Acoustic Treatment and bedrooms
so do room I live is really bad in terms of acoustics I suppose, walls are very thin and floor is thin as well, people downstairs can hear you walking pretty much if you walk a bit hard. So how would studio monitors work in that case? Would it be only good for arranging and composing, and not good for mixing&mastering later on?
So shall I get studio monitors and mix with my headphones?
If your room is really bad in acoustics both arranging+composing and mixing&mastering (if you like to group it like that) won’t give you the best results, I guess.
On the other hand, thin walls and floor do not mean your room is bad in acoustics. I think you might have mixed something up.
Thin walls and floors → -your family or your neighbours might get angry with you having turned up the speakers that much
-you might hear some mushes from other rooms
Room with bad acoustics means: occurance of flutter echos, undesirable reflections, low frequency problems etc.
How to treat rooms like that: on the cheap: Make sure you have some shelves filled with lots of books, clothes (or something similar) in your back and also on your left and right wall out of your “sitting-in-front-of-the-mixing-desk” view.
Professionally: Acoustic treatment with basstraps in every corner of your room, absorbers and diffusors on your walls.
!!! You probably won’t be able to eliminate the “the-sound-will-disturb-my-neighbours” problem on the cheap. This can only be treated with building a room in your room (very expensive!!!)
Ah I see. It is not a problem during the day, as we have quiet hours from 11 to 7am but I do not have echos or undesirable reflections in the room, only problem I would seem to have is that neighbors will complain after a certain hour which I can eliminate by using my headphones.
So I would be fine using studio monitors like KRK Rokit5 or 6 for a box shaped room, it is mid sized room, box shaped?
Perfect would having a room with unparallel walls (which in normal buildings isn’t the case very often).
I never had the chance to try out Rokits 5 or 6 so I can’t give you a statement considering the quality. From what I’ve heard about them I consider them more to be DJing monitors than appropriate reference monitors for music production but I don’t know…
In general, I don’t think there is any reason why you should not start working with some monitors.
If your room is fine or acoustically treated you will have much better results on monitors than on headphones. If your room is not that good in terms of acoustics you will experience that your sounds gets more and more squishy and undefined when increasing the volume. So you’d better work with moderate volume then.
I see, I want monitors for more of a reference, as it gets tiring to listen with headphones all the time. I will still fine detail, and carefully mix with a good pair of studio headphones. I am not sure I will check the monitors out.
Ok! I know the problem of getting tired by listening to headpones all the time. Therefore, I’ve made the decision to use open headphones to eliminate this “sound-seems-to-be-IN-your-head-rather-than-coming-from-outside”-feeling. But it’s still not the same as listening to reference monitors, of course.
Which studio headphones do you use?
I have KRK 6400’s but I am planning to purchase Sennheiser HD 650’s
Box shaped rooms without stuff on the walls are usually terrible acoustic environments.
The best way I’ve heard it described is that you don’t listen to instruments or speakers (music)…you listen to rooms with music playing in them. If the room sucks…all speakers will suck in it.
So, address that first.
Short of custom-building a room, there are a few things you can do…some cheaper than others.
High End: good speaker placement + good acoustic treatments…purpose built acoustic panels, bass traps, diffusers, etc.
There are a lot of places that sell this kind of stuff…but it gets expensive quick…like $500 to $1000 for a normal bedroom. And actually placing the speakers in the room requires measurements and math.
Medium End: basic acoustic treatments + half-decent speaker placement.
If your speakers aren’t backed up to a wall, are on something heavy, and have tweeters about ear level, and make an equilateral triangle with your head…that help…then it’s dealing with specific problems in the room, which can be cheaper than tuning the whole thing. Basically, you’re just trying to kill primary reflections (time to start reading).
Low End: Speaker placement + moving furniture
One of the biggest “free” tweaks is to put a bookshelf straight across from your monitors, something on the walls to your sides (heavy canvas paintings are better than nothing…but not by a lot, and use a carpeted room. It’s not good, but it’s listenable. In order to work, the bookshelf has to actually have (heavy) books on it that aren’t all the same size, so it absorbs some low frequency buildup on the long side of the room and kind of diffuses the stuff coming back at you.
Most bedrooms sound terrible.
Also, none of this has anything to do with sound-proofing. It’s just to make it sound better inside the room. It won’t sound any quieter outside of that……you want to do that, and you’re talking building a room inside a room with weird masonry practices that costs a lot of money.
By any chance would having a wardrobe full to the brim of clothes opposite your speakers help, or is that just a stupid idea?
The bookshelf idea was given to me by a very successful mix/mastering engineer (name’s miguel; worked with Bieber, Elton John, andre 3000, BOB, etc.) who was talking to me about my room (which then became irrelevant when I moved in with my girlfriend…her room sucks for sound quality). So, I can’t speak to that with the same level of confidence. But…
My intuition tells me that it would sound better than a blank, parallel wall…but clothes aren’t particularly dense (compared to paper; for absorption) or reflective (compared to book spines; for diffusion), so it seems like they’d absorb highs more than lows…which would help making things more pleasant…but it won’t make it any easier to mix lows. Lows tend to be a problem in bedroom-sized rooms because of how long the sound waves are.
There really is no substitute for the high-end treatments (except going balls-deep and building a room…but that’s well beyond most bedroom producers’ budgets), but I think cleverly placed books and boxes of vinyl would make a much bigger difference than clothes.
That being said, the biggest thing is to know your room/speakers. Do what you can, and then listen to a lot of music in the room. If you can get your stuff to sound similar to finished tracks, it’ll do more good than worrying endlessly.
What I’m doing (well…what I was doing before moving in with the gf) was working up from the bottom of that list and just forcing myself not to upgrade speakers until the room deserves them.
Along those lines, I like my RP5s okay. They’re cheap, loud (for a bedroom), clear (for a bedroom without any major treatments), and still vaguely pleasing to listen to (not at all fatiguing at normal levels unless you’re listening for detailed mids). If I had it to do over again, I’d probably buy HS50m or HS80ms and their sub…but I’d also get pissed off about crawling behind them to constantly switch the EQ adjustment switches between sounding like NS-10s and sounding like bookshelf speakers……and I’d have to get a monitor controller to patch the sub in and out……which is a lot more expensive. So I might not be as happy with them. When I upgrade, the KRKs are going to become TV speakers (assuming they’re not completely worn out) so it still won’t be money down the drain.
I also wouldn’t recommend Yamaha monitors unless you know what NS-10s are and like them. The little bit I’ve used them…I get what people were talking about, but I couldn’t have them as my only speakers.
For the price, I think the KRK Rokits are okay. IMHO, next step up costs about $1000 for the set (and there are several choices in that range) and, again IMHO, none of them are worth buying until you’ve put something into real acoustic treatments.
Having heard some very nice-sounding rooms, the difference is staggering. The difference between a typical box bedroom with hardwood floors and a box bedroom with $1000 worth of acoustic treatments and a rug/carpet is way bigger than the difference between a $150 audio interface and a $10,000 audio interface).
Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to sell expensive, shiny speakers than it is to sell boring acoustic foam and extremely overpriced ugly-ass wooden scultpures…so people think they need better monitors than they can actually hear.
That being said, if you actually have a budget for this (or want to save up), I’d buy Something like this and either these or these (depending on furniture) with this, plus a set of these and some cheap-ass rug…the uglier the better (if the room has hard wood).
It’s like $3500-$4000, but it’d make the biggest difference.
It’ll also be a long time before I can justify that kind of expense.
And that’s with a mind towards production/recording. It’s irrelevant for DJing. If all you want to do is DJ, you don’t need or want speakers or a room nearly that clean. It’ll sound boring as hell. If all you’re doing is DJing, I personally suggest decent bookshelf speakers (RP5s, Audioengine 5s, etc.) and just putting something straight across the room from them. Other people suggest hi-fi systems, though I still haven’t seen a good example of getting anywhere near the bang for your buck that KRK and Audioengine offer.
I know about the speaker placement but never had good chance to see how monitors sounds in my room, so I will figure it out and besides that I still think I would get a good pair of headphones to finish mixing and other stuff on it instead of with monitors. I want monitors to listen and build the track as I don’t start mixing before i finish the arrangement.
I heard about a few professional artists who even used this for recording vocals last minute. Probably much better than nothing but not comparable with professional acoustic treatment I guess.
There is a significant difference between a rooms acoustic behavior and the acoustic isolation from one space to the next.The former can be treated relatively easily with standard materials, Rockwool, Acoustic foam products, Owens Corning. Isolation is a different matter and relates to the structure of the building itself and can be complex and costly to address.2 things provide isolation, air seals and mass, both technically complicated to achieve.
One of the biggest obstacles to isolate against is frequencies, < 300Hz (i.e. bass) with long wavelengths and complex transmission paths through building structures. I believe in your current situation the best solution is a small set of monitors for when you can use them and a set of high end headphones with good deep bass response for when you need to not disturb people.
cheers
SafeandSound Mastering
Audio mastering
Recording inside a closet is different. You’re mostly just trying to kill annoying reflections and outside noise…and they can work for that. Voices don’t really have very low frequency content (well…most of them…the black guy from Rockapella’s voice goes a few legers below the bass cleff…or down to like 50 Hz) and you’re going to be filtering out a lot of that anyway even if your mic records it.
It’s a very different situation than wanting flat frequency response past the audible spectrum (to avoid beats(1) from, say, 2Hz signals causing effects at overtones) and no reflections.
(Note 1: “beats” in this context means constructive interference)
Agreed.
And, yeah…most of the tracking rooms I’ve been to are built inside of warehouses or other large spaces with floors and ceilings made out of concrete suspended from or sitting on springs and walls that are a couple layers of cinderblocks filled with sand or something like it……and some other stuff.
It gets expensive quick. Sadly…that’s one thing that bedroom producers just won’t have access to without paying for it.
This is what I’ve been searching for a long time now. What would you suggest as an example for this kind of high end headphones?
Closed ones like the AKG K-271/ Audiotechnica ATH M50 or open ones like the AKG K-701/702 or do you think it is necessary to start searching in a different league of headphones like Grado RS 1i?
I guess I know all the theory about differences between open and closed headphones and about different classes of headphones depending on their price but I would be very interested in your opinion (as I consider you to be a pro → “SafeandSound Mastering”) and which headphones you would recommend for mixing and mastering!
I really heard good things about beyerdynamics dt990 open headphones.
Not a bad call, a good balance between ‘hi-fi’ and comfort (a bit tight but at least some air gets in). AKG K240 are comfortable, non fatiguing and good for long hours if need be, not hi fi and not a much bass but very comfortable, neutral in their presentation. The DT990 can be a bit tiring and ‘head clampy’ I use DT770 (closed) for QC myself but they are a bit oppressive for more than an hour at a time, comfort wise. DT770 good for Qc as they isolate and give detail and deep lows for QC purposes i.e. hearing clicks and other audio issues.
cheers
SafeandSound Mastering
Audio mastering
I agree with Mostapha, really great info, though I would opt for the Mackie MR series in stead of the KRK Rokits.
In my opinion, the Mackies have a more flat response than the Rokits, for almost the same pricing.
I have had the exact opposite experience, and I’d bet money that the difference was the room we demo’d them in.
As for headphones…I use my HD-25s, but that’s just because I use them for about everything and am used to them after six and a half years. I think mixes I’ve done on them translate pretty well (down to a point…they just don’t do sub bass) but, again, after 6.5 years of listening to them several times a week on average, I’m pretty sure you could mix (up to a point) with anything that wasn’t broken or flat-out lousy.
Definitely right.
I’ve been using a Sennheiser PX 40 for about 6 years now (got them when I still went to school^^) and even if it lacked in the bass area and probably was far from being accurate I ended up with producing decent mixes with it knowing its weaknesses. I would probably have continued for years if it didn’t break a few weeks ago. That’s where I am now, searching for some new headphones. From giving them a first listen at the local music store I really liked the Audiotechnica ATH M50 (seemed quite precise to me) and the AKG K-702 (which are a bit too pricey though so I would tend to get a closer look at the AKG 701).
Making the final decision what to buy often tends to be a long process with me as my policy is “Buy some quality gear and you will make sure you only buy once!”