Listen up all you budding mixers, if you’re mixing in a home studio, you’re already at a disadvantage: your room is fighting against you. Most of our home studios are just that, studios inside a spare bedroom or basement in our house. The room was never built out to give us a controlled listening environment so we can make critical sonic decisions.
Have no fear, there’s a lot you can do to compensate, and one of the easiest and most impactful is to create a mixing sweet spot.
Via Emilio Küffer Flickr
Time To Move Your Speakers
One of the biggest things holding back your mixes is simply where you put your desk in your room. There are a lot of “wrong” places to put your desk and likely only one or two ideal spots. So if you really want to churn out better mixes, you need to be OK with doing a bit of rearranging in your room.
It’s pretty simple really. If your room is somewhat rectangular, place your desk along one of the shorter walls and center it between the walls on either side of you. Having your desk, and therefore your monitor speakers, perfectly centered is critical for giving you even reflections and a more accurate stereo image.
If you’re tucked into a corner somewhere or randomly along a wall, the sound from your speakers will become smeared with uneven reflections bouncing all over the place making it harder for you to really hear your mix properly.
Back Away From The Wall
Now that your desk is centered along side the shortest wall in your room, pull it back from the wall by at least a foot. It kills me to see pictures of peoples’ studios where their desk and speakers are right up against the wall. Why? Because you’re creating more bass buildup which causes you to mix improperly.
While mixing you think you’re hearing plenty of bass but in reality you’re hearing the bass buildup from being too close to the wall. Consequently you don’t mix enough low end in your mix, which is why you take your mix to your car or your headphones and you say, “Where did the bass go?” It was never in your mix, only in your room.
Time For The Triangle
My favorite math class in school was geometry, because it was way more visual than say calculus. It was also way easier! So to put the finishing touches on your mixing sweet spot we need to break out some simple geometry. We need to create an equilateral triangle between your head and your two monitors.
It couldn’t be easier. An equilateral triangle is a one in which all sides are the same length. So basically we want your head to be the same distance from each of your speakers as your speakers are from each other. The best way to measure this is with a tape measure and to go from your head to the center cone of your speakers.
So for example, if your speakers on your desk are three feet apart (cone to cone), make sure your head is three feet away from the speakers. That might mean you need to slide your chair closer or further away. If that distance is too close, then you can keep your sitting position the same and instead widen the distance between your speakers. Just make sure they stay centered on the desk.
Finally, turn in your speakers so they are facing your directly, not flush with your computer screen. You should be able to turn slightly to the right, face your right speaker and be looking directly at the face of it. And likewise on the left. And one more thing, adjust the speaker height so the top tweeter is level with your ears. That’s it! You’ve now just created a perfectly equilateral triangle with your speakers.
Let’s Recap
To get the absolute most out of your studio monitors:
- Move them and your desk to the shortest wall in your room.
- Center them along that wall. Pull them away from the wall by at least 12 inches (or about half a meter).
- Then make sure the distance between your speakers on the desk is the same distance from each speaker to your head.
- Turn the speakers in slightly to face you and adjust their level so the top tweeter is at about your ear height when sitting.
Voila! You’ve now created your very own mixing sweet spot. By doing nothing more than changing the placement of your speakers in the room you have created a more balanced and focused listening position so you can best hear what’s coming out of your DAW.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
A great guide for everyone out there that is still mixing in a corner of their room. It pains me to see producers posting images of their home studio, only to find out they are sitting in the corner of their room with no acoustic treatment whatsoever.
And yet it’s so incredibly important to be able to trust what you hear in your room. I’d argue it’s in fact the MOST important thing.
Honestly, if I had to choose, I’d rather mix in garageband with no plugins whatsoever inside a well treated room with a sweet spot where I know that I can trust that what I hear is correct, than mix on an SSL and a wall of rack mounted gear in a room that masks or amplifies every move I make.
Agree
But what can I do if the corner is all I have?
Help please.
Great Guide. Simple but very useful. We tend to forget the basic rules sometimes, so its important to refresh that kind of basic rules!
Great Work man! I love your Web Site.
Alex Ruiz.
Spain. Live Sound Technician and musician.
Good stuff, and > check!
What I am missing in the ‘reflection picture’ though, is the reflection coming from the left speaker, via the right wall, into the right ear and the other way round.
For fighting the room reflections, you can use (anti)reflection panels. You can use a (friend with a) mirror sliding along the wall to work out where the reflection points are.(If you are sitting in your mixing position and can see one of the speakers in the mirror > reflection point)
Also, I have read somewhere that it is actually a better idea to be slightly ‘off-centre’,to help avoid standing waves in the room. I thought that made sense.
I get why you want the spot centered along a wall, but is there a sonic reason to use the shorter wall versus the longer wall in a rectangular room?
When you’re against the shorter wall, the sound waves will go down the longer length of your room. By the time they hit the wall and bounce back into your ear they will have been defused and reduced in volume and tone. *more so then going against the longer wall, and having the sound waves reflect down a shorter passage*
Here’s a great way to calibrate monitors..
Interesting info. So here’s a question for you. My room has a very large window on the south wall, the door on the east wall, the other two walls are fine. Am I better off having my monitors pointing at the window or the door? Or to have my desk slightly off center next to the door, pointing to the plan west wall? (having my desk on the south/window wall isn’t really an option). Btw, my room is closer to square with the north/south walls being just slightly longer.
i have the same exact situation and would be interested on a tip too.
I would say “…to have my desk slightly off center next to the door, pointing to the plan west wall”. You will have to deal with the early reflections coming off that window, so I suggest to buy some heavy curtains 🙂
Great article!
Just a small remark about the speakers close to the wall. While it is true that the closer you put them to the wall, the more bass buildup you will get from the boundary effect.
!!BUT!!, placing them only a small distance (lets say less than 1,5m – 2m) from the wall will create a time difference between the direct sound, and the sound reflected from the front wall. This will in turn give you comb filtering and will ruin your frequency response.
Most people fix this by using absorption on the front wall, but this is ineffective in the low end, so what will happen is you will have cancelation somewhere in the bass region caused by the interference of the direct sound and the reflected sound.
My rule is, OR sufficient distance from the wall, OR directly (more or less) AGAINST the wall. But in the latter cae you should compensate your bass response using (built in) EQ.
Greetz
Alex
Hey Graham,
great article and also many thanks for all your tips, I regularly enjoy checking your website.
In this particular case I have to second Alex’s comment on the question of distance to the wall. In fact the further away you go from the front wall, the lower in frequency the cancellation will be from the reflection interfering with the direct sound. And these are very nasty cancellations, often much worse than the frequency dips from standing waves.
In my experience, in any room smaller than say 25m2, or particularly odd shaped rooms, the safest bet to get a decent frequency response will usually be right up against the wall. In consequence the cancellation due to the reflection will be much higher in frequency and thus much more easily controlled with absorption. Getting the general amount of bass right is then just a question of finding the right EQ setting on the speaker, as Alex said. Soffit mounting is basically the ultimate application of this principal.
Best,
Jesco
I have a rectangular room and I have windows(with a heater below it) at one of the short walls and windowed doors at the other short wall…My setup is at the center of the long wall right now…It’s not really a good space because of the obvious reasons but it’s the only one that I can choose from and it’s pretty quite.So should I move the setup to the short wall and which ? or should I keep it where it is ?
Graham could you give me an advice ?
thanks it’s really appreciated
I have my set up the way you explain it.. The problem I have is that when I get the mix out of my studio I have to much low end on it.. My speakers are about 10 inches from the back wall, I have acustic treatment on about 50% of the walls ( but nothing on the ceiling) the room is 10 x 12 ft with a 9ft ceiling
Luis, that could be a result of your monitors as well. If your monitors are biased and not producing the low end properly, you would get a result like that.
If you have access to one, I would recommend using an RTA in your mixing space to give you an unbiased readout of what is actually happening.
It’s also something that I’ve heard Graham touch on in other blogs / videos where it’s important to “learn” your room. You’re saying that every time you take a mix out of your studio, it has too much low end. Well, ok, great, you’ve learned something about your room. Now adjust for it. You make the mix “sound” like it doesn’t have quite enough low end when you hear it in your room, so that the end result is a balanced mix elsewhere.
Graham,
What about a room that is pretty much square? It’s more of a home “office” space then spare bedroom. So think box with one side having big glass swinging doors. Let me know what you think.
Not sure what Graham would do, but in that situation I would put the desk on the wall opposite the glass and acoustically treat the walls immediately to the left and right of my mixing position. I might even get curtains (as opposed to blinds) for the glass wall to help with the nasty reflections you might get off a hard surface like that.
My music room is more or less a square; my desk is situated in the room so that my chair is just about dead-center (and the speakers therefore are far away from the wall, almost in the center of the room). I use a pair of first-gen Tannoy Reveals (passive).
I also do not have them pointed directly at me, I find the stereo imaging and phantom center / soundstage to be better by aiming them at the center of the wall behind me. YMMV, but I recommend experimenting with very slight angle changes to see what works best for your speakers. (This applies to your home stereo too, for those of you who still have one!)
My favorite trick to check mixes is to step outside the room into the hallway. If the mix still sounds good out there, with no stereo imaging, a lot of acoustic refraction and no line-of-sight to the speakers then I know I have my mix elements balanced pretty well (aside of stereo, of course, which is n/a out in the hallway).
Graham,
Thanks for another great article! Quick question for you if you have time: I have the Presonus Eris E5 monitors, and I’m asking this because, as I’ve seen in your recent videos, I believe you have the same ones (or similar.) Since I’m unable to move my desk out from the wall due to space reasons, what are your thoughts on the Eris E5’s built-in bass compensation for this situation? (There’s a switch on the back that reduces the bass based on where your speakers are.) Just thought I’d ask since (I think) you have the same monitors. Thanks again!
Yes, I have the E8s and those controls are great. Use them as best you can while referencing pro tracks!
Sounds great; I’ll give it a try. Thanks!
Hey Graham, thank you very much, this is very useful
I know this is off topic and maybe the wrong place but I would be happy if you also offered paypall as a payment service for your dueling mixes website http://www.DuelingMixes.com .
I like it so I want to join.
Hey Graham,
Thanks for the article..
So..
What if in my room my only option is to setup my “desk” on the longer wall?
My rectangular room the one small wall has a full built in bookcase floor to ceiling, the other is the entrance with a double French door.
Im kind of forced to use the one long wall to setup on as the other long wall has two windows.
Pretty limiting, but alas.. I need to make due I guess.
This was the reason for my question about it earlier. The basic reason is that when you set up along the shorter wall, it minimizes the time of the reflections you’re going to get. Obviously, this means you need to take steps, ie better acoustic treatment.
In a perfectly dead room, location doesn’t matter at all. I’m fairly sure none of us have that luxury. The general guidance I’m getting says that you simply do the best you can with what you have.
In your case, you’ve acknowledged that your mixing spot has to be in a specific location due to physical concerns. Ok. Now take steps to deal with the problems it creates. Good curtains on the windows behind you for starters. The real challenge you’ll face is figuring out how to treat the “short” walls which have doors and a bookcase. Actually, the bookcase, if loaded with books is probably a pretty good sound absorber. The doors will be challenging to treat.
Thanks Brian!
On the French doors, I have thick grade curtains (about 4 panels) which seems to work ok, the built in bookshelf is loaded with books too. Most of the wall areas are covered (hanging guitars n such). So its the outside windows which I need to curtain next.
So far just blinds..
But alas, I need to work with what ive got..
You may want to put some kind of muffling on the hanging guitars’ strings as they will resonate in the room and can cause some weird noises when they do that mics can pick up sometimes. This also can help when recording guitars: put something like a small piece of cloth under the guitar strings above the nut to mute the high ringing that area can resonate. It isn’t always noticeable ringing but especially when having to record close in a bad room more of the ringing can be heard. Also clip extra string lengths short. These are especially important if you have a solo acoustic guitar section in the mix.
Hey Graham!
What do you think about my position? When I read this article I started wondering if I should move my mixing place somewhere else…
As seen in this picture:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e035ugmk6yebr94/2014-03-18%2008.20.45.jpg
I sit on the left side and my Hs50M’s are all the way into the wall.
Unlike you, I hear the bass good in the room, but when I take it for a listen at some other stereo setup (like my car) the bass is TOO strong…
Do you think moving my setup elsewhere can help?
It would be worth moving things around. Make sure you “tune your speakers” by listening to pro mixes on them as you adjust them to see what happens to the low end, the top end, etc.
Hey guys. I might have a problem. When i’m sitting on the sweet spot i can not hear the bass.. But when i get closer, or between monitors (nearly touching my face with the display) i can hear it very good! Foam is located to the righ,left,up and the wall behind monitors.No basstrap yet. I have rokit 5 krk’s and 18square meters room.(190sq feet). What would be the problem? Thanks
also, when i’m in the midlle of the room, the bass is good
Does the bass disappear on YOUR mixes or on a pro mix that you’re referencing?
on every kind of music i play
anyway..i changed my desk location on the larger side of the wall, which i know it’s not recomended, but it’s much better now
Nice! That’s more important than “right” or “wrong”.
English is not my first language so please someone help me to understand this right.
When he says “If your room is somewhat rectangular, place your desk along one of the shorter walls and center it between the walls on either side of you.” does it mean that if I have a retangular room I must position my desk in the room in a way that when I’d sit in front of it for a mix session I’d have one of the two biggest walls in front of me, the other big one in the back and each of the two smallest walls on my left and right sides?
Is that correct or what he’s saying is exactly the opposite: when sitting in front of the desk I should be facing one of the smaller walls and having each of the biggest ones on my L & R sides.
Thanks in advance
The opposite.
thank you for the post Graham !! im little bit confuse when you all mention about Pro references track and comparison for mixing .. but my question is all the pro references tracks are already Mastered and they are converted down to mp3 which is lower quality of audio on internet or on iTunes , how we can compare them with our projects and switch between pro Ref track and our mix .. if you can write a post about how to do references track comparison .. how to find proper Ref track would be great ..
-Chamila –
I don’t see it as an issue. The quality is pretty good. What I’m really listening for is the mixing decisions (how loud or quiet a kick drum, vocal, bass guitar, etc is) as well as the tonal balance (how bright or dark is the mix).
Nice site and good work!! I have a quick question for you. I just moved to another state and had to setup a new room for video/audio editing and mixing. The room is 11.3 x 13.5 and ceiling height is 11 feet. It has French doors on one of the long walls and outdoor windows with curtains on a small wall. Floor is unfortunately shag crpet but doesn’t seem to kill any highs. Ears do get a bit fatigued while listening though in a short time. I just purchased jbl lsr 305s and desk is sitting on the 11.3 smaller wall. Desk is also glass.Speakers are 1 ft away from wall on stands. Not much slap back in room at all but there are a few bass frequencies that stand out a bit on playback of pro recordings. Should I stay on the short wall or try the long wall instead for the bass response? Or start looking into room treatment like corner bass diffusers and behind speaker treatments which I know I will add a little bit for mids and highs but not much. Just the bass needs some love. ; ) Any ideas would b e greatly appreciated.
Try it all if you can. Bass traps might help kill those lower frequency build up.
Also, if you can move the speakers off the wall by another foot, that would likely help.
my garage is 24’x12′. my set-up is almost centered on the long side where there is only plywood/stucco on the outside. my 8″ (woofer size) monitors are sitting on cinder-blocks with the rear of the monitors 17″ from that wall. there are 2’x3″x4′ gobos behind each monitor. the monitors are placed roughly 40 degrees with the tweeters torwards ear level–woofers on top. the front of the monitors are almost 10′ from the drywall/no insulation/drywall back wall (which has an 8’x3″x4′ gobo hanging at the monitors’ height from the 2″x4″ support beams). there is roughly 8.5′ from each monitor to each short wall whereas the left side is the sheet-metal garage door covered with two sets of queen size beds (box-springs included) and the right side is a partition to the house which is just drywall/insulation/drywall. the garage plywood/shingled ceiling/roof is vaulted/sloped from the front wall (monitor wise) starting at almost 9′ to the back wall ending at about 13′.
i really want to put my monitors closer to the front wall to get them further away from my ears. although all music and reference material sounds great how my set-up is now–im the kind of person that values musical content/execution over production quality.
what to do? any suggestions are appreciated.
If the reference tracks sound great with your setup then you’re in a good spot.
Hi ,
Would you please take a look at this pic and tell me , is that really bad idea to place my desk like this ? Can I do acoustic treatment or it’s totally wrong way ?
Thanks
Hi ,
Would you please take a look at this pic and tell me , is that really bad idea to place my desk like this ? Can I do acoustic treatment or it’s totally wrong way ?
My Imagine Place
thanks
Man – I wouldn’t want my speakers there. Trapped in corners and you create a super weird listening position. Try and move somewhere else in the room if you can.
Thank you so much …
I know it was silly and I’m gonna try better place for it.
hi i want to ask a question not really related to the post above but i know u use a mono auratone type speaker as well as your Krk’s.Wanted to know in your work flow how do you use the mono speaker.Do you mix on krk’s the check and finalize the mix on auratone or you mix on auratone and finalize on ark’s etc.
Great question. I mix primarily on the KRKs and regularly check on the mono speaker.
Great advice overall!
A couple questions:
1. What about so-called pseudo-soffit (really pseudo-flush) method? That means putting monitors right up against the wall (almost touching) to minimize low frequency boundary interference (SBIR). Many advise that as the best solution for certain rooms (well, second-best to actually building the speakers in flush to the wall).
2. How to deal with a large computer monitor on the desk? Should the speakers be put close (small triangle) just to either side of the display? Or pushed far back in a larger triangle, so they are behind the display? Either way seems like it can lead to acoustic and stereo imaging problems (the former method by creating a reflective surface for the sound; the second by potentially partially blocking the sound).
Thank you!
1. I’m not a fan of having speakers right up against the wall if you can avoid it. It makes them interact with the wall more.
2. I try and line up the speakers with the computer monitor, so it’s not in the way of the direct sound.