Help me fix my room!

[cheeseandpepper]

Hello Recording Review people!

Im writing (pleading) to you all for sound advice on how to optimize my studio/office. Heres the story...

I work for a multimedia company and I am their music/sound department. We recently moved to a new office and this occurred while I was on tour. Therefore I had no say when they were building walls and so now im stuck in a room that I believe sounds like crap. (im no expert on rooms, but i know that certain things sound "wrong" in this room and ill get to that in a bit)

The room itself is roughly 10 feet long by about 6 feet wide with at least a 12 foot high ceiling. My desk is along the longer wall so that leaves me 6 feet for a wall then my speakers then me then the back wall. On my left is a giant window and on my right is a heavy door.

Behind me is a room 3x the size of my "studio" with an A/C unit that powers the entire floor. Lets call him Godzilla. Godzilla keeps the 10,000 sq foot office cool and is constantly breathing down my back, literally. Also Godzilla is hungry - about every 20 minutes his stomach growls - its a heinous shriek of hunger. Sounds like somebody's making steel.

Onto the sound. my desk was destroyed in the move so they got me a new one. There's no room for my speakers on it so they had some speaker stands which place the speakers a good 8" above my ear level. That i know is a problem. When i scoot my chair back all the way to the back wall i can hear most of what's coming out of the speakers. Unfortunately when i am back against the wall, i get the full (or at least a fuller) range of eq but its super muffly - very hard to hear anything. I mean, i can HEAR it but, i cant make out the parts or the instruments or the words etc.

So to sum up - I've got a monster behind me that snores all day in a low rumble and shrieks every 20 minutes. I've got a sardine can for a room and dont know where to place the speakers so I can actually hear things properly. And if i do find that magic triangle between the 2 speakers and my head chances are the walls are gonna mess things up anyway.

is there no hope? the company will spend some money if i start yelling at people, but I need some ammo and a plan.

thanks in advance for your expertise.

[brandondrury]

The room itself is roughly 10 feet long by about 6 feet wide with at least a 12 foot high ceiling.

6 feet wide? That's a big walk in closet with a high ceiling. Ouch!

I need some ammo and a plan.

Unfortunately, you really only need a single bullet if you catch my drift.

You didn't mention what this room was for. Are you mixing? Are you composing MIDI? Are you tracking anything with a microphone?

Essentially you have the worst possible situation imaginable and you are pushing the laws of physics to their breaking point. A 6' wide room is not a room. It's a closet. I'm sure the frequency response curve in this room is about as crazy as it gets. The window won't help a bit and Godzilla's impact is obvious.

I think you are going to have your work cut out for you. It's clear that audio isn't THAT important to your company because zero thought went into this.

My only suggestion is headphones and that still doesn't solve the Godzilla problem.

Brandon