitor thing

As I ignore everything about acoustic shielding, is it any reason to put the material just in some places of the walls and not others? How do you know where to place it and where not?

One thing to add to Todd´s post is that the amount and type of acoustic treatment also depends on what the purpose is and the room. The general acoustics for a mastering studio is different to the requirements a mix studio, etc and all depend on the acoustics and dimensions of the room. There is an art to this but there is a lot of acoustic science as well.

[Gilmore]

Yeah, there is endless sea of wisdom about this if one want´s to dig that deep, but for home studio the rule of thumb goes a long way.

There is a common way called the mirror method, but then you sit in the mixing area in front of the mixing desk and ask someone to hold a mirror in places around the room, and if you see the monitors in the mirror, then you put foam or some accoustic material there.

Also if you have a larger room, then you can treat each end differently.

Auralex has some great instructions on their website, room calculators and more tools.

This post has been edited by Gilmore: Mar 8 2011, 06:10 PM

[tonymiro]

...

There is a common way called the mirror method, but then you sit in the mixing area in front of the mixing desk and ask someone to hold a mirror in places around the room, and if you see the monitors in the mirror, then you put foam or some accoustic material there.

..

A ha and I know it well - fine for a home recording/mixing studio . I also know a few UK pro studios who did this as their acoustic check.

But it does tend to assume some givens that are rarely the case. Clap test is a good test for a home studio in much the same way as well .


Also just to add...

Auralax acoustic treatment like Gilmore has here is specially designed and manufactured for acoustic treatment. It´s not normal foam padding as it´s specially designed for acoustics and also treated to be fire resistant.

[Bear Rose]

Nice setup! I have the same midi keyboard controller!

[thefireball]

Dang, now that's a dream studio right there. Nice guitar collection.

[Blister]

Beautiful home studio! Thanks so much for sharing!

Gary

This post has been edited by Blister: Mar 9 2011, 03:11 AM