Home Studio Room Dimensions?

[tld]

A square room can definately be a problem, as the geometry is perfect for getting standing waves, cancellation, hot spots etc, especially with bass frequencies. Having said that, I'm currently set up in a room that's about the worst of all worlds...it's about 13' x 13' with a real low ceiling, where the ceiling height is about half the wall length. That's just about a perfect half cube...ideal for the above problems. Worse yet, it's a basement room with three concrete and cinder block walls. It's important to note that any recording that's actually taking place in that room is direct. That is, triggered drums, direct guitar and bass etc. So in our case, these are only monitoring issues, not recording issues. Another issue with smaller rooms is that you're generally stuck putting the monitors close to the wall, which is also not ideal.

I covered most of the wall in back of the monitors with 4" Auralex wedge foam, and put Auralex bass traps in the corners of the opposite wall. That's all I have right now, aside from wall to wall carpet. To be honest, as bad as it should be, we've been doing quite well with it. There's a pretty nasty spot in the room where the bass gets noticably boosted, but luckily it's in the back of the room. I have the monitors set up so they form roughly a 3' x 3' x 3' triangle with the spot where I sit. When mixing, I always make sure to check the mix carefully at lower levels, to take the room out of the equation, but this rarely seems to reveal any serious mistakes.

I've been real happy with my mixes. They've been translating well to everything I listen to them on. So the bad room dimensions can't be hurting me that much.

That 4" wedge behind the monitors really does a lot to help out of control bass. The next thing I might add would be some sort of diffusion on the back wall.

Just my unprofessional, unscientific $.02 [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Tom

[guyfromky]

Anybody got a standard spec on what dimension a home studio should be? My particular room is 10' X 10' square. Any suggestions short of renovation? Tell me about monitoring in a room this size, please.

Thanks,
guyfromky

[guyfromky]

That's some great advice!

I suppose you use the digi 001 and PT?

I'm actually a poser. I have only the Windows PC and a couple of guitars right now. I want to get the rest of what I need but, I'm doing the smart thing and reading a lot of stuff from users first. At least I think it's a smart thing. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Have you ever used one of those small stand alone digital recorders like the BOSS BR-8 or something like it? What did you think?

I want to use Logic since a friend of mine is also going with it. His studio is much cooler than I will ever have and I figured I could lay down the basics at home and polish them up in his studio. Thus, saving me some cash to throw in on my own recording experience.

If you have any other info you could just spill out, I'd love to read it. Thanks again for the advice.

Later On,
guyfromky

[tld]

You're quite welcome. Actually I sprung for a used Mix+ system a few years ago. I'm using a stock 9600/350, Mix+ with an extra DSP farm, an SC II card, and an Apogee AD8000. Prior to that, I'd really never used more than a porta-studio, so it was quite a huge step. Don't really have any experience with anything in between.

Good luck,

Tom