Break out from Budget Monitor thread: How I treated my studio

[elmagoo]

I figured Brandon would prefer to keep the Budget Monitors thread on topic, so I started a new thread to answer this question

Originally Posted by jay jay

What type of room and what did you do to treat it?

It's a small bedroom in a 2 bedroom apartment measuring 12.5' x 12' x 8.1'. The room has to serve as my studio, our guest room, and my wife's office, so as you can imagine the setup is far from ideal (although most of the room is for the studio . I wanted something easy and removable as we're renting, so I bought an Auralex project studio pak, and then supplemented it with 10 Auralex LENRD bass traps, 4 Auralex bass corner cubes, and 2 2' x 4' Auralex standard wedge 2" foam. Upon hindsight, it probably would have been better to spend the extra money and not get the project pak and just spring for normal 2" foam. I mounted everything with heavy duty exterior 2 sided tape (the red stuff you find at Home Depot in the paint department).

The cubes and LENRDs did the heavy stuff taming the boomy bass frequencies, and I used the 2' x 4' panels for the early reflection spots on the side. The project pak main tiles cover the wall behind the computer monitor and areas behind the studio monitors, as well as the early relection spot on the ceiling. There's also a bit of the project pak directly behind me on the wall, but most of that wall is taken up by my wife's surfboard .

The last bit, and this will be the most controversal, is I used the IK Multimedia ARC system. I researched this a bunch and every review I found be it professional, or personal on a forum, said the same thing; it is not a replacement for treatment, but rather a supplement. Also to quantify what I mean by review is that I only considered people who had actually used this complete product. There are several reviews out there of just the technology from about a year prior, but I don't count that as the same thing because this is a different product.

Before activating the ARC system, everything was MUCH better, tighter, more focused already just from the treatment. But doing a test with my living room stereo revealed that while it was very close, it was still not quite translating. After activating the ARC system, what I heard in my studio was what I heard coming out of my living room.

I know a lot of people are skeptical about any kind of room EQ usage, but I have to say this thing does work well. I do believe the trick is that you have to treat your room first, and then use this as a supplement. I think the problems arise in that if you don't treat your room, odds are the plug in is going to have to go to it's extremes to fix things, which in turn will cause problems. If your room is treated decently, the plug in doesn't have to do as much heavy lifting, hence you can get the benefits without artifacts.

I have to head to work, but I'll post some pics of my room tonight, along with the response graph from ARC.

[elmagoo]

OK, so here are the pics I promised. The size restrictions for the site are too small, so I created a flickr account:

Flickr: Photos from the_elmagoo

I'm hoping that link takes you to the proper page . It's hard to see the bass traps as they're mostly in the wall to ceiling corners, and the cubes are directly in the wall to wall to ceiling corners.

[Edu Cesar]

I don't know anything about room treatment, but I'm thinking about doing the same thing to my bedroom anytime I get some extra money. Thanks for the descriptions and photos, that's very useful!

[jay jay]

Originally Posted by elmagoo

After activating the ARC system, what I heard in my studio was what I heard coming out of my living room.

Did you notice any apparent difference in the sound from your monitors after the activating the ARC? Where you able to hear where it was boosted or cut? Just curious.

After reading your post, I felt it was time to evaluate my room. Last night I checked frequency response from 20-20K. I used a calibrated SPL meter and test tones at my seating position. All over the place. up to 20db peaks and dips. Also, I have tons of high end while listening, but the measured value was 5-10 db lower in the higher frequencies. I have the calibration sheet for the meter so I know the problem is my room. My guess is reflections and phase issues. Thanks for the info.
Time for me to start some treatment.

[elmagoo]

Originally Posted by jay jay

Did you notice any apparent difference in the sound from your monitors after the activating the ARC? Where you able to hear where it was boosted or cut? Just curious.

After reading your post, I felt it was time to evaluate my room. Last night I checked frequency response from 20-20K. I used a calibrated SPL meter and test tones at my seating position. All over the place. up to 20db peaks and dips. Also, I have tons of high end while listening, but the measured value was 5-10 db lower in the higher frequencies. I have the calibration sheet for the meter so I know the problem is my room. My guess is reflections and phase issues. Thanks for the info.
Time for me to start some treatment.

There's a definite difference you can hear with the ARC system engaged. Before any of the room treatment, I had major boominess issues, and stereo imaging was very difficult to tell. Also when applying EQ or compression, I couldn't really tell any difference in the sound with just a few db of tweaks.

I first applied the Auralex project pack, and immediately the stereo imaging got better, but the boominess was rampant and muddied up everything. After applying all of the bass traps and the 2' x 4' sheets to the side reflection points, the boominess went away, stereo imagining was good, and I could hear EQ and compression changes with just a few db of tweaks.

At this point, I really liked the way the room sounded, and what I was hearing from my speakers was exactly what I wanted my mix to sound like (I was listening to the Spider / Trion test that I did for a reference). I was considering not using the ARC until I did a comparison with my living room stereo and found that in my living room it was still not quite sounding like what I was hearing in my studio. This isn't to say that I couldn't make it work. It would only have taken a few tries to nail the mix on my living room stereo and account for the sonic differences as it was so much easier to hear everything clearly. But being a perfectionist, I wanted the best I could get for my situation, so I applied the ARC system. There was an immediate and noticeable change for the better. What I heard in my studio was exactly what I heard in my living room. Also the stereo imaging went up yet another notch, and tweaking EQs and compression became even easier and noticeable. Also listening to various tracks that I would import into Cubase became enlightening as I could very clearly hear what they did with their mixes.

If you're registering 20db peaks and dips in your room, then I'd highly recommend doing some treatment first and foremost. I'm not sure how much there is on room treatments here on this forum, but I know over at gearslutz there's a lot of information. Anything from DIY traps to how to treat a room and such:

Gearslutz.com - Powered by vBulletin

Also there's some good articles you can find on the realtraps site with regards to treatment types and placement:

RealTraps - Home

I would love to have gone the DIY route as it probably would have cost about the same money, or maybe a bit more from the research I've done. Alas I didn't want to go through the pain and hassle for an apartment knowing when I move I'd have to rebuild new traps because of size issues and such with my current room situation. I'm definitely happy with the Auralex stuff and would recommend it, but I know there are other brands out there as well.

Best of luck!! I think it'll be one of the strongest and best investments you'll make in improving the quality of your recordings and mixes .