Hello forum(Ethan),

I am home studio PC DAW music producer and I know for a fact that my room is not setup acoustically sound. However things were going relatively well. I have a pair of KRK Rokit 5 near field monitors (active) and they are placed in the appropriate equidistant triangle with me at the head. Well obviously for mixing and mastering I realized that I needed to engage or at least represent the lower spectrum to get the whole audio picture so I went out and bought the matching subwoofer.

Soon after plugging it in and listening to a couple of reference CD's I noticed my ears were fatigued and even a little stressed or pained. Not loud volume by any means. SO the reality of acoustics set in and I started looking around for bass traps etc. And I got a call into an acoustician to see if he can help, dont know how much dinero it will cost.

But this ear thing coincided with the subwoofer hook up. Weird thing is that some guy at another forum said that bass traps would not help this ear thing. Was he right? Am I halucinating when I notice the ear stress the day I hook up the sub?

What to do what to do? Any pearls of wisdom out there? Thanks if you can. I have attached a drawing of the room: http://www.crabtwins.com/scan.jpg

Welcome.

First of all, you should really consider reorienting your room to a more symmetric situation.

I could see your becoming fatigued with the new sub. It's something different and you're likely mixing differently due to the now skewed response due to room mode and bass build-up issues.

I think that once you get things arranged, response smoothed out with proper monitor/sub placement, and the room treated to bring the decay times down, you'll not find that fatigue.

Bryan

bpape,

thanks for the response. Yeah this room was orignally a study and for that reason it has become a hybrid study and music room. SO bass traps won't solve my problem? hmmm..

> this room was orignally a study and for that reason it has become a hybrid study and music room. <

I agree with Bryan about reorienting your room. You should set up with the speakers on the right side of the drawing, facing toward the left. Then put your seat so you face the right wall with your ears about 3.5 feet from that wall.

> SO bass traps won't solve my problem? <

Bass traps absolutely will help your problem.

--Ethan

thanks Ethan,

One thing I Was curious about was that you talk about using 705 2in )or 2 1inch 703. But the drawings of the bass traps show a 1" insulation. That throws the math of the drawing off. Just curious if i am missing something. thanks

> But the drawings of the bass traps show a 1" insulation. <

The wood panel traps in my plans article are very different from using rigid fiberglass only. With the wood panel traps, the fiberglass only has to damp the wood panel. With fiberglass traps the fiberglass has to do it all.

--Ethan