Acoustic Treatment - what should I be aiming for

[RobinC]

My music room is located in a converted garage. Room is rectangular but has bifold doors along one side. I use it to write synth based songs. The only recording of live audio is vocals. I mix the occasional song for various musical friends. I’m a hobbyist and harbour no ambitions to be anything other than that but am interested in the quality of my output.

I took GIK up on their free advice and spent some money on various bass traps. There was an immediate change in the sound of the room notably in terms of a reduction in reverb

Whilst I’ve seen lots of info in the internet that treatment is a good thing, I haven’t seen much in terms of what I should be aiming for

Using Sonarworks I’ve got a plot of my room response. It’s not flat with the treatment and I don’t expect it to ever be. Sonarworks is not recommending boosting or cutting any frequency over 5db. It took quite a lot of moving speakers, adjusting listening position to get to that point.

The plots for the left and right speakers are broadly the same , the greatest area of differentiation is below 150hz

So my long winded question is in terms of an amateur home studio is this good enough? Or should I be aiming to reduce those peaks and troughs further?

[Drew Stephenson]

I'm not sure what the actual output plots from Sonarworks are, but if it's a 2-dimensional frequency plot then it's only showing you half the picture. You're getting the frequency domain information but not the time domain effect.
To use an extreme example, when my current room was an empty box I did a measurement using REW. The plot actually looked pretty flat over about 100Hz, but this was because the reverb time was sooooo long that everything was getting smeared over the test time.
I'm not suggesting that your room is that bad (honestly it can't be! ) but you might still find that some broadband treatment at the mirror points will help.
That can be done pretty affordably (either bought or DIY) and won't cost you too much room space.

[RobinC]

I’ve downloaded REW and intend to start getting to grips with it soon. Having seen how Sonarworks frequency response curves can vary when moving the speakers just a small amount, I feel I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. At the start of this process I didn’t know that desk reflections were a thing, now I can hear them when I move my chair closer to my desk.

[RichardT]

Hi Robin,

Excursions of 5dB from flatness are quite common in home studios and it can be very hard to get better than that in a home studio environment.

You may need a surprisingly large amount of broadband trapping to get the best out of your space - it may be more than GIK recommended. My experience has been that getting the additional trapping made a great difference to the sound without affecting the size of the frequency peaks significantly. So in a domestic setting they are not the best measure of success.

Also don’t stick with positions recommended by GIK, but experiment with different placements. Especially important is trying different distances from the wall surface.

For me, how it sounds is more important than how it measures. Interpreting REW plots is not trivial.

If you have serious messiness at particular frequencies below say 120Hz have a look at tuned traps.

Also consider raising your speakers so that you get less reflection from the desk.

[RobinC]

I’m pleased with how the room sounds, it’s my preferred place to listen to music and after decades of largely headphone use it’s weaned me off those.

I’ve toyed with moving the speakers up, and will do further experimentation. However it’s a bit like whack a mole. I slightly improve one area at the expense of something else. It’s then deciding what areas are most important to me I suppose.

[Drew Stephenson]

I think the thing to remember is that unless you're in a purpose-designed studio then it will always be a compromise. Don't lose time (and potentially money) chasing a theoretical flatline that's never really achievable.
From a mixing perspective what really matters is 'can you make reliable mix decisions that translate to other environments' - as soon as you can answer 'yes' then you're done.
From a recording perspective you're after 'does it sound like the singer is in a normal domestic environment?' and when you can answer 'no' then you're pretty much there.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Excellent advice blindrew. Very well put!

Two of my bumps are at 6dB, but I can still record a very good vocal and my mixes translate. They're not world class but I notice that now when I send things to collaborators, they respond about arrangement issues rather than "can you turn up/down x".

Was amazed at how much more fun it is to mix on speakers. Headphones can work but it's more tiring IME.

[sonics]

Was amazed at how much more fun it is to mix on speakers. Headphones can work but it's more tiring IME.

This is a very important and often-ignored point. I have to work on headphones a lot, and was very happy to discover room emulation software some years ago (I use Waves) which, for me, restores some of that "feel" very nicely. Definitely not a gimmick.

[RobinC]

Was amazed at how much more fun it is to mix on speakers. Headphones can work but it's more tiring IME.

I'd agree its much less fatiguing. I seem more inclined to monitor at sensible levels on speakers

[RobinC]

I think the thing to remember is that unless you're in a purpose-designed studio then it will always be a compromise. Don't lose time (and potentially money) chasing a theoretical flatline that's never really achievable.

I think that in a nutshell is where I'm trying (or hoping I'm already at). to get to. I want to avoid the road of diminishing returns and to say to myself it is what it is live with it.

From a mixing perspective what really matters is 'can you make reliable mix decisions that translate to other environments' - as soon as you can answer 'yes' then you're done.

I think that I'm at that point. That doesn't mean my mixes are necessarily good but I think when I listen to them on other systems they are broadly true to what I created in my converted garage.

Thanks for the input!

[Sam Spoons]

I'm with the "don't obsess over measurements" crowd. If you room sounds good to you and is a happy place to record/mix/listen to music then you have achieved you aim.

[Martin Walker]

I'm with the "don't obsess over measurements" crowd. If you room sounds good to you and is a happy place to record/mix/listen to music then you have achieved you aim.

The only time I obsessed over measurement was when first treating my studio - I discovered that while adjusting the position of bass traps (which had cost me a pretty penny) in real time, while watching the waterfall plot of room mode decay, even lifting or dropping a single trap by a few inches made a noticeable difference to its effectiveness at lower frequencies. So, I made sure that each one worked as well as it could before I attached it to the wall.