What if I told you there was a way to make all of your current gear immediately sound better? No I’m not talking about getting new converters or upgrading your DAW (like that will instantly make you sound better). Rather I’m suggesting that if you tighten up the sound of your room with a little speaker adjustment and acoustic treatment you’ll get better performance out of all your current stuff. Let’s examine this theory shall we?
Via Taco Ekkel Flickr
Better Recordings With Your Current Microphones
When you’ve considered your room’s sound and treated it with with some simple acoustic panels, you’ll hear immediate improvement in your recordings. Your microphones aren’t that smart. They hear everything and anything that is happening in your room, for better or for worse. If your room sounds untreated, that’s what your mics will pick up.
However, if you’ve tightened up the slap back and that nasty ring we’re all so familiar with, then what your mics will “hear” is likely what you want them to “hear”, your source. Your acoustic guitars will resonate better, vocals will be clearer, and of course, percussion will be more crisp. It’s amazing what modestly priced microphones can do if you just put them in a decent sounding room!
Better Mixes With Your Same Speakers
Mixing is hard. I get that. But why do we think that better, more expensive speakers are the solution? I guess the logic goes that if they are more expensive, they will reveal the sound of our tracks more accurately to us, thereby giving us an edge when mixing. It’s so funny though, because some of the best pro mixers in the world mix primarily on very “inaccurate” and overly mid rangy Yamaha NS10s. And their mixes sound great!
The reason? Talent of course! Oh, and experience! And… a solid mixing room. Hopefully you have talent. And likely you’re getting more experience with each mix you do. So why not improve the sound of your room with solid speaker placement and basic acoustic treatment? It will immediately let you hear what’s coming out of your speakers more accurately, getting you one step closer to better mixes.
Don’t Waste Anymore Of Your Money
If you have a solid studio setup in place (and you can get one for only $300 US) and you’re starting to make some decent music with it, do me a favor. Don’t waste any more of your hard earned money on additional gear until you’ve tackled your room. No more preamps, converters, plugins, DAW upgrades, microphones, expensive cables (what?!), studio monitors, audio interfaces, etc. Just don’t.
It’s not that you can’t benefit from some of those upgrades one day, it’s just that you’ll never hear their full potential if you can’t hear things clearly in your room. Your money is valuable and I want you to spend it where it counts. Tighten up the sound of your room and you’ll see instant improvement in your current setup. Then you can assess what you need (and don’t need) from there. Deal?
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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. 
What do you think about room correction software such as the IK Multimedia ARC? I use a combination of that with room treatment and I feel like it’s helping me tremendously.
that correcting software is compensating some frequencies based on Your exact listening position, but it does not help about resonance frequencies (those frequencies which cause ringing).
it does not help for _recording_ in the same room. The ringing and resonances are in recording with mic. Well, its possible to take that out too, but then the frequencies need to be surgically removed with very sharp filters and its still ugly to listen.
Also that software has its limits.
Try in different rooms with that software? Do you get the _same_ sound?
And going even worse places these eqs will treat frequencies even more and its even more uglier to listen.
The thing is that the reference monitors can be as flat as they can be, but
the room itself, where it is, affects the frequency power density characteristics graph and its not flat anymore at all. No average bedroom or livingroom can match the special echo-free room! –> thats the room
where speakers characteristics are _measured_ 🙂
Well, I guess that I will keep most in my room as it is, otherwise its very inconvenient to listen on somewhere else where the room is very unbalanced.
I now mix on speakers from a home Cinema set, would studio monitors or acoustic treatment be the best thing to buy first?
I have seen people who buy expensive studio monitors but leave room untreated — that money is perfectly wasted. And totally overpriced for background listening. 😀 Also people who buy the expensive home cinema, they use less than 10% of its quality becouse they place and install it having no thought about acoustics! There is no point this good equipment for people who put speakers in the corners or in bookshelf, against the wall and have unsymmetrical room.
At the same time I had a Hi-Fi speakers which I placed only acustic symmetri in my mind, and got the best result. All things and placement what we have in room, counts. Especially where are You sitting. If You move to the corners, You have more bass. The speaker placement is the first equalizer. In other words, Hi-Fi setup, placed properly _can_ be a good setup for monitoring too. And studio monitors dont give that improvement if they are in non-treated rooms.
I have a room that sounds completely dry because I attached acoustic foam on all the walls and the ceiling (my plan was to soundproof the room). Would it be a good idea to mix in that room, or would the result be a unnatural sounding mix. Is a normal/good sounding room more suitable to mix?
Pelzer
Just speak yourself in the room there. If the room sound completely dry then You hear yourself _not_ with Your outer ears but only through the nose channel inside your head (as the walls dont reflect your sound back to your ears outside!).
You can get enough flat characteristics there. And its better than average room.
(read above my comment) — No average bedroom/livingroom is useful for mixing or mastering as they are far from being flat.
You can fix plates on the walls to make reflections in this case, but dont put anything at the corners or 30 cm away from the corners.
Best acoustics so far have big church and cathedrals for recording with natural reverb. 🙂
I did 3 of my albums in a completely deadened room. Its better than untreated for sure, but not exactly ideal because the foam only absorbs mid to high frequencies. (I dont even need to ask how it handled soundproofing, didn’t work, right?) The foam solves problems with reverberation and slap echo but it sucks up too much high frequencies and doesnt touch low frequencies. Do you find yourself reaching for the high shelf eq a lot? further, do you have trouble getting an accurate low frequencies to translate outside the studio? The way I do it is; first, put in some bass traps (Cheaply made with Corning 702 fiberglass panels and cloth) then make a “live end-dead end” room. Put your foam on the front wall where your speakers are. Now sit in your listening position. Make sure the monitors sit in an equal triangle between themselves and your head (Equal distance between speaker to speaker, and speaker to ear) Now have a friend drag a mirror across the side walls (stay in your listening spot)) and place a piece of foam wherever you can see a monitor in the mirror. same for the ceiling. Now for the back wall you need to break up the sound waves, scattering them into all directions rather than just slapping straight back at you. There are commercial diffusors that are a bit pricey, but a strategically placed bookshelf can do wonders.
Hey Graham! I’ve been using lately the ARC system within a quite dry room, and the result of my new mixes have improved a lot! it is a quite accurate plugin. In fact you can create different curves if you have different monitors, setups, or place in the room where you might be standing or sitting. The only thing that I don’t like much is the fact that it has to be as a plugin on you master track. It would be great if it could be always working no matter if you are using a daw on a job, or just listening music in your itunes. I thought it would be good sharing this with all of you.
well, there is that Behringer Ultracurve (hardware unit) thats always on. 🙂 But all those EQs and plugins, whatever they are, have their own limitations.
Another possibility is to treat the room.
Definitely the best thing I ever did to my studio is build and install sound panels.
I built them all myself with the knowledge learned from Ethan Winer.
250+ ft of wood,24 panels 24x48x2 Roxul , Over 1200 staples, 30 yards fabric, 5 bandaids!
The before and after difference sound is amazing!
Without the treatment all the money spent on ‘highend”gear is a waste.
Here’e some pictures of the project.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1530823799953.2068279.1515482417&type=3
Emilio
Is there anywhere on the internet with a step-by-step tutorial on how to make those panels? I’m very interested, and those look perfect for my current living/recording situation because of the portability
Na quinta-feira pela-porco manha, em cima de abstenção, beba a carraspana, deixando os grãos dentre arroz, completando repetidamente devido a
riqueza copo dentre brilho.