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evil
frequencies, yet hard and heavy materials reflect them
back. Ultra low bass frequencies have an remarkable
ability to pass through almost anything (just ask your
next-door neighbours).
We need to use a combination of different
materials to solve these problems. Before we do that,
though, let’s take a look at the problems that
unwanted sound reflections can cause.
environment with a diffuse high-frequency
soundfield, creating an uncoloured sense of space in
the room we are listening in.
You can spend a lot of money treating your room
to professional standards, but frankly, this is not
money well spent unless you regularly hire out your
studio to paying clients. Most of the benefits of
effective acoustic treatment can be achieved for little
or no cost if you’re prepared to sacrifice a little room
space and be imaginative and creative in the way that
you use what is available to you.
But before starting, you need to decide whether
the approaches we’re about to run through will work
for you. Don’t start off unless you are sure that you
can get the results you need, and that any bits you
need to buy are within your budget. Work out what
Firstly, if a sound is reflected in phase with itself
(ie, both the original sound wave and its reflection are
in synchronisation and are perfectly overlapping each How sound travels
other), then that sound becomes reinforced, making it
considerably louder. This results in the characteristic
boominess of some rooms. This can swamp the room
with sound, making it difficult to hear clearly.
Secondly, if a room is built in a solid and
soundproof manner, bass frequencies build up at the
edges of the room, so that the mix sounds radically
different depending on where in the room you
happen to be standing.
Thirdly, if a reflection is out-of-phase (ie, the
positioning of the reflected waveform clashes with the
original), it causes a comb-filtering effect, making
some frequencies leap out more than others. This can
mask problems in your mix or exaggerate issues that
wouldn’t normally be a problem. As each ear will
receive a different reflection pattern, the stereo
imaging can also become unclear, and it can be very
hard for your brain to identify the different
instruments in the mix clearly.
If we strive to eliminate every unwanted sound
reflection, the resulting sound of the room becomes
too unnatural and artificial. It doesn’t represent the We’re so used to seeing the familiar wavy line display – shown in picture 1, above – on computer-based
kind of environment that the mix will typically be sound editing software that it’s easy to forget that this bears no resemblance to how sound actually moves
played back in. The room feels ‘dead’, claustrophobic in the air.
and unpleasant to be in. Our brains analyse everyday When a sound source starts to vibrate, it compresses the air around it. As the air expands again it
sound reflections to help orient us (similar to bats in compresses the air around it, and that, in turn expands. So, the wave action travels outwards like a set of
caves), and if we deny ourselves such information, we huge wobbly concentric spheres, similar to the cross-section view shown in the lower picture above.
quickly feel boxed in and extremely uncomfortable. So in reality, the actual air around the sound source doesn’t travel to where the sound is picked up. Instead,
We need an environment where low frequencies it is merely the ripple-like action that is transferred to the receiver in a sort of ‘falling domino’ effect.
don’t accumulate and swamp the sound, and an
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items you can recycle from around your house (or The audible effect of resonance depends on the The solution is simple. Large items of furniture,
from the local rubbish tip), and what things you’ll have size of the room, but dry drum patterns will show up cupboards, wardrobes, bookcases and display cabinets
to buy. the defect best. Try comparing different types of will break up the room into smaller, less resonant
OK, that said, let’s look at the specifics of solving snare and bass drum samples, listening first on spaces, and will also help absorb sound.
these problems. headphones, and then on speakers. The drums should But be aware that cheap wardrobes and cabinets
be clear-sounding in both cases. A poor, resonant can cause problems if their panels are not solidly
Reducing room resonance room will add unwanted colouration that isn’t there constructed (especially the large back panel). There is
If two large walls are directly facing each other, some when listening on headphones. a simple test: bash the panels lightly using the soft
sound will keep bouncing back and forth until it is Room resonance happens in three dimensions: palm of your hand. The sound they make should be
dissipated as heat or cancels itself out. If the length of between the two side walls, between the front and little more than a ‘slap’ or a ‘thunk’. If any of the panels
the sound wave is exactly the same as the distance rear walls, and between the floor and the ceiling. boom like a bass drum, you know you’re in for trouble.
between the two walls, it gets reinforced and the Typically, the resonance between the floor and ceiling Often, you need only to nail the troublesome panel
room resonates in a boomy way. In fact, if the distance is very much lower, due to floorboards, carpet, and into place more securely to solve the problem.
between the walls is any exact multiple of the sound’s thin ceiling boards reflecting much less sound than You don’t want to turn your nice studio into a junk
wavelength, then some degree of resonance will hard side walls tend to. We need to break up the pure, room, but you have to compromise. Those fantastic,
always result. rectangular nature of the room to solve this problem. minimalist rooms you see in hi-fi adverts are sheer
The problems
speaker speaker
speaker speaker
speaker speaker
low profile
work bench equipment low profile
rack low profile work bench equipment
work bench equipment rack
rack
chair
chair
chair
entrance door
entrance door
entrance door
1 Any waveform that fits exactly between parallel
walls will cause the room to hoot – or resonate – at
that frequency as the sound keeps bouncing between the 3 But a completely ‘dead’ room that absorbs all the
walls. Most rooms have three such fundamental 2 Direct and secondary ‘live’ reflections from the walls, sound lacks essential everyday audio clues that tell
frequencies: one between the side walls, one between ceiling, and any large, flat objects in the room the brain how big a room is, resulting in an unnatural
front and back walls, and a third between the floor and confuse the stereo imaging and make it difficult to hear monitoring environment that feels small and cramped and
the ceiling. exactly what’s happening in terms of instrumentation. can even induce strange feelings of panic.
The solutions
display cabinet bass trap display cabinet bass trap bass trap display cabinet bass trap
chair
chair chair
storage storage
storage storage storage storage cupboard cupboard
cupboard cupboard cupboard cupboard
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ACOUSTICS
fantasy. In reality, no rectangular minimalist room with Testing your room
bare walls is a good listening environment. You need
to make creative use of your furniture to make your
room a more complex shape.
Be assured, however, that the sonic difference
3 As a separate set of figures, do the same for
the length of the room (front to back) and for
the height (floor to ceiling).
made to a room by such simple additions can be truly
astonishing. For a simple example of suitable furniture
layout, see the first diagram in The Solutions
walkthrough on p62.
4 Start the mda TestTone plug-in and switch it to
SINE mode. While listening to a tone of about
1kHz, adjust your speaker volume to a comfortable,
moderate listening level.
Taming the bass end
Ironically, a very solidly built room tends to have bass
problems. If your studio is made of flimsy stud walls,
excess bass leaks through to adjoining rooms. But in a
5 Now, starting from a frequency of about 50Hz,
manually adjust the frequency – very slowly –
upwards to somewhere just above 1kHz. You don’t
room made of brick or stone, bass frequencies tend to need to go any higher, because this test becomes
gather at certain points in the room, and you will much less valid at high frequencies. You need to do
notice a dramatic change in the amount of bass this in several steps, using the F1 control on the
depending on where you stand. plug-in to set the frequency range, and F2 to
This can be very worrying. How can you determine Get your hands on the TestTone plug-in by pointing your manually sweep through it.
how much bass is right for your mix when you might browser at www.mda-vst.com
hear little bass in your normal listening position but
too much when you listen further back in the room?
We need to ‘mop up’ all of that excess bass and
You can perform a simple test to see if your room
suffers from resonance problems. You’ll need to
6 As you sweep up the frequency bands, listen
carefully as you pass through the resonant
frequencies you’ve written down. If the volume
make the sound more consistent throughout. Then use the mda TestTone VST plug-in – available as a level of the tone seems to suddenly leap out at you
you’ll be hearing the real amount of bass, instead of pack of plug-ins for free download from at around this frequency, you know you’ve got a
bass that’s over-amplified by your room. www.mda-vst.com. resonance problem that needs addressing. If you
We achieve this by placing bass traps in the room’s This plug-in is just a simple test tone generator pass cleanly through the numbers you’ve written
corners. All you need to build them are some large, which you can use to manually sweep through all down, you’re in the clear.
solid wooden boxes stuffed with non-flammable of the audio frequencies.
cotton wool or similar material. Such boxes are
available in the form of simple, cheap, display cabinets
without doors, or you can knock them up yourself
Before performing this test, however, you need to
observe some precautions, as sine wave testing
can damage your speakers if not done with a great
7 It’s important not to get too obsessive when
using this test. Many minor variations in the
level of the tone will happen as you sweep; these
from offcuts of chipboard and a few nails. For stuffing, deal of care: should be ignored.
you can buy very cheap pillows from your local
catalogue store. Feather pillows are even better, but
are more expensive.
Simply place units like this on the floor in the
• Do not play very high or very low frequencies
through domestic-quality loudspeakers
• Listen only at a very moderate sound level –
8 You may notice other significant resonances as
you sweep through the low frequencies. It
may be the side panels of a wardrobe vibrating in
corners of your room. Two are probably enough for quieter than normal music playback your room, or perhaps a flimsily constructed wall
most small rooms. They tighten up the bottom end of • Do not leave the test tone running for extended where a cupboard was built into the room. You’ll
a room wonderfully. It might take you a while to get periods of time need to find creative solutions to fix such problems
used to the new sound! • If you cannot hear the test tone, fix the problem such as these.
If you want to improve the appearance of these before turning the speaker volume up
units, cover the entire box with a thin fabric – the
material used for covering the front of hi-fi The test is performed as follows: 9 Listen out also for any rattles and buzzes from
objects within the room as you sweep
loudspeakers is ideal. You could tell your friends that
the entire unit is just an enormous subwoofer speaker
used only for dub reggae...
1 Firstly, some maths: the speed of sound is
approximately 1,130 feet per second (at room
temperature). Divide this number by the width of
through the low frequencies. There may be several
different objects in the room that have been
rattling for ages – it’s just that you never noticed
You don’t even have to use a dedicated unit as a your room in feet to find the resonant frequency of them before.
bass trap. If you are using tall, solidly-built, free- the side walls. For example, for a room 8.5 feet
standing bookcases to help break up the shape of the wide: 1130/8.5=133Hz. Write down your answer. The above method, though useful, is still a very
room, you can simply stuff pillows into the bottom crude one that should never be used to fine-tune a
two shelves to achieve a similar, bass-damping effect
(though this will be less pronounced than units placed
in the corners of the room).
2 As the room can also resonate at harmonic
intervals, write down several multiples of your
answer (ie, double, triple, four, five, six and seven
room – this technique is far too primitive for that.
It is, however, ideal for identifying when either the
room, or some object within it, is causing
times your original answer. You don’t normally significant and undesirable resonance problems at
Controlling room reflections need to go any higher than this). low-to-mid frequencies.
It’s not just the bass frequencies that need to be
tamed, it’s the high frequencies too. But this time, the
problem is more complicated.
We need to prevent all direct reflections from
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1 This simple display can be cannibalised for use as a 2 We discard the quarter shelves, turn the unit 3 Then we simply leave it in the corner of the room. It’s
bass trap – its size is ideal. sideways, and stuff it with four pillows. OK to place things on top, such as this CD rack.
1 Adjustable, sprung shower rails can be wedged 2 Tabbed curtains or similar material is simply hung 3 A roof beam can bridge the gap between two curtain
between walls without marking them. from the railings. rails, or you can use a tall cabinet, as shown here.
on the uncoloured sound in front of you. wall even though you don’t know it yet – it’s our old Grand designs
That’s the theory, anyway, and in practice this friend the bookcase again! As we’ve seen, probably the most versatile piece of
arrangement really does seem to work. It’s used in Bookshelves and bookcases are a remarkable boon furniture you can place in your studio room is one or
many top-flight recording studios around the world. if you want to get a good-sounding room. Firstly, they more tall bookcases. The lower shelves can be stuffed
Technically speaking, a true LEDE room would typically help break up a square or rectangular room, and – with pillows to act as a bass trap, the middle shelves
include a hard floor covering on at least part of the more importantly in this case – they create a pseudo- can be stocked with books of random sizes to act as a
rear section of the room, but at home, with a parallel- random hard surface that causes high frequencies to diffuser wall, and the top shelves can be used, well, as
facing floor and ceiling, this might cause more scatter on impact into many directions at once. This is actual shelves to place your bits and pieces on.
problems than it solves. exactly the kind of behaviour we want. But remember that before starting the process of
To further cut costs, you don’t even need to use You don’t need a floor-to-ceiling covering of books renovating your room, it’s best to design it on paper
full-height curtains. An adequate length of curtain (although there’s no harm in that). All that is needed is and make sure you can get everything you need
hanging at ear-level at your normal listening position a decent wall covering of books at ear level to diffuse within your budget (and within the physical space,
may be all that is required, although it is obviously the sound. The more random the surface of books, too). Test the sound of the room thoroughly by
more desirable to have a room where the sound the better, so it’s time to get your books disorganised listening to several well-known recordings before even
remains consistent regardless of whether you are and mix them up as much as possible so big and small starting to make changes, so you know exactly which
sitting or standing, and the less curtain you use, the books intermingle in unpredictable ways. of the problems we’ve discussed apply to your room.
less absorption you will achieve. The ideal placement for your scatter wall of books Keep checking as you go along to find out how well
Finally, in order to stop the room sounding as dead is across the back of the room, although there is no you’re progressing.
as an anechoic chamber, we need to create a diffusion harm in having them down the sides as well. They You’ll be surprised at how dramatically the sound
or scatter wall to create complex secondary reflections should be ideally positioned behind your normal of the room improves as a result of the simple
at the back of the room. Custom designed diffusion listening position though, so that sound from the changes we’ve described. And best of all, if
walls are extremely expensive. However, most homes monitor speakers bouncing off them hits the back wall you’ve got a well-stocked home, you might be
(and that could include yours) already feature a scatter before reaching your ears. able to do it without spending a single penny.
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