Some tips on monitor placement....

[mikelogic303]

1. Put your monitors on stands. If you can't afford them, then make them. Very important.

 

2. Make your speakers face the length of the room, not across it.

 

3. You must now try to move your monitors forward or backward to get the best (most even) bass response from where you sit while you mix. "most even" means that all the bass notes, if you play say a simple sine on a low octave, will have the same energy.

 

The length of a 60hz tone as it moves through the air is around 6 or 7 feet. If you stand at the back of the room and listen to your monitors, you are standing where the sound bounces off the back wall, and the bass should be doubled. Move about 3 feet more, and you will hear no bass. These nodes are the problem. You don't want to be sitting in a node where the bass is doubled, or cancelled.

 

This is the rough solution, the best solution is to use bass traps at the back wall to eat up the bass so it doesn't get back to you and cancel or double itself.

 

4. Your monitors should form an equilateral triangle with the back of your head. So time to get a measuring tape. Make the distance between the monitors the same as the distance from say, the left monitor to your head. The distance from the right monitor to your head should be the same. It should form a triangle with sides of equal length. Some montiors work best when angled in a little, some not.

 

5. Keep monitors at least 1 foot from all walls, windows or other large surfaces. Keep all levels on the master out of your desk flat. Do not use an eq on the monitors, ever. The reasons for this are well complicated, suffice to say you will be fixing the sound for your room, but creating problems you will hear elsewhere. The mid point between tweeter and bass driver should be level with your ear in height. Do not put potted plants on your monitors!

 

Hope some of this helps, you will not be able to do much unless your monitors are setup correctly. Use some music with a vocal to test the stereo image, the singer should sit bang in the middle. The sound should seem to come from just left and right of the monitors, and you should be able to point to where each drum sound is coming from.

 

peace out,

 

miKe

[Digital Psyence]

1. Put your monitors on stands. If you can't afford them, then make them. Very important.

 

2. Make your speakers face the length of the room, not across it.

 

3. You must now try to move your monitors forward or backward to get the best (most even) bass response from where you sit while you mix. "most even" means that all the bass notes, if you play say a simple sine on a low octave, will have the same energy.

 

The length of a 60hz tone as it moves through the air is around 6 or 7 feet. If you stand at the back of the room and listen to your monitors, you are standing where the sound bounces off the back wall, and the bass should be doubled. Move about 3 feet more, and you will hear no bass. These nodes are the problem. You don't want to be sitting in a node where the bass is doubled, or cancelled.

 

This is the rough solution, the best solution is to use bass traps at the back wall to eat up the bass so it doesn't get back to you and cancel or double itself.

 

4. Your monitors should form an equilateral triangle with the back of your head. So time to get a measuring tape. Make the distance between the monitors the same as the distance from say, the left monitor to your head. The distance from the right monitor to your head should be the same. It should form a triangle with sides of equal length. Some montiors work best when angled in a little, some not.

 

5. Keep monitors at least 1 foot from all walls, windows or other large surfaces. Keep all levels on the master out of your desk flat. Do not use an eq on the monitors, ever. The reasons for this are well complicated, suffice to say you will be fixing the sound for your room, but creating problems you will hear elsewhere. The mid point between tweeter and bass driver should be level with your ear in height. Do not put potted plants on your monitors!

 

Hope some of this helps, you will not be able to do much unless your monitors are setup correctly. Use some music with a vocal to test the stereo image, the singer should sit bang in the middle. The sound should seem to come from just left and right of the monitors, and you should be able to point to where each drum sound is coming from.

 

peace out,

 

miKe

294356[/snapback]

Thanks a lot !!

 

Great tips, most of what you wrote i didnt know, i just thouht that it would be best to use bass-traps in each corner of the room.

 

Your tips will come in handy soon, im constructing my studio right know, sexy lights in the ceiling, and a big homebuild working desk + 2 x 12unit racks 2x 14 unit racks (all homebuild) I'll post pics when im done with it

 

I have a question for you, because you seem to knoe a bit about acoustic treatment. i have a room that looks like this:

 

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Can you suggest what i should do with the angeled window? I thought about covering it with roockwool and hope for a good result. (i do not have monitors yet) i have some old speakers and i can clear hear the difference between the bass-notes. some makes a very deep bass around these 6-7 foots away as you wrote.

[mikelogic303]

Hi ya,

 

Yes, covering the window with rockwool would help. You want to try and dampen some of the high/mid frequency reflections from the glass. So rockwool will do that, but not much to absorb bass.

 

As for the bass, in such a small room it is going to be difficult to get it sorted out. The smaller the room, the higher the resonant frequency. So in a room like yours, your're probably looking at something between 50Hz and say 120Hz. Which you have already heard yourself. As I said in my earlier post, try moving your speakers away from the east wall until you find a spot where the bass is most even. Maybe you will have to put the speakers on stands behind the desk to be able to move them about freely. (that is, if you havn't already built the desk into the wall!) If this doesn't work, there are some good plans for home made bass traps on the net. Have a look on google! And pulg all the bass ports on your speakers/monitors, this will reduce some of the bass.

 

Remember! What you are trying to setup is a monitoring environment which is as flat or neutral sounding as possible. This will ensure your mix translates well onto other sound systems.

 

Hope this helps!

 

miKe

[Digital Psyence]

Hey thanks a lot!

 

the desk is build into the wall, so i was thinking about hanging the monitors in the ceiling (Like a reversed stand hanging down)

 

I have looked at these, i think they will work good, what do you think?

 

RealTraps