[bobbylou]

Hi everyone this is my first post but I've been reading through a lot of your stories and experiences and this seems to be a great place to get advice.

I'd like to set up a small basement bedroom as a place to listen to music and also to do some home recording/mixing. It's not a great room but it'll have to do, any advice about speaker placement and room treatment would be really appreciated.

This is the room:


The door is at the top left. Bottom right is a deep window, about a foot from the wall to the glass. The ceiling is 7.5 feet. The little grey lines on the left represent two furnace openings about 5 feet up that wall. It has laminate flooring and drywall over aluminum studs for the interior walls, probably wood studs for the wall with the window.

So from reading about other peoples projects I have an idea of the general sort of treatments used, but right now I haven't even settled on what type of speakers to use or which way to set up the room. Square one 

[Ethan Winer]

I haven't even settled on what type of speakers to use or which way to set up the room. Square one 

Set up so you face the wall on the left, with the speakers firing toward the right. More here:

How to set up a room

As for speakers, I favor full-range bi-amp active speakers such as Mackie 824s. Then add as much bass trapping as you can possibly manage, plus absorption at the side-wall and ceiling reflection points.

--Ethan

[bobbylou]

Thanks for the link and the advice Ethan. So If I set up the speakers on the left, and follow the 38% rule that would put my seat only 4.5 feet from the front wall, pretty tight. The linked page says 38% from the rear wall is also a good spot, that would put my seat 7.4 feet from the front wall leaving more room to get the speakers out from the wall.

I haven't settled on speakers yet but I'm definitely looking for something like the one you mentioned. I'd like to have a two way that can get down to around 100hz and a sub that can be used below that if needed. I plan to hang the monitors from the ceiling eventually once the location experimenting is done because I don't have a mixer or anything that needs a big desk, just a laptop. I'm going to get an ecm8000 this week to do room measurements, any links for beginners on that subject would be useful.

For the bass trapping I have two free floor to ceiling corners in the room, but they're opposite corners. Should I do corner traps there or something else?

[Ethan Winer]

The linked page says 38% from the rear wall is also a good spot, that would put my seat 7.4 feet from the front wall leaving more room to get the speakers out from the wall.

Yes, but don't just blindly pull the speakers way out from the wall. The only way to know for sure where the bass response is best is to measure at high resolution as you experiment with speaker placement.

I'd like to have a two way that can get down to around 100hz and a sub that can be used below that if needed.

Stereo or home theater? For stereo you'll do much better with a single pair of speakers that can get down to 50 Hz or even lower. A sub is needed for HT though.

I'm going to get an ecm8000 this week to do room measurements, any links for beginners on that subject would be useful.

This article explains how I use the ETF software, but the principles apply to all such programs.

For the bass trapping I have two free floor to ceiling corners in the room, but they're opposite corners. Should I do corner traps there or something else?

Most rooms have 12 corners, not only four. The more corner surface you treat, the better. Always.

--Ethan

[bpape]

You can also start by sitting 4.5' from the back wall.  Just remember that these are just starting points - they're not set in stone.

Bryan

[max190]

I would place the spkrs on the wall with the window starting with them 3' out from the front wall, and 2' from each sidewall measuring from the front center of your spkrs.
Listening position would be around 6' to 6'6" away.
These are just starting points to experiment with.

Not sure if your willing to cover up some of that window, but you need to trap all 3 of your open corners.  You can use your door opening as another way to control bass.  Either keeping it closed, or open a little.
Install heavy drapes covering window.

I would treat your front, side, and rear walls with absorption panels.
Put a rug down on the floor between your listening position and spkrs.
Since your ceiling is somewhat low, you may wish to add panels there as well.

I like the dynamics and naturalness of Dynaudio.
Stand mounted models that would excel in that room size;
Focus 140
Contour S1.4
Confidence C1

Good luck,

 

[bobbylou]

thanks again for the suggestions everyone. So I have to get the microphone, probably thursday because the music store is open later then, and learn about bass traps. These use a membrane of some kind over the absorber material it seems?

Ethan, I'm going to try fuzzmeasure since my laptop is an apple. I'll try to get the room cleaned out and learn to do some "before" measurements this weekend.

[bpape]

Maybe or maybe not on the membrane.  Definitely not on everything.  Get the seating and speaker location dialed in first to see what specific issues we have to deal with other than the general issues in all small rooms.

Bryan

[bobbylou]

I see I forgot to answer a couple things, sorry. Stereo is definitely the priority although a tv will end up on the wall in here because we have an extra. I was thinking of smaller speakers with subs because they'd be more convenient to move out of the way when I'm not using the room for music, but you think the sound quality would suffer?

And to max190, yes I'm willing to do something about the window as long as it's something that can be removed fairly easily. Especially with fall/winter coming I don't mind plugging it up because it will keep the cold out.

[max190]

The sound quality of a dedicated 2-ch room will suffer when you hang that tv on the wall 

 

[bobbylou]

hehe maybe the tv will have to be treated too then. The question is do I use rockwool or holy water for that one...

I found the ecm8000 in stock at a music store not too far away today. Got fuzzmeasure downloaded on the laptop. Now to actually clean out the room so I can get started.   

[bpape]

Wash a blanket in holy water and hang it over the set when you're listening. 

Bryan

[bobbylou]

Ok so I didn't get it done last weekend, where's the procrastination smiley? Now that I've spent some time in there I know two things: 1. road noise is a problem, I'm going to have to block up that window and maybe get a real door. 2. this is a really small room! 

I'll probably be hemming and hawing about the monitor purchase for quite a bit longer yet, but I dug up some worthless brown box three ways and set them up to try and get a room measurement. I think the brand is fisher and the woofers (10") sound pretty abused so I hope these results aren't screwed up. This is my absolute first try at room measurement. I set up the ecm8000 with the tip at ear level in the listening position, pointing straight up. FuzzMeasure sends the signal to just one channel so I did one then the other. Sweep is 0Hz to 1kHz over ten seconds.



Blue is the left speaker and red is the right. There is no smoothing. I also had it average them into one line:



I had fun making noise but I have no idea how to interpret that.  How do you tell if the room or the possibly mangled woofers are causing these peaks and dips?

[bpape]

Hard to say what the actual response is given the speakers in question - but the curve doesn't look at all out of line in terms of in-room response.  I suspect you could help some with careful placement of speakers and seating.  Don't really pay too much attention to response above around 400hz when trying to get things dialed in at this point.

Bryan

[Christof]

thanks again for the suggestions everyone. So I have to get the microphone, probably thursday because the music store is open later then, and learn about bass traps. These use a membrane of some kind over the absorber material it seems?

Ethan, I'm going to try fuzzmeasure since my laptop is an apple. I'll try to get the room cleaned out and learn to do some "before" measurements this weekend.

Please post more about Fuzzmeasure as you use it, I'm very interested to hear what you think of it.  You may even wish to post some of your findings in the Apple Circle.

c.

[bobbylou]

Okay, I think I'll set up a different pair of speakers when I have a chance and measure again. If some of the bumps look the same then I guess I know it's a room effect?  I didn't spend much time moving things around yet and honestly there's not much freedom to move with such a small space. Like the name of the thread says this really is a downstairs bedroom. There is a bed behind the listening seat so I can't move back, only forward. This position happens to be almost exactly at 38% of the way from the back wall so hopefully it's not too bad. Maybe I can get away with replacing the bed with a futton or something else that could double as a couch / listening seat, but for now the bed stays because the room has to remain usable as a place to sleep. The speakers are currently about two feet from the front and side walls. Oh these are floor standing speakers and I plan to have monitors on stands. Hmm, maybe there's not a lot of point in doing this until I settle on speakers. 

About Fuzzmeasure, this is all I know how to do with it so far but I will say it's very easy to do this. There's a button at the top you press to set the sweep length and range and a second button you push to make it run the test. That's it. After the test it takes quite a while before it displays the results because it's doing something about impulse response. I hope I figure out how to turn that off.

[DR]

So bobbylou,

Is your primary goal to listen or record and mix? Two totally different animals.

[bobbylou]

That's the issue I'm wrestling with. Do I spend a bunch of money on fancy monitors when realistically I won't spend all that much time making music? Or do I buy some speakers that just sound nice? This is the only space I have available so it has to be a compromise of some kind.