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Bass Traps
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| Etherium |
| I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it's impossible to judge the low-end in a room with parallel walls and no bass traps. Do any of you have them and if so did they improve your problem? |
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| trancenrg69 |
Hey Etherium, I've spoken to alot of sound engineers and it's been said that you can have the best near fields but if you have bad acoustics you'll never get the best out of your monitors. I am torn between getting event tr8's with a project 2 kit or mackies without the kit. With that said, here is an example of how basstraps can help.
http://www.auralex.com/sound_contro...ol_project2.asp
click "sound sample" and hear the before and after. |
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| Sebraaa12 |
You can always listen your basssounds through wall , for example in bathroom :) Totally different effect!
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sebra |
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| iLLicit |
Cool link that is. You can really tell the difference. But I think these sets are only important for when you are recording live instruments in a room? It shouldn't matter much when you are monitoring. |
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| Dj Thy |
It's also relevant (very!) when monitoring. Due to room accoustics, some frequencies will be emphasized, others will be attenuated (ok, for standing waves this will change depending where you stand in the room, but you gotta agree, when you are mixing/monitoring, you are sitting in one distinct spot and not running around). And you will try to compensate in your mix. For example, let's say your room emphasizes bass. You'll mix in less bass. But when you listen to your mix in another environment, it will sound light. That's just a very basic example (I'm not talking about comb filtering and stuff like that). Room accoustics are very important for good recordings, but also for mixing/mastering. Sadly, they are very difficult (read expensive) to control.
So Etherium, yes, when you are serious about your job, they improve the situation. But keep in mind that every room is different, and should be treated according to that too. There is no standard fit-all solution. Some companies like Auralex or Primacoustic have come with some "standard" packages that are usually good enough for the job. But real professional studio's (with much money) will have their studio's and control rooms treated for that particular situation.
Even then, you can contac Auralex (and Primacoustic also I think) and they can ask you for a description of your room (a plot, sizes, etc) and they'll calculate what's the best options for you. It usually yields pretty good results.
It's pretty good you are considering this, because lot's of people just don't want to understand that. They spend loads of money on the cleanest superduper equipment, and then they wonder why their stuff still doesn't sound good. I'm going to make a bold statement here, but in my experience, most money in a studio is in fact spent in not so obvious "details" (accoustics, cabling, electrical wiring and spike protection, lighting, ...), and usually it's those "details" that can make the difference between brilliant and utter garbage... |
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| Etherium |
| Well, I'm planning on getting 8 LENRDs and putting them in the four corners of my room. No matter if I'm sitting in the sweet spot or not, I move my head, say, a couple of feet and boom boom boom , then back, dink, dink, dink. Because of the standing wave I think it clouds my entire monitoring experience and I'm just sick of it. I've heard about several people saying that the first time they really heard their mix wasn't when the bought Genelecs or Mackies, but when they added some studio foam and bass traps. I'm all set on the studio foam, but I'm getting bass traps soon. Until then I'll be blindly moving sliders on my Juno-106. I'm picking up 8 LENRDs late next week and I'll let everyone know how it goes. I'm going to install them exactly as Auralex suggests and I hope to get some real low end control. Right now, it seems like someone has thrown a blanket over my speakers (and I have good DACs and decent speakers, MOTU and Event TR8). I'm confident it's the the low-end that's doing this. It's expensive, but the way I see it, it's like a monitors upgrade. |
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| Scottaculous |
| quote: | Originally posted by trancenrg69
Hey Etherium, I've spoken to alot of sound engineers and it's been said that you can have the best near fields but if you have bad acoustics you'll never get the best out of your monitors. I am torn between getting event tr8's with a project 2 kit or mackies without the kit. With that said, here is an example of how basstraps can help.
http://www.auralex.com/sound_contro...ol_project2.asp
click "sound sample" and hear the before and after. |
Great link but that's not an example of a bass trap at work. It's more absorption foam trapping reverberation from the guitar riff.
Etherium, placement of the monitors are essential as well. Not sure if you already own them but isolating the monitors from the desk really helps with murky bass. Try to place the monitors away from the back wall. I'll be investing on Auralex's Roominator kits pretty soon so please keep us posted on the after effects of the bass traps. |
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| Sloouh |
Get a low cabinet (About waist hight) stuff it full of pillows and sit it at the rear of the room in the centre. Crude but effective. However I can take most of my drum it out of the room, leave the bass drum and stick an extra blanket inside. Even more effective. Pull your speakers/moniters out from the wall at least 5 inchs.
This is whats recomended by a high quality audio mag. (Dealing mainly with valve amps :)) As I have my soundcard out put put into my valve amp then everything sounds slightly to nice. I have to plug back in my horrible active computer speakers. |
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| FuzzyGreen |
| My studio is very rectangle shaped and the monitors are pointed at the closest parallel wall. I get lots of reflections, but I solve this problem by having a sofa directly behind my desk and also using headphone monitoring in addition to speaker monitoring. |
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| Etherium |
| quote: | | Not sure if you already own them but isolating the monitors from the desk really helps with murky bass. |
I have Auralex MoPads and yes they are lovely. My monitors are close to my wall but I have no choice but from my understanding this will just boost the bass response by more or less set 3 db or so (if not near corners and the bass ports in the front). So, that's more of a constant, the variable is the standing wave in the room. I just called Guitar Center and the guy said he could get me a wicked good deal for President's Day Sale so it looks like I'll have these by next week. |
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| trancenrg69 |
| Another thing Etherium is you have the tr8's. they go pretty low, if im not mistaken down to 35 or 38hz. I wonder if you would have the same bass problems if you had smaller monitors say with a 6.5 inch woofer. As for the bass traps, if you could give a review on them that would be great, because i'm thinking of buying them. good luck |
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| Etherium |
I generally roll of at 35 hz. Regardless, part of the point of me posting about bass traps was to kind of subtely point out that it's a problem for most people (after all, many of us work in square or rectangular rooms)and that those people might not realize it's a problem. For a while there I had the general feeling that things were not right with my monitoring, so I bought some Auralex Foam and it really did help, but I still didn't have a good feeling about it. Then one day I kind of started realizing how different the bass sounded when I would stand up or sit down or move around in the room. I did some research and the conclusion I made is that there is a standing wave in my room and that it's something that most budget studios have a problem with. My problem is not so much with the inaccurate bass, but with the way the standing wave obscures the whole mix. There are reports that after people fix their low-end the entire monitoring experience kind of magically cleans up, and based on the blanketing/obscuring effect this seems to have I don't doubt it. I think the LENRDs will allow me to minimize this, but I'm not sure they will completely get rid of it. A better solution would be the minitraps by Realtraps or whatever they are called, but I can't justify spending a grand on this.
Anyway, it's really surprising (and frustrating) to me how very few people know anything about this subject. In any parallel-walled room it would obviously be a problem yet when I mentioned bass traps to the PRO AUDIO guy at Guitar Center he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. That's sad, IMO. |
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