Small room bass

Ethan winer is an old friend of mine and part owner of "real traps" a company that makes acoustic treatment products.

http://ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html  there is a lot of good(?) free information at his website.

I have known him for decades and he is a pretty solid citizen about studio spaces and sound treatment.

JR

bernbrue said:

Afaik there is only one commercial product. Search for "bag end etrap"

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There is also this one
http://www.psiaudio.com/en/our-products/avaa-c20/
They say their system is different of the Bag End; seen from a user's point of view, the big difference is the PSI does not need to be tuned.

Have you seen Sonarworks speaker and Headphone EQ?  It's not the best choice for an analog setup like yours Ian but for about $220 ,  it came with a calibrated microphone and microphone file and is quite easy to setup.  Whats great about it is not only does it eq the speakers and recommend the spacing but it also has a phase adjustments it performs to create a very solid  mix sound field. 

It however requires to be inserted on your daw master out to effect the sound  and hence requires that the final mix come from your DAW.    It has changed the way I work and also has a headphone side for fixing frequency problems in headphones.  There is a database of files for popular Headphones and you can also buy or send your headphones in for a tailored response of your own headphones. 

I'm a believer in panel traps and/or bass traps in the 3' deep range if you have the space (along with diffusion on the surface) but some rooms just don't have the space so panel traps are the only way.  Even so it takes a lot of surface to change the bass response.  And as others say move your speakers to different positions. 

Also I find the your head height in a short ceiling room has a great deal to dictate your bass sound as caused from cancellation.  The bass output is best if Im setting on a high stool rather than in a conventional chair/ hence not so much in the middle of the ceiling hight but more in the upper third of height.   

ruffrecords said:

To summarise, diffusion is far better than absorption?

Cheers

Ian

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I would say "no" for small rooms. I suppose, that you need some distance from the diffusors.
First thing I could imagine is that if a close soundsource is emitting sound to the diffusor, the difference between the distances to the surface of the diffusor is big and so should spoil up  how it works.
Also you need some distance from the listening position to the diffusor.
If you are having a lot or medium size space between you and the rear wall, diffusion can sure be great.
It also depends on what frequencies you want to diffuse. Low frequencies diffusion needs more space.
If you like to suppress the reflections from sidewalls, I suppose that one should calculate what frequencies start to summ up or cancel with the direct signal and build the diffusor based on that.

But I've never done that and its a pure guess by me.
Does it sound right?

I should have been more precise: I meant diffusion is better than absorption for higher frequencies. Bass is a whole different ball game.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I should have been more precise: I meant diffusion is better than absorption for higher frequencies. Bass is a whole different ball game.

Cheers

Ian

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not 100% exactly ...
u need both!
diffusion doesnt work so well a in small room...

JohnRoberts said:

Ethan winer is an old friend of mine and part owner of "real traps" a company that makes acoustic treatment products.

http://ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html  there is a lot of good(?) free information at his website.

I have known him for decades and he is a pretty solid citizen about studio spaces and sound treatment.

JR

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I know of Ethan from many years ago. Much respected guy. I'll check him out.

Cheers

ian

kambo said:

not 100% exactly ...
u need both!
diffusion doesnt work so well a in small room...

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I am becoming confused. Some say diffusion works better in a small room, some say absorption. I must admit I have never had much trouble at the higher frequencies. In my last studio I used the foam pyramids.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I am becoming confused. Some say diffusion works better in a small room, some say absorption. I must admit I have never had much trouble at the higher frequencies. In my last studio I used the foam pyramids.

Cheers

Ian

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I would think it depends very much on how you like your listening environment. Personally I like a dead-ish room, and I know I must not put too much reverb, and that I need to make the perspective in the mix rather more defined. But that doesn't change much in terms of HF response.

I've been happy in a dead-ish room as well for mixing where  the imaging is more solid to my ears.  I have a good friend I did a studio for.  He does not like spending time in a dead room at all so diffusion is a way to get some scattered bounce to sound field to hopefully reduce hard reflections from comb filtering the sound field.    Over the years its the perspective of the listener and a lot of fancy traps and diffusors are just an expensive look that book cases and couches could help solve. A small room is a small room.    When working in a remote truck,  I always bring headphones to get a grasp on the sound field and once thats established I can use the speakers with all the problems of a small room.  Some people do not like headphones for mixing.  Its in the ears of the beholder.

I am used to a fairly dead room. I have used phones to check bass. I have found phones tend to exaggerate reverb.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I am becoming confused. Some say diffusion works better in a small room, some say absorption. I must admit I have never had much trouble at the higher frequencies. In my last studio I used the foam pyramids.

Cheers

Ian

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sorry for the confusion...
u dont wanna mix is fully none reflected room, nor frequencies bouncing around like ping pong ball...

back in the days, they use to mix in fully dead rooms, now days more live sounding room,
dead_ish to dead_ish++ 

because diffusion still maintains the frequencies in the room, in a small room it gives you fake impression of
sounding bigger than reality... because you are still hearing diffused frequencies, but a tiny bit little later, and lower in energy as they have to do some travelling in the room before hit ur ears.
in large room, diffused frequencies have to travel some serious distance, before hit your ears, they are already too low to hear. but they dont give you dead feeling... they loose their energy over the travelling distance. and they bounce around so many times, due size of the room... in small room that energy is still pretty high. not enough distance to travel. your imaging likely to  get confused too....

u need to absorb first to control, if u think ur room is too dead,
then add diffusion...

especially, adding those expensive wood diffuser panels on ur back wall is total waste of time and money in a small studio. if i remember correctly they need at least 6-10 feet distance from ur sitting position to start work properly...

ruffrecords said:

I am used to a fairly dead room. I have used phones to check bass. I have found phones tend to exaggerate reverb.

Cheers

Ian

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I use headphones only for troublecheck (mainly VLF noise, residuals in silent passages) and general editing. I never use them for mixing; they are tolerant to the most blatant errors in reverb dosage, improper balance and perspective. Some claim using HTFS processing fix these issues; it doesn't work for me.

I have been in some very small rooms in what was Heathmans mastering in West London that sounded very good.  When I go the tape measure out there was about 2 feet of base trapping on the wall behind the speakers & more on the rear wall.    I think that if one has a small room to begin with it is difficult to see the benefits of losing this amount of room space, but these rooms do sound good.

Another good way to absorb some bass is put a false floor in, & fill it with sand,  that way you don't lose so much floor area.  I've seen this at the studio of quite a good French producer.

Hey Ian, how is this going on? I didn't went throw all the topic but a fast pick.

  Usually the lack of bass is fixed with monitor placement  (search SBIR, Speaker Boundary Interference Response)
The idea is to optimize the monitor placement so you get the minimum attenuations dips and then only cut out the peaks electronically. In a small room the best position is usually right next to the corners, just not touching the walls. Not very intuitive but that would generate a big LF lump and very little attenuation, you will just need a LF shelving to shave that down and you are done.

  Then use the traps for the time domain problems, you do a waterfall graph and treat the long resonances. Fixing low frequency response with trapping is brute force and probably not physically possible in a small room, you end with a bass trap in your lap.

  Once working with a two way system I took advantage of the independent sub placement to help with the x-over, so I get the cancelation right after the x-over frequency in both ways and the sum was quite neat. It was a really nice exercise at least, I had the response chart to impress the girls coming home back then 

JS

abbey road d enfer said:

I use headphones only for troublecheck (mainly VLF noise, residuals in silent passages) and general editing. I never use them for mixing; they are tolerant to the most blatant errors in reverb dosage, improper balance and perspective. Some claim using HTFS processing fix these issues; it doesn't work for me.

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Interesting viewpoint. I wonder with so many (majority?) of music being listened to on phones, shouldn'the we be mixing on them too?

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

Interesting viewpoint. I wonder with so many (majority?) of music being listened to on phones, shouldn'the we be mixing on them too?

Cheers

Ian

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  Yo do need to be extra careful while mixing with headphones, is not a good practice and it's quite noticeable. I do the double check in my headphones and use them as reference but I have the same pair for years and I'm quite used to them. I only check very specific stuff, like relative levels between kick and bass, but I keep the LF  balance overall soft enough so the mastering guys can do the final balance in some nicer environment than usual mix conditions.

JS

joaquins said:

  Yo do need to be extra careful while mixing with headphones, is not a good practice and it's quite noticeable. I do the double check in my headphones and use them as reference but I have the same pair for years and I'm quite used to them. I only check very specific stuff, like relative levels between kick and bass, but I keep the LF  balance overall soft enough so the mastering guys can do the final balance in some nicer environment than usual mix conditions.

JS

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I am not sure I understand the "it'seems not good practice" statement. Unless you can afford a large properly treated control room with big expensive speakers, your mix environment us less than perfect. Even then, mist studies used Auratones as a check for a typical end listener speaker.  In a small room, the acoustics will always to some extent compromise the sound. How is this any worse than headphones where at least the acoustics are controlled?

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I am not sure I understand the "it'seems not good practice" statement. Unless you can afford a large properly treated control room with big expensive speakers, your mix environment us less than perfect. Even then, mist studies used Auratones as a check for a typical end listener speaker.  In a small room, the acoustics will always to some extent compromise the sound. How is this any worse than headphones where at least the acoustics are controlled?

Cheers

Ian

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  I didn't said seems at any point... so now you confused me.

  The problem with headphones is the behavior, not the frequency response. While is usually true that something that sounds nice on speakers also sounds good on HP the inverse is not true at all. Don't quite me on that but I think it has more to  do with what happens inside your brain than with acoustics (Psicoacoustics) as you loose correlation, space perception, etc. There might be some audio processing to mitigate that effect but not eliminate it and still I don't know.

  There are many things that work differently on headphones than on speakers, also you need to consider your post processing (Psicoac again) as it is correcting some of the room problems for you without you even noticing it. I think given a relatively symmetric room, good monitor placement and some LF attenuation as mentioned in my first post it's possible to get to a decent situation. Then the HP could be useful to double check a thing or two but not to build up the mix. (I'm speaking about LF here, you said HF has been solved and is usually much simpler, almost never a deal breaker)

  The other point, if you have a set of HP that are super nice but you aren't used to them, they are quite useless, expend some time with them and see, just listen to (known) music as much as you can. If you have a half decent (nicer is better) set of HP and you use it every day and know exactly how something sounds on them and how it reflects on many other places then you can work with them.  Not as a main mix device but as secondary reference.

  If you can do the experiment, mix something fast and dirty using your HP without attention to them. Then mix again, the same thing or something similar, using the best monitoring situation you can get at home. Hear those mixes in different places and see, or if you can get to a friend's better studio great. I could spoil this for you if you wish so, I've done it.

JS

think this way...

let say you are a pilot candidate, or a pilot...

if you play microsoft flight simulator on ur PC, you will get no sense of hight, stall, up, down etc etc...
but you will get good reading of, if u have enough fuel, r u heading the right direction, will u make the final desitination : thats your headphone...

then u jump to Boing flight simulator...  that thing moves like crazy, u get all sort of physical reaction to your moves, but still is not the real thing... u still miss a lot of sense of feeling.... but way better than PC flight simulator, u can actually totally fly the real thing...  this is your small room... there are so many albums
successfully recorded and produced in small rooms... not that horrible! especially if u know what u doing, with decent treatment...

than the real thing, you fly a real airplane,
u get all the sense of feeling for every little detail....
that your large room  8)
but that doesnt mean, every mix gonna sound "WOOOW".... if u dont know what u doing, large room doesnt really mean anything.... i heard so many crap mixes over the years, mixed at penthouse NY studios...