basstraps- room treatment

strange the picture and post is gone. however the monitor stands are standing the only postion they can in the room for allowing people to walk around in the room. have my table with song lyrics and coffe drinking spot behind the setup- I been a bit tired of this already so started moving around to get them monitors standing proper. they sound ok when raised. but the monitor stands are too high. need to get some other or just use them to power up a reference pa speaker. like disco speaker or something . behringer truth would begreat and some adams to track and mix on. but this is just a dream right now and will remain a dream for some years. maybe I can some cheaper monitor stands later . I am aware the placement is really bad, . fixing it in a living room environment is worse. lucky I am not married or have a girlfreind. they would complain over the homestudio taking up all the space :)

Cough echo means that you would need some mid-high absorbers in the room as well. You can analyse the room using a room analyser like Fons's Aliki. You can then check for, and treat nodes that may develop in your room. Back to your picture... It looks to me as if your monitor position may be a bit high. A good placement would be to place the hight of the tweeters at the same level as your ears when in your preferred working position, be it standing, or seated. (My guess, seated ;-) ) Another thing I noticed is that your monitors might be a bit to close to each other, but I may be misled by the picture. A good placement would be to create a even sided triangle, with yourself and the two monitors at the corners of the triangle. This means that the monitors should be as far from each other as they are from you respectively. This helps with the stereo image of the system. Point the monitors towards you from that position, or even to point just in front of you.

Here is a picture of my current project. [URL=http://img695.imageshack.us/i/monitors.jpg/][IMG]http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/328/monitors.jpg[/IMG][/URL] the bass traps will be placed only on the wall behind me. I need to use this as living room too. I live in a two room apartment. one room for kitchen and rest for everything else. I am only amatour but likes to do things proper anyway. would this be enough treatment ? . btw. the stands I just made today. I had a backpain for some weeks now. so it is not setup proper yet. just set the monitors on the stands to hear how it sounds :)

thanks. I will remeber this if I get some mroe of this oasis. But I just finsihed my monitorstands now. its getting time to do the basstraps. I asked the local hardware store . They will cut some wood for free and deilvere so I can get these made this month. not this week because I do have a annoying backpain. keeps me from setting up the studio. but will be getting closer everyday that goes by. Have a simple question. I do know that overall treatment would be best. but how about keeping one end of the room free so there can be recorded akustic stuff with a bit of room ambience and the behind computer setup /monitors is bass traps in eaxh corner. carpets over the rest in the part of the room until I make som more basstraps. Would that work fine. as loing the basstraps in each corner is placed from bottom to top of the corner. not just in the listing position. I do have bare walls . like a basement. echoes four times when I cough ...... not good hifi listing environement either :) I would have to do this room treatment anyway. but setting up studio at home for own personal usage makes it more important the room sounds good.

Yes, as Daniel said, the oasis tend to be a bit crumbly. For room installation I would recommend something that can withstand a bit more wear and tear. That said, my makeshift oasis block microphone filters are still going strong. If they stay dry they olny become powdery when you subject them to friction. Hanging on my microphones they do no harm. I have a test for audio foam, that I call the brains out of ear test. When you take a piece of insulator, and hold it next to your ear, you can hear the effect it has to sound around and beyond it. Well designed audio absorbent traps have an strange effect that feels like the sound is sucked out of your ear, and an erie silence presses down on that ear. The effect diminishes as the material lets though some audible frequencies. The only other items that ever had that effect, and more on my ear, is Ostrich eggs, with only one hole, and listening into the hole. It feels like your brain is sucked from your ear... Of course, it would be a bit impractical, as the egg is more reflective side than hole, hence the effect. The Oasis block as a lot of this effect, for the money, on small scale deployment.

One of the problems of using foam is that it only absorbs at mid to high frequencies, say 500Hz and above. Using foam exclusively will cut down high frequency reflections, but will leave an exaggerated bass response in a small room, due to room modes. This can unbalance your mixes and make the room actually worse than it was to start with. As for oasis foam used by florists, I would have thought it was too crumbly to use in a studio, because it will get damaged easily. However, I have used offcuts of a similar density foam as isolating supports for small monitor loudspeakers. This works well when mixing on a table or other furniture, because it raises the monitors up a little closer to your ear level, and also reduces resonance in the woodwork somewhat. If you don't have the room for rigid, non-resonant speaker stands like http://www.blackbox-design.com/images/D-Back-L2.jpg then foam supports are better than nothing. Cheers! Daniel

this looks like something I could be doing for littel expenses. However. I found some cheap oasis. the blocs I got already are three pieces. remember you spoke about that quentin. . sometimes these oasis blocs are given away very cheap or even for free by the local supermarked. shoudl have a chance of getting some of the cheap ones this month. its sold massive amounts up to hollidays and dicarded leftovers are free after the hollydays. just been easter. Could I make diffusers or somethign out of this material . is it flamable or fireproof. I got a couple of blocs I study a bit to see what I could do with it. thanks. for the advise.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPL0or2x2ko and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJN5NnQpX5s&NR=1 for some DIY examples. They are time consuming to build though. As well as diffusion, you are likely to need some trapping for lower frequencies, especially in a small room. I'd suggest making some sine sweep tests with your monitor speakers, to find out where your problem frequencies are. Cheers! Daniel

thanks. my last reply did not get accepted somehow. I was posting right after quentins reply. strange . I was cheking rockfon. it seemed inexensive at first but then I found out how much more expensive it is than other commecial products- this is out of question. I got an idea I dont know if will work. get some pieces of plywood large enough like bigger size like some pictures usually are. 60 x 60 or something like that. clue on left over pieces of wood that I can get for free and make diffuseres my self.- then in each corner make a triangel in plywood and put up againts the wall ,floor , and same on these with clued on blocs of wood that has pyramid shapes. same on the ceiling . would something like that work. I am talking about wood only. and most of it I can get almost for free. thanks for you input.

I strongly recommend reading the Sound on Sound guide before beginning construction, in three parts starting here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/acoustics1.html It will help you avoid expensive mistakes :-)

With proper precaution, rock wool is not a hazard. Work outside, if posiible, and wear protection for your hands and ALWAYS wear a mask for particles. If you cover the rock wool with a layer of fabric that is a fine weave, it will not pass into the room, even if you move it about frequently.