Sit stand desk - monitors on floor stands, or on [stands on] the desk?

[Dan B]

I’m planning a sit-stand desk setup, and would be grateful for some advice.



The dilemma is, should I put the monitor speakers (Neumann KH310s) on stands behind the desk, or on the desk on specialist stands, e.g. IsoAcoustics ISO-200*? When seated, they’d be in the same position whether on the desk or on stands.

The upside of having them on the desk is optimal speaker positioning whether standing or sitting - since the monitors will raise up and down with the desk. The downside is that the desk (only having two legs and supporting a lot of weight) will inevitably wobble a bit (see, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_uvKLgtJ44) and be much less stable than the heavy, sand-filled 100cm Atacama stands - so they’d be acoustically compromised.

The upside of having them on heavy, sand filled 1m high stands is that'd they're stable. Downside: poorly positioned when standing.

I expect I’ll probably spend my time split roughly 50/50 seating/standing. But could commit to only doing critical listening (mixing/mastering) in the seated position.

It’d be helpful to know – from those that have tried both stands and desk mounting – how much of a difference it made (all other things – e.g. speaker positioning – being equal).

Having (separate) speaker stands that go up and down isn't really practical: I move between sitting and standing a lot; they're also expensive (about £500).

* These only go 20cm high, whereas to get the tweeters level with my ears, I’d really need about 30cm. You can at least angle the monitors. Something like this - https://www.thomann.de/gb/gravity_sp_3102.htm - does better on height, but less good for isolation. Any ideas for alternative approaches/products welcome. NB the motor mechanism for the desk has a weight limit, so I'm not sure I'd be able to get away with breezeblocks or whatever as a way of gaining speaker height, but that might be possible (and if going down the breezeblocks route, I could presumably skip the ISOacoustics 200 stands and just put something else (?) in there for isolation.

For additional context:
- There’ll be acoustic panels behind each monitor (pictured), along with fairly extensive treatment in the room.
- I expect I’ll mount all my screens (a 40”, with two 27” above it) to the desk, so they go up and down with it. They’ll be set back just a little from (or parallel with) the fronts of the monitor speakers.
- Unfortunately there’s not a huge amount of scope for trial and error here, since whether the speakers go on stands or on the desk will be crucial to how the desk is built, so I really need to commit in advance.

[Forum Admin]

Useful? https://youtu.be/51dVVBxFw00

[Jorge]

Part of my day gig includes working with an ergonomist to fix ergonomic hazards in workplaces for the purpose of prevention of occupational musculoskeletal disorders, and I do music, sound and recording on the side. I am generally a big believer in sit stand workstations and have one in my office.

Although I have never tried what you are proposing, I have a concern that unless you are mixing or mastering in an anechoic chamber or a very very large room with a really high ceiling, moving your head and the monitors the 14 to 20 inches vertically from sitting to standing position and back would change the relative distances from the ceiling/floor and could have very noticeable and unpredictable effects on the sound of your monitors. Even with good acoustic treatment, the floor and (according to your drawing) the ceiling are both mostly reflective. There are bound to be frequencies for which you are moving your ears out of or into an acoustic null, or conversely a peak. The room sets up resonance nodes in all 3 dimensions and usually the vertical is the shortest, so the "sweet spot" would be the smallest in the vertical dimension as well. Your head and the monitors could be halfway between floor and ceiling while seated and 1/3 of the way down from the ceiling when standing, potentially a big difference.

I don't think you could solve this problem by leaving the monitors fixed and just moving your head up and down relative to the monitors. The relative distances from the mid speaker and the tweeter to your ear could change substantially with the changing angle. For bass notes, the changes would be less but for mid and high frequencies, even a few inches change could be very audible and introduce unwanted variability into your mixing/mastering decisions.

You can do an experiment and mix the same song(s) sitting, then move the monitors and stand and mix again, then listen for differences. But I suspect that for consistency your mixing and mastering would be best served by always doing it with your head, monitors and walls/ceiling in the same relative position. I would recommend having one fixed mixing position as you mentioned, only while sitting, and putting the monitors on stable floor stands. Only use the alternative standing position when not mixing, and take walks or bike rides or yoga or dumbell workouts during breaks to keep yourself from being too sedentary.

[Murray B]

I'm not a studio professional so this might be off the mark, my suggestion would be to use whatever position sounds works best for the speakers to be the speakers listening position and then have the other one as a headphone listening position. From my limited experience there are times when you need to do jobs that aren't critical listening that could be done in whatever way you choose and then other times where you'd actually want to be using headphones and sometimes where you want to be using speakers. It might work out to just transition between tasks when you transition between positions and vice versa.

Also maybe changing the angle of the speakers rather than the height might help - probably not an acoustically neutral change though.

[zenguitar]

Instead of an adjustable desk, how about a standing height desk with a taller cashiers stool. The taller seating will keep your head at the same height whether sitting or standing.



It's an approach I've used in the past. I picked up a cashiers stool from some builders refurbishing a bank many years ago, cost me a fiver.

Andy

[Folderol]

I had one of those once. It drove me totally nuts with all the creaks, squeaks and rattles. I had had enough and threw it in the tip

[Dan B]

Thanks all for the replies.

My main concern with having a fixed standing desk is that I've struggled to find really good chairs of the right height (and have just bought a regular height Humanscale chair), and ergonomically they seem compromised (I suppose you could have a raised platform for your feet under the desk). So fairly wedded to the sit stand concept.

Given that, I'm happy to stay in only one position for critical listening work.

The room will be pretty heavily treated (about 24 or so acoustic panels, including clouds - not shown; perhaps some diffusion too).

So I think the main issue is how badly the speakers are likely to suffer being on IsoAcoustics stands (or similar) an inevitably slightly wobble desk, vs on solid, stand filled stands. If it's not too much of a problem, having speakers that go up and down would be preferable. Even for casual listening, having the monitors in a better position relatively to my head in both sitting and standing positions will, I suspect, be better than having them optimised for one only. As for the acoustic inconsistency of moving the speakers and my head relative to the room, I can live with that by keeping critical listening to one position (likely to be seated, as I suspect that'll be the more neutral of the two, but I'll test); it might even be useful to have a different secondary position (and so sound) for checking translatability, etc.

[Dan B]

P.S. I'd always assumed that seated would be the better position for critical listening/mixing. But in this room, with a 2.4m ceiling, and speakers on 1m stands (on some slabs), that puts them pretty much bank on the mid-height of the room ... which is acoustically undesirable.

I'm tempted to try them on the desk to start with (perhaps on Mopads on a few breeze blocks to start with - then maybe some IsoAcoustic stands if I want to stick with it). If it really doesn't work (e.g. too wobbly/acoustically compromsied), reinstate the the stands. Downside is having to modify / replace the desk top to accommodate the stands ...

[DanDan]

Caruso Isobond is great stuff. The cost should be offset against the lack of any need for containment fabric and frame. I often recommend that a thin layer be used as a front for much deeper traps of light cheap fibre. What is the purpose of the desk? A little shelf to carry Mouse and Keyboard could be attached to an adjustable chair.

[Dan B]

Thanks for the tip on Carousi Isobond - looks like it could be handy for my living room! And possibly in this room too (though I already have about 24 panels for here, so...). I might even make some panels to go on the desk itself to tame the reflections for critical work. (I'm guessing it's not sturdy enough to actually use as a panel on top of desktop itself - i.e. as a new desktop.)

This room is doubling as an office space, and through the years I've got used to having a reasonable amount of desk space - for papers, monitor controller, food and drink, etc. Not sure I could cope with just small platform for a keyboard and mouse, even though it would be acoustically more desireable.

I'm learning towards a deep desk on a sit stand platform - with the speakers and screens attached at the back, and a c. 6 degree sloping desk at the front (which should help a bit acoustically). Since I can't find any decent desk isolation products that are the right height (c. 30cm), subject to advice, I guess I'll:

(i) Put some heavy blocks (e.g. breeze blocks) on the desk (perhaps with a mat underneath - see below), then some IsoAcoustics stands on top of that, then the monitor speakers.

(ii) If the desk motors can handle the additional weight, as above, but skipping the IsoAcoustics stands and using more blocks to acheive the correct height. I'm guessing blu-tack between speakers and the blocks; and perhaps some kind of mat (recommendations? Sorbothan sheet? Mouse matt?*) between the blocks and the desk?

(iii) Perhaps best of all, build some small rack units onto the desk to achieve the right height, and put the speakers directly on top of that (again, perhaps with some kind of mat, or bluetac, or other descoupling like the Isopucks*).

If I use breeze blocks, ideally I'd find a way of "beautifying" them - perhaps a wooden box around them?

* As you can see, I get a bit confused around coupling/de-coupling/what works best in which scenario/what's cost effective/what's hi-fi snake oil!

[forumuser756964]

Hi all.

I built a sit-stand setup in 2019 and I've been refining it since. Before that I had a standing desk with monitors on separate stands.

I have a 2.1 monitor setup, with the sub on the floor and the two satellites on the desk. The display is on an arm clamped to the desk, saving a lot of space, and I built "pods" either side of it which not only support the speakers but also contain all my essential studio gear (4u of 19" rack space each side).

Like the guy in the video, I eventually concluded that the only sensible way to do the cabling was to have as much gear as possible on the desk, so that the cables can all stay still and don't have to flex every time I raise or lower the desk! There are still two clusters of cables that do go down to the floor - one is for all the power and USB connections, and the other is the audio cables coming up from the sub.

My desk is on IKEA legs, which are positioned in the middle of the desk rather than at the back like the Jarvis legs. There is a little wobble in the standing position, but nothing like the amount that the guy in the video has!

I've found that the difference in audio accuracy between having fixed stands and having the speakers on foam on the desk pods is pretty minimal. Both setups were accurately measured and positioned, and I use room correction software, so I guess the differences are being minimised to some extent. It must be said that my studio has really strange acoustics - my house is made of softwood and my studio is upstairs, and the bass resonances I've measured do not correspond at all to the dimensions of the room. I'm pretty sure they're actually standing waves between the the sloping metal roof above me and the concrete foundation slab one storey down! So my room treatment and my room correction software (ARC3) are working pretty hard all the time, and the small difference in speaker placement between the two desk setups seems like much less of a problem in comparison.

However, room correction software does have an important advantage with a sit-stand desk, which is that I have two correction profiles, one for sitting and one for standing, and when I raise or lower the desk I just switch between them to instantly minimise the acoustic difference between the two positions. I've also noticed that the smoothness of the room response has increased significantly since IK upgraded ARC2.5 to ARC3. ARC3 includes a certain amount of vertical alignment information as well as side-to-side (you take measurements with the mic at three different heights) and it seems to help a lot.

It must be said my BlueSky speakers are a LOT smaller than your Neumanns, though!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CIAwFbqLT1b ... _copy_link

[Dan B]

An update:

I've now moved into the space. I ordered a Fully Jarvis desk frame (using an Ikea kitchen worktop as the desk surface - to which I'll add an extending further desktop using Accuride keyboard drawer runners). I'd intended to get a different standing desk (E8), but they weren't in stock for a few months.

I decided to mount the monitor speakers (and screens) to the desk. That way they all go up and down together, and I can also adjust the position of the whole setup - even wheel it around - the room, as I got castors for the desk.

I did get some IsoAcoustics 200 to mount the Neumans on, but found them too wobbly at full height to be comfortable, especially with the up/down motion of the desk/moving the desk around on wheels. Instead I'm using some concrete blocks, with hockey pucks on top. Much more stable, and (as far as I can tell from some very unscientific testing) sounds better. Also cost <£20, rather than £120!

So far, very happy. Still piecing things together, but plan to post photos, perhaps even a video, when done (and if I remeber!).

Thanks again for all the advice.

Dan

[Martin Walker]

An update...

So far, very happy. Still piecing things together, but plan to post photos, perhaps even a video, when done (and if I remeber!).

Thanks again for all the advice.

Dan

Hi Dan,

Looking forward to the forthcoming photos, but after reading through the previous responses one additional thought occurred to me, and that's to use something like Sonarworks to measure for two different corrective loudspeaker EQs, one for when you are standing up and the other for sitting down.

This would in theory compensate for any differences in acoustic output depending on their vertical position.

Martin

[Dan B]

Thanks Martin. Yes, I was having similar thoughts. Still assembling things at the moment, but once I have speaker and desk positions locked, I plan to do exactly that (Sonarworks or something similar).

The challenge is that when I not working on audio, most of my listening is simply on the PC (via my RME soundcard, to the Neumans via a Drawmer CMC2). I think most (all?) of the room correction software runs as plug-ins, so I guess I'd always have keep a DAW open all the time and route everything through that (unless there's another, easier approach...?). Haven't tried that approach yet, but I'll look into it ...

[RichardT]

Hi Dan,

You can install Sonarworks so that all audio goes through it - so you don’t need to route audio through your DAW. The software component that does that is called ‘Sonarworks systemwide’ and it creates another audio device that you can use. At least that’s what happens on Mac! This is the approach that I use so that I can do referencing by listening to Tidal with the same correction as I get using Cubase.

[Martin Walker]

Yes, Sonarworks Systemwide utility works in exactly the same way on my PC, so everything goes through it, including YouTube and other online audio.

When I open Reaper, that uses the lower latency ASIO version, and automatically avoids Systemwide so the correct only happens once. All works fine for me!

Martin

[Hugh Robjohns]

There are a number of hardware speaker/room correction systems -- KRK Ergo, MiniDSP, Coneq, Trinnov, etc -- that can be plumbed into the monitoring signal path or monitor controller, which are more appropriate for systems that involve replay sources which don't go through a computer.

And of course there are many speaker systems with integrated room correction facilities, too.

But there are always limitations over what room/speaker correction systems can do, and my preference was to fix the room as best as I could so that room correction software wasn't needed...

[Martin Walker]

But there are always limitations over what room/speaker correction systems can do, and my preference was to fix the room as best as I could so that room correction software wasn't needed...

My approach was also to fix the room as best I could, before adding Sonarworks to flatten out the remaining ripples (in my case, Sonarworks has to correct by no more than 6dB at any frequency, and works well, but in my experience it's not really so effective if attempting to correct for larger swings in largely untreated rooms).

Martin

[Dan B]

Thanks all.
Sonarworks Systemwide (or similar software I can strap across my master soundcard output) sounds like the ticket, or possibly the hardware route. There's not much that I listen to through the monitors that doesn't get routed through the soundcard, or a least not that I desperately need to have "corrected" (e.g. guitar).

I think I've reached the limit with what I can practically do with room treatment. (See attached - though I also have another 4-6 panels which I may use to double up corner traps and double/extend first reflection side points).


what is my monitor name

[RichardT]

Thanks all.
Sonarworks Systemwide (or similar software I can strap across my master soundcard output) sounds like the ticket, or possibly the hardware route. There's not much that I listen to through the monitors that doesn't get routed through the soundcard, or a least not that I desperately need to have "corrected" (e.g. guitar).

I think I've reached the limit with what I can practically do with room treatment. (See attached - though I also have another 4-6 panels which I may use to double up corner traps and double/extend first reflection side points).

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what is my monitor name

That looks good Dan, my only observation is that your panels are relatively slim at 4 inches. You would certainly get some improvement from doubling some of them up, especially the ones closest to the speakers and at reflection points.

[Hugh Robjohns]

The image is difficult to read, but it appears to me that the side panels are 4-inches thick and spaced with a four-inch gap from the wall, which is a very practical approach. Most of the acoustic reach of 8-inch traps without the weight!

There also appear to be 6-inch deep panels on the rear wall, and even deeper full-height bass traps in the front corners (although I'm not clear if there are corner chunks behind the corner panels).

[RichardT]

The image is difficult to read, but it appears to me that the side panels are 4-inches thick and spaced with a four-inch gap from the wall, which is a very practical approach. Most of the acoustic reach of 8-inch traps without the weight!

There also appear to be 6-inch deep panels on the rear wall, and even deeper full-height bass traps in the front corners (although I'm not clear if there are corner chunks behind the corner panels).

I think it’s basically a good design Hugh, don’t get me wrong, I’m just encouraging Dan to deploy his extra panels! In my experience it really is the more the merrier, especially close to the speakers and reflection points.

[Dan B]

Thanks both.

Yes, currently it's 4" panels with 4" gaps on the side walls and for the clouds. I can see the sense in doubling up first reflections with spare panels.

Rear wall is 6" with 6" gaps. Front corners are floor to ceiling 6" panels across the corners (with duvets behind).

I also have a few tall (c. 155cm) 4" panels. I'll need to get testing with REW and experiment with SBIR. The 38% listening formula suggests the (front of the) speakers should be 73cm from the front wall. I could put the tall panels behind the speakers ... But the other option would be to push the whole setup towards the front wall (closest would be about 45-50cm) and use those tall panels in front of the corner traps, so they'd be effectively 10" of treatment, with a gap (and a duvet) behind.

[Dan B]

P.S. Rear wall corner chuncks are just small 40cm triangles in the upper tri-corners - but there isn't really room for anything else back there!