sigh.

wife and i had to move into a bigger place. it seems like everytime i move, my room gets worse. maybe not.

the place i am in currently is - the living room. this is bad, but with some BA and traps it does sound good - shockingly good. drives the wife crazy (and therefore me too ha ha).

the new place has a spare room, 10.5 x 10.5 x 8. oh boy, those numbers dont look good. mode calc says bad things....my ears say bad things.... very ringy with the clap test.

plus the doors couldnt be setup worse, doors in two of four corners.

on a plus, there is a walk-in closet that is very big. big enough so i have 3 rack cases, 5 keyboards, many boxes of equipment etc and can still walk around. i think the closet is 4 x 10.5 x 8 with (4) being a guess. i didnt measure the closet yet. (closet sounds awful - like a ZIIING during clap test).

i got my work cut out for me. i'll be hauling my BA and traps over, but have a problem with 2 of 4 corners being there is doors there. i know i'll need more of everything to get this room under control.

yes, i'm very aware that 10.5 x 10.5 is a disaster. thank god its not permanent, but it looks like we might be here for several years

so far this week i have been reconfiguring (read- cutting up and modifying) my racks so they will fit in this small space. (my three main racks holding nearly everything are 13" wide altogether.)

i'm adapting a new way to place my nearfields - this will both help and hurt. imaging will be better, but i had a nearly free reflection zone before with how i had them set. this reflection free zone will be near impossible with the way i have to do it now, i'm still mulling this aspect over.

it took me about a year before i had the last place sounding GREAT, and thats a much, much bigger room.

i'm shooting for ACCEPTABLE in the new room, and i fear that may be near-impossible.

Good luck! At least you've been through it before so you know how to attack it and what you're in for.

How would you like to have had this for your FIRST room you were trying to tame...

Bryan

well, if i had, i certainly would have more BA and traps in my arsenal. so maybe that would be a good thing.

also, it could only get better after this room!

well, i am in the new room now.

i placed several traps in there strategically to reduce standing waves (these are ZING! waves when you clap your hands - really, really bad).

all my traps are NOT in corners at all, currently they are placed 4" from the walls as BA.

there are still some minor standing waves in areas of the room. i can hear them, but overall they are a drop in the bucket comparatively.

no BA will stay where it is, its placed this way to help me identify whats going on in here.

once the major standing waves were taken care of, i tried the room out - and i am SHOCKED.

the response is incredible - i am getting wonderful deep, defined bass AS IS. much better than my last room by far.

right now this little nightmare room is sonically night and day compared to the "A" room at the U where i teach (A room has issues we are addressing i.e. previous instructor used FOAM and NO traps/BA - moron).

it must be a good sign. with just several BA on the walls its a useable room, and quite a good one at that. i have done one 2-hour live mix in this condition and it translates to every system i've played it on. BIZARRE.

now before you think i am bragging and/or crazy let me say that i realize the bass response is not flat. i am just suprised at how NON-DISASTEROUS it is. it should be horrible, unusable, but its decent and sounds GOOD.

i pulled those BA out for a test and it was unusable. mid freqs went nuts, image dissapeared, locating was impossible.

so i now beleive that for some reason in this room - mid freqs are the demon. i do have to place more BA to get rid of more standing waves.

BUT, i am not going to do that until i trap the corners. doing that should tighten up the bass to even better than it is now (and its good now) as well as help with standing waves.

i have an album that i have had for a while, and while playing it in the new room i realized for the first time it has subsonics. i can hear these finally, stuff down to around 40hz or so (unmeasured - a guess) that i was unaware of.

and all this is even with my head in the direct center of the room. ( i have carefully managed to NOT place my head in the center of the room when ideally sitting). if i change my head position or walk within the room, the response does not shift noticably. odd.

i am happy this is the case, but i am confused by the good results. it makes little sense to me how the bass could be working so well in a room that it should never work even when trapped.

my plan is to use the 5.5" cotton in the front corners 2'x8' tall. back corners are a mystery as the doors will be an issue.

how on earth could this room sound like anything but dogmeat?