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Tuning a control room.


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Here's a poll for you...How many people think there should be a law requiring bass traps, diffusers, and baffles installed in your home studio before you're allowed to turn the tape recorder on ????

Living' in the shadow,

of someone else's dream....

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Where,

I have a home studio and have been learning everything I can about acoustics. I frequent Ethan's forum and have been making my own absorbers based on his research and experience for a few months now. After adding a few absorbers, the acoustic difference is amazing. Without a properly tuned room, people in the room listening to the mix each hears something different, depending on where they are sitting in the room. And it's hard to get an agreement on the mix with everybody hearing something different. Tuning the room has helped me get a more even mix wherever someone is sitting. Without tuning, you cannot get a consistent sounding mix in all reasonable listening positions in the room. No matter how much you EQ the sound prior to it getting to the speakers.

 

I understand EQing the mix to compensate for speaker quality (though I don't do it myself), but this is not a question of one thing versus the other. Even if you get it EQ'd correctly at the speaker, once it comes out, then all kinds of things effect what people hear(reflective surfaces / corners / parallel walls / etc). These things muck up the sound, and make it hard to get a good mix.

 

Perfectly tuned speakers in an untuned room produces poorer results than tuned speakers in a tuned room. You can have both.

 

Proper tuning, especially in smaller rooms is critical. A little absorption can make a small room sound large. I use it in my tracking room, especially in the ceiling to open it up. The ceiling sounds higher than it really is.

 

Just my 2 cents.

dw

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From what I understand diffusion is a much better bet for making a room sound larger than it is- so is having nice leaky walls that let the bass out.

 

I don't have any acoustic treatment at all except for a pillow here and a blanket there. I depend on speakers with very little bleed out the back and sides and finding just the right place to put them in a pretty big and irregularly shaped room with a high ceiling. I find my work translates extremely well- lots of credit to exceptional monitor amps and the fact that I never EQ anything.

A WOP BOP A LU BOP, A LOP BAM BOOM!

 

"There is nothing I regret so much as my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" -Henry David Thoreau

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Originally posted by where02190:

If you eq the mix to compensate for speaker quality, your mix will only sound good on those speakers.

It still comes down to the individual's ability to know his setup and how it translates. Even if someone has eq'd their monitors for one reason or another, it will still come down to the individual's ability to know what his setup is telling him.

A good engineer should be able to mix on a fisher-price boombox and be able to make it translate to other systems.

It come down to knowing your setup and how it translates.

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I need all the help I can get so I got that F. Alton Everest book and did the math. My vaulted drop ceiling took care of all the highs and high mids and I needed 6 each low bass, high bass and low mid traps. I just made the frames against the walls with the holy plywood tops and rigid fiberglass behind the covers.

 

I was playing music while installing them and the difference was unreal as each one went up.

 

I'd use a solid wood room or even extremely hard materials for effect for recording, but for mixing, you can't work in a room with drywall or plaster walls. It just sucks sound wise.

 

Yeah, the treatment even makes my 'NS-10 Studio' and horrortone monitors sound listenable. :)

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