Acoustic room treatment and room design philosophy are dime a dozen. Other than the basic acoustic principals, even the professional acoustic designer can differ greatly from one to another. None of them are truly WRONG . . . Some work better than others. The best solution depends on each individual space.

I don,t feel too comfortable giving advice about room acoustics without hearing the actual room, so I won't.

Here are the basics. Your PRIMARY GOAL is to make your MIX POSITION as accurate as possible. That means, at the very least eliminate DIRECT reflection (first order reflection) from reaching your ears at your mix position. Direct reflection from ceiling, side walls and floor needs to be minimized as much as possible. These Surfaces should be acoustically absorbent and not reflective or diffusive.

That usually means an area in all surfaces that are about perpendicular to the monitors for about 4 feet in front of your monitor. This is your critical surface area. Your monitors should be symetrically placed at least 12 to 24 inches from the side and rear walls. The center line of your monitors should converge at the mix position, horizontally and vertically. Your monitors should be pointed right at you. Your mix position should be about 4 to 5 feet in front of the monitors. This generally works for a small room (less than 12'x12' room with a 9' ceiling.) With a larger room, its time to think about moving up to some Mid Field monitors.

If you treat this critical area with foam, use at least a 3" thick foam. If you use carpeting use 2 or 3 layers in the critical area and hang them with about an inch of air space in between them. A single layer carpeting should NOT be glued to the wall. Instead, hang them with at least half inch space from the wall surface. These treatment should absorb frequency above 120 Hz. Most effective for frequency above 600 Hz. Surface treatments are not very effective for frequencies below 300 Hz. Generally, low frequencies are amplified in the corners. Low frequency requires mass. Foam bass traps do help but not a whole lot. A real bass traps are not cheap but you can build them. You can find plans available on the internet.

Once you do this minimal treatment, you will notice an improvement in imaging and clarity. The problem with small room is the small critical listening area. Usually about 24 to 30 inch sphere around the mix position. When you move out of the mix position, you will start to hear standing waves and acoustic distortions. Once in a while due to the room shape, you end up with a bad standing wave at your mix position. If that happens, you might have to re-locate the mix position or introduce a 31 band EQ in the monitor chain.

The wall behind the monitors is usually preferable to be dead.

Myself included, 99% of us can not afford to "build" a studio and have the rooms designed by an architect specializing in building recording studios. So we end up adopting existing spaces.

My control room and the isolation booth used to be an "extra bedroom" that was illegally built into a 2 car garage. Now that its no longer rented and renamed as a hobby room, I didn't have to tear it out.

I prefer rooms that are as dead as possible. I prefer not to hear any short reflection in the control room or the iso booth. When I mix, the first thing I do add "room ambiance" as needed before adding effects. If had larger spaces, I can start thinking about controlling room ambiance. For me, small dead spaces has always been a friend.

The best room treatment you can do, is research. Read about it as much as you can. Then do what your particular room needs. Just compare what you hear in your room against your reference headphone. The room is telling you what it needs.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Ed

www.pointconceptionstudio.com