Standing Waves and the Descent Into Madness

[Empty Planet]

Sorry for the length, I'm going to great pains to be concise. My mixes are finally getting out into the real world and I've hit a big, typical stumbling block. Symptoms: Bottom heavy mixes when played outside my mixing room (wish I had a new problem for you). In actual mixing room, huge amount of bass when standing right against the back wall, a null spot in center of room, and somewhere between the two at the actual mixing position. Diagnosis: Huge freakin' standing wave sucking out energy from around 120 hz down, but mostly below 70. Partial Necessarily Low Budget Solution: Monitors in the Position of Madness -- IN the corner, but wait, it gets worse, FACING the corner -- in which I now sit to mix. This after much experimentation. Low end from 70 hz down recaptured, and that's where I was piling most of my energy to compensate. VERY happy with that, as that was where my mixes were sickest. New Problem: Testing strictly by ear (yes I know software methods exist for this but the ones with which I am familiar are unfortunately out of my budget, which is nil at the moment), I'm listening to sines at ascending 10 hz intervals and now I'm detecting a significant energy drop centered around 90 hz. These sines all hit the dB meter -- and I've used a few -- at the same level. Question for Those Who've Been There: I've laboriously created an eq curve as the last stop in my mix chain which pretty much compensates for this dropout. Do you know a really good reason why it would be a very bad idea to mix with this eq enabled, then disable it for the actual printing of the track? Other than I'm completely mad and this is the most insane thing you've ever heard? Thanks tons for bearing with me, suggestions would be most appreciated. Equipment: Event 20/20p monitors. Square Room of Doom.

[not Cereal]

no no no. there is a much simpler issue going on here. ALL studio speakers are different than normal speakers. ALL of them. even the sh*t ns10's. what i do, and many like me do (and some not like me also) is [i]learn what your speakers sound like[/i] i'm not being mean, i am trying to be helpful. your speakers sound a certain way. you are not hearing them that way, and you are trying to make them sound the way you want. this doesnt work. it never will. DO NOT put an eq inbetween your mixer and amp. DO spend about an hour a day listening to cd's that you like. then, try and get your mixes to sound like that. it may sound WRONG to you, but you will learn the way your speakers sound. now, you can experimant with positioning, and adding materials around your listening area, this is not a bad idea. do one thing at a time, and make very slow changes. add one thing and get used to it. biggest and most important: have a method to play your mixes in your car/truck. i used to burn cd's to do this; now i use a minidisc. i do a digital transfer of a mix into the MD player and take it out to my truck (i have an adapter in the truck for this). this is your real world test. try other peoples cars too. try other peoples stereos. try boomboxes. try any cheap peice of crap you can find. you get used to what your going to hear. [i]now[/i] after doing these things for a few years i can pretty much know what my mixes will sound like outside of my nearfields, because i know what my speakers sound like. i dont mix exactly what i think i should be hearing, but i do mix what i know the speakers are sounding like. i need to hear a little bit too much mids, and get the bass to sit really full but just under the guitars, and make sure i dont have to much sizzle on the top. AND i need to hear the kick drum real well but if it moves my drivers visibly its too much. these are just things i know from my system. yours is different. learn your speakers, listen to what you like on them. make your mixes sound like that. hope this is helpful, it sure was a lot of typing.

[Empty Planet]

Thanks very much, Coaster. I do appreciate the typing. But I was trying to make the point -- wretched that I did not even with so many words! -- that there was truckloads of bottom end in my mixes that I wasn't hearing due to the standing wave in my mixing room. In attempting to get it up to "acceptable" levels in the weird (but recommended) place in which my monitors sat, I was in fact piling on tons of unecessary low end, which of course shows up the second I foolishly try to play a mix anywhere else. Well that problem's solved, but my post's question was should I apply an eq solution to a lesser, but similar, problem. Your advice seems good, and is appreciated. I'll use the reference cds more often. :wave:

[not Cereal]

i dont think your going to get the bass you expect out of any studio monitors. i think i understand what you are expecting to hear, because i to wanted to hear bass like that 10 years ago. it just isnt going to happen unless you run a consumer setup alongside your monitors. i used to use 15" jbls and yes they [i]would[/i] get that phat, live sounding bass i wanted, but my mixes were MUD outside the setup. i developed an ear for a sound that isnt really bass heavy like one would think it should and my mixes improved. i use hr824's a lot and they do not have a heavy bass sound either. fairly pleasant flattish sound, nice, but no boom boom bass. i like my monitor ones the best, because i know them the best, and they are not as good as the hr824's or the jbl's. but i KNOW them, so i can mix on them comfortably. when i first got used to what studio speakers sounded like i thought there should be a lot more bass than i was hearing, more like my home stereo. this just isnt the case. studio speakers typically have a whole octave or more of freq they respond to (loaded statement) but seriously, home speakers rarely go above 15k or so, and id bet that the studio speakers go much above that and a lot more accuratley. ***try hooking up your home stereo to your setup and see if you DO get the bass your looking for.

[Salyphus]

How about adding a [url=http://www.event1.com/Products/Surround/Surround.html]subwoofer?[/url]

[Empty Planet]

Wow, I must be the King of Miscommunication tonight! Rearranging my mixing room must have disoriented me badly. I have all the bass I need! More than enough, actually. Merely saying that the shape of my room was cancelling out that range so that it wasn't getting to my ears. I would set the levels of a bass line, say, which -- where I was mixing -- SOUNDED perfectly coherent with a balanced mix, but because of the standing wave I was actually overcompensating like a MOFO and the low end when played in an unaffected room actually sounded like I'd chained a dozen Radio Shack Megabasses! (Which would be 12 million basses, btw.) And I do A/B with consumer speakers, which I find extremely helpful. But they were oriented the same way and were partially cancelled as well, and when they DID overload I would just chuckle and say to myself, ahh those commercial speakers. :rolleyes: I'm listening more keenly now. Thanks though, guys.

[gtrmac]

Just get some bass traps from Ethan Winer and be done with it. He even has plans on his website so you can make them yourself. Coaster's suggestions are certainly valid, you must learn how your speakers relate to "real world" systems but if the room acoustics are horrible there is not much future in that. Here's Ethan's Bass Trap Website: http://www.realtraps.com/ The DIY Article is here: http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html I'm suffering from the same problem in my home studio and I need to do something also.

[alcohol]

I used to suffer from that problem. One thing I did was get stands for the speakers. the speakers are also away from the walls and not on a desk. This really helps. After I do my mix, I pass it through a high pass filter, slowly taking off as much bass as I can until I hearthe filter affect the mix. You'd be surprised at how much unecessary bandwidth is taken up by bass that you really don't hear. I also have some NS10s monitors powered with a consumer amp and I boost the bass all the way. If the NS10s can't handle it then I know I need to take more very low bottom off with either a steep shelving EQ or a highpass filter. Many people have speakers that hype the bottom or they purposefully boost the bass eq. The high pass filter does the trick.

[not Cereal]

what else do you use besides the ns10's? do you like the ns10's? its ok if you do, i know people who swear by them. they (ns10's) just drive me up the wall is all, personal preferences are all different.

[G. Ratte]

I used to have a big problem with my stuff sounding all muddy and crappy on big PA systems (ie: dance clubs). Now I've got this goofy Radio Shack EQ box connected in-line to the monitor mix that has a spectrum display in the middle with bouncing lights. It's awesome. I also use my monitors for all my home listening, so that helps me know what they sound like. Anyways, I often watch the lights bounce and it helps me see what's going on in the low end of commercial tunes that I can't really hear. That's the stuff that was screwing up my mixes. Or if you're slick, you could do the same thing with SpectraFoo. And when I do my "mastering", I do a low cut at about 40Hz to just get rid of all that. It also helps to ignore people when they're 'helping' and say they wanna hear it 'really bump'. Send 'em out to their car with a tape or whatever. It's hard to explain to a layman that these speakers are different. Maybe you could A/B them some stuff if you have time and are nice.

[Bunny Knutson]

Please make sure you read gtrmac's post above. Ethan Winer will be glad to help you set up proper bass traps.

[S_Gould]

But isn't bass catch and release? Or can you keep it once you've trapped it? I'm confused... ;) :D :freak:

[gtrmac]

I've been doing everything on headphones lately and checking on the monitors at the music school where I teach. They have a good studio with big Tannoys there. It's a drag for me though because I can't trust anything at home. I'd really like to hear my speakers true sound soon. I have NS-100's in the living room which give me some idea of what's happening but the acoustics there aren't good either. Time for me to build some traps and absorbers too.

[Salyphus]

This has got to be one of the best thread titles ever.

[dr.sound]

Hey Empty, First off, you should be congratulated for at least being aware of what causes your problem. What are the room dimensions? Of the height, width and depth do any of these dimensions divide evenly to the next such as 12x12x 6 etc. If you can situate yourself in a position so that you and the speakers are away from the walls then with a little experimenting maybe you'll find you don't need that EQ any more. Good Luck,

[Ethan Winer]

EP, > huge amount of bass when standing right against the back wall, a null spot in center of room < This is very typical. You already got some good advice, and much more is in the article I just wrote as a FAQ for my Acoustics forum: [url=http://www.recording.org/users/acoustics]www.recording.org/users/acoustics[/url] --Ethan

[dr.sound]

Ethan, Great article!! I will link to it in the future if you don't mind. :thu: Thank You,

[Empty Planet]

Thanks very much everyone. I just had a friend explain wave cancellation via the swimming pool analogy and now I understand the function of bass traps. :rolleyes: Why would I want my bass sucked out more, I was asking myself? I'm getting sucked out all day, every day! :eek: Now I got it. Yes, the dimensions of the room are a perfect rectilinear nightmare for sound. Until I do the bass trap thing my psycho monitor placement seems to be working for the worst part of the problem. In the meantime I'm going to do some recording tests with my lone C1 and some sine sweeps, provided the specs say the c1 goes that low, and perhaps try to get a more accurate picture. Ahh, the technical aspects of getting one's music out into the real world...and I thought all the problems with that were merely artistic/psychological ones! Thanks for all the help. :wave:

[Bunny Knutson]

Hey, Empty Planet, keep us posted on your progress as you set up your bass traps. Photos would be a total bonus, and I'd be willing to help post them up online, if necessary. Are you going to buy traps from Ethan? From what I've seen, he is a very knowledgeable and helpful guy. Good luck with your trap set up. :thu:

[Gtoledo3]

I'm just throwing this out there....your speakers aren't out of phase are they? I think coaster is right on the money; if you really learn your speakers and room, everything else can be mediated. I think people always put their speakers way too close to walls though. My room is setup so that the speakers are just about in the middle of the room.