Updated Home Studio

I had Auralex do a room analysis. They provided their technical recommendations, like moving the desk to the window as it would take advantage of the longer room dimension to allow lower waveforms to fully develop. I have some new curtains coming, and some corner fills on the next pay period.

Here's the thing. They recommended about $1500-$1800 worth of materials, which was out of my price range. I sourced similar materials through vendors on Ebay for about 1/10th of that price putting my entire investment into this room at about $200 including some nice flat Valspar interior paint.

As you enter the room,


Further into the room.


A quick glance at the west wall to the left after you enter into the room.


A room shot of the west/north wall moving toward the seated position.


Same view, but with more of the lower portion/floor so you can see my pedal board.


The North to East Wall.


A higher shot of the East wall.


Behind the iMac and studio monitors. These were free, I spent no $$ on these. They are packaging squares that are perforated and work wonderfully to trap low end.



All absorption products were applied using velcro tape. I purchased a 15' roll at Lowes for under $20, cut them into 1" segments, fluff side to the foam, rigid side to the wall. The smaller 12"x12" squares are nice and light and worked fine on their own. For the larger pieces on the North wall/mixing location, I helped them by using longer sections of velcro tape, and use some tacky spray to help them stick to the foam better. These are significantly heavier than the smaller pieces.

I used Flat interior paint by Valspar. When I had the room gutted, I did notice that the 15ms flutter echo wasn't as bright sounding, even prior to room treatment. Having done another room in gloss some years ago while I still lived in Ca. I can definitely tell that flat paint versus glossy paint is the better route to go if wanting to treat the room appropriately.

Once painted, and foam applied. The flutter echo is gone from the room, but, there is a slight early reflection between the East and West wall in the untreated areas, particularly at about 5 ' in height. Once I added the traditional bow/quiver/arrow array on the West wall, and the headpiece, and photo on the East wall, they are pretty much eliminated.

I still have another couple of pieces to hang, like the canvas painting on the floor, another poster on foam core board that is behind the door, and I've got 3 ea 12"x12" square foam pieces on the door itself.

The glass mirrored closet doors are coming out, and will be replaced with custom ordered curtains from Ikea, they'll just slide back & forth easily, but will dampen further waveforms. You can see my gigging 6 guitar briefcase in the right hand portion of the closet, unseen is the other side to the left, which just has all of the cases stored vertically.



I'm running Pro-Tools 12.5 something, and my M-Audio AV-40 monitors do the trick nicely. I rarely playback at more than about 60 db, or just above conversation level. The room sounds so much more objective now, and translates as nice as my Sennheiser HD-280 Pro headphones do. My interface is an Avid Fast Track Duo.

All in all, I could not be more pleased. My Mac is maxed out with 32gb of RAM and performs flawlessly, no dropouts, no glitches.
 
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Re: Updated Home Studio

Nice build. Have nice recording!

Two things you may consider:

- bass traps in the 90-degree corners: just place a roll of soft something there, the same packaging foams would do wonders there
- placing the AV40s to ear-level: again, no-$$$ matter, put two identical wooden blocks / speaker boxes / under them. If you put a 3mm thick mouse pad under that box you'll have a double layer resonation dampening, just as functional as some yippy $1000+ stand.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

I have corner treatment in my cart, waiting till the next pay period.
Got speaker stands coming soon too. The AV-40's already have some mouse pad material on the bottom of them, but they do need to be elevated. The Mo-Pads just don't angle them up enough to where my line of site is direct between the woofer & tweeter of each of them.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

reaper and foam on the walls, cool! I like my reaper as well. I agree about the bass traps with NecroPolo and speaker placement. for my mixing, my Rokit6Ks are are on special foam, ear level, and triangle distance from my head.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

reaper and foam on the walls, cool! I like my reaper as well. I agree about the bass traps with NecroPolo and speaker placement. for my mixing, my Rokit6Ks are are on special foam, ear level, and triangle distance from my head.

No Reaper, that's Pro Tools 12.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

Nice job! It's amazing how dampening materials can affect a recording space. I have to get some corner traps for my room. I have discovered that if I open the door into the walk in closet just a crack, it makes for a great bass trap.

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

looks wild, congrats.

I mix through crappy headphones and a 10 year-old bose sound dock, lol.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

Thank you for the kind words.
I never used to pay any attention to room treatment when I was younger, but as I've gotten older & trained I hear its affect everywhere I go.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

It sounds just live enough towards the back end of the room, for mic'ing up the acoustic, doing vocals, my cedar flute, or hand percussion, but at the engineering position, it's controlled and objective, translates better.
 
Re: Updated Home Studio

One small last tip, if I may... you might consider raising the speakers so that the tweeters are at your ear level when seated. It would give you a more complete and direct picture of what is coming out of them and reduce the reflection off the desk coming into your ears.
 
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