Here is why you may want a pair of subs in your studio

[MirrorProfiles]

I have a KRK sub and honestly could never get low end right in my mixes until the slate VSX cans. It’s fun for playback or composition though.

have you measured and adjusted the sub crossover/phase settings?

IMO it’s good to measure from the listening position with no sub at all, adjust the monitoring until you get the best sounding/most accurate response possible. From there, you’ll know what your problem areas are and you’d try the sub in different positions in the room and with different settings to address those losses in the low end. Itll totally depend on the room, speakers, and positions of everything but there should be somewhere that helps.

2 subs can compensate for each other, it can be helpful for a more even response around the room and also with stereo imagiming for higher bass notes. Likewise if your time and phase aligning things, it has some advantages.

But IMO, if using it isn’t helping things then it’s worth spending more time positioning and dialling it in. When they’re right they should be fairly invisible and just extend the monitoring naturally, while smoothing out the low end a bit

 

[Bruce]

have you measured and adjusted the sub crossover/phase settings?

IMO it’s good to measure from the listening position with no sub at all, adjust the monitoring until you get the best sounding/most accurate response possible. From there, you’ll know what your problem areas are and you’d try the sub in different positions in the room and with different settings to address those losses in the low end. Itll totally depend on the room, speakers, and positions of everything but there should be somewhere that helps.

2 subs can compensate for each other, it can be helpful for a more even response around the room and also with stereo imagiming for higher bass notes. Likewise if your time and phase aligning things, it has some advantages.

But IMO, if using it isn’t helping things then it’s worth spending more time positioning and dialling it in. When they’re right they should be fairly invisible and just extend the monitoring naturally, while smoothing out the low end a bit

My current room is pretty hopeless. Anything I mix is always bass anemic no matter how low I make the sub. If I try and compensate I always dial in the wrong frequencies and it gets too bass heavy and too much in the wrong way. Short of a basement renovation there is no fixing the problems in this room. Thankfully, Im moving in 6 months so this will no longer be a problem.

 

[marsonic]

Why would why would I want to incorporate someone else’s room into my monitoring?

Very simple. My room sucks, and the modeling mimics professionally treated rooms and other acoustically relevant situations. The point of these headphones is to listen with someone else’s room. For me, the proof is in the results.

I get the "my room sucks" part and liking headphones, but why do you want a different room when the headphones give you "no room" essentially for free? Most of the high-end rooms are supposed to sound basically like no room.

I'm not attacking you....I've really never understood the point of virtual rooms. But, if it works for you, it works for you.

 

[Bruce]

I get the "my room sucks" part and liking headphones, but why do you want a different room when the headphones give you "no room" essentially for free? Most of the high-end rooms are supposed to sound basically like no room.

I'm not attacking you....I've really never understood the point of virtual rooms. But, if it works for you, it works for you.

I understand what you're saying and don't feel attacked. I think headphones for the most part, outside of any modeling of course, offer a unique experience. Neither good or bad, they serve as another point of reference and the better ones should be relatively flat. Still, each one has its sound and they'll all be a bit different, up to earbuds which I happen to really like the sound of, too.

These super well treated rooms also have a sound and each one, with each pair of modeled speaker in them serve to reveal things in a mix specifically. Taken from the "Your Mix Sucks" book, I get my mix at least 50% along on the boombox model in the headphones. I didn't believe this approach worked until I tried it. After the boombox, I move into a particular room to make finer adjustments. Then when it is almost completed I bounce around. I check my mix on modeled headphones, modeled earbuds, a modeled car and now there is even a modeled cellphone speaker. The huge obvious benefit of this is I never have to leave my desk. Lastly, at least to me, the results were quite telling. My best productions were with these headphones. A mix will always be somewhat of a compromise of getting a track to sound at least decent in almost any reasonable listening environment and it should sound stellar in a good environment.

 

[marsonic]

I understand what you're saying and don't feel attacked. I think headphones for the most part, outside of any modeling of course, offer a unique experience. Neither good or bad, they serve as another point of reference and the better ones should be relatively flat. Still, each one has its sound and they'll all be a bit different, up to earbuds which I happen to really like the sound of, too.

These super well treated rooms also have a sound and each one, with each pair of modeled speaker in them serve to reveal things in a mix specifically. Taken from the "Your Mix Sucks" book, I get my mix at least 50% along on the boombox model in the headphones. I didn't believe this approach worked until I tried it. After the boombox, I move into a particular room to make finer adjustments. Then when it is almost completed I bounce around. I check my mix on modeled headphones, modeled earbuds, a modeled car and now there is even a modeled cellphone speaker. The huge obvious benefit of this is I never have to leave my desk. Lastly, at least to me, the results were quite telling. My best productions were with these headphones. A mix will always be somewhat of a compromise of getting a track to sound at least decent in almost any reasonable listening environment and it should sound stellar in a good environment.

I guess that approach makes sense. I've always kind of preferred the "one good system" approach. I've just found that easier than bouncing between different reference environments, at least after you learn it. I've also never really liked working on NS-10s, even though I know that's very much a minority opinion. I also haven't used room/whatever simulation quite like that enough to have a real opinion.

There are an infinite number of ways a sound system can be "wrong", and more-or-less only one that's "right" that we're all trying to get close to (ignoring, of course, that some people prefer brighter/darker/etc. sounds). I like how close my speakers are to "right" with my treatments and correction, and I like how close my IEMs are with just HRTF crossfeed.

To each their own.

For after you move, if you can, I think it's worth starting from the beginning setting up the room. It makes a big difference.

 

[fretworn]

Well, I don’t use Slate VSX (I use a pair of Ollo Audio with the unit specific correction EQ curves into Waves NX), however I find the process @Bruce uses to yield excellent results.

Between old and shot ears, along with a questionable room… Having the stereo field emulation of a room with speakers sitting on a desk playing through all the different speaker simms makes a difference for me in a big way.

I may dial the room in or out depending.

I do it in a way that maybe doesn’t make sense to others but it goes like this…

If I can hear everything correctly in mono, on a pair of emulated NS10s, (i.e. kick, snare, hat, bass, guitar, supporting instrumentation/fx, along with the melody) …

I find that when I take it to stereo, then on to the larger monitors, it just gets betterer and betterer.

Although there was this one time when I forgot to check on the large monitors, and missed all the sub 80 Hz frequencies

 

[DrewJD82]

I recently found a non-sweet spot in my studio where if I stand in that one spot, all the bad bass frequencies pop out like a sore thumb. Until I can make a legit studio somewhere, this’ll work for now!

 

[murphy brown]

Room acoustics can be such a challenge, especially those deep nulls in the 100Hz-150Hz range. It's wild how they can wreak havoc on the frequency response, making it a real struggle in "normal" home setups. Dealing with 20dB nulls is like wrestling with an audio black hole. Have you found any effective strategies to tackle these nulls in your own setup?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Room acoustics can be such a challenge, especially those deep nulls in the 100Hz-150Hz range. It's wild how they can wreak havoc on the frequency response, making it a real struggle in "normal" home setups. Dealing with 20dB nulls is like wrestling with an audio black hole. Have you found any effective strategies to tackle these nulls in your own setup?

room treatment, optimal monitor placement, optimal listening position, subs, sonarworks

 

[Rewolf]

I struggled with it: -12db null at 120Hz due to a room about 2.4m x 2.4m x 4.8m. I only found that out after the Car test of the mix was a disastrous overwhelming bass nightmare. Back to the room, it sounded fine. Then you start the education process to discover you know a lot less than you thought you might

I tried various cheap treatments but nothing worked. There are some quite advanced bass traps that can be home-built, especially ones that use tuned weighted membranes, but at the end of the day in a room that small you end up having more treatment than room space.

Headphone solutions take the room out of the equation. Many top mixers, even when they have really well-treated rooms will still mention in interviews that they use headphones to check the low-end is ok. They don't mix in them all the time, but they always check.

 

[marsonic]

Room acoustics can be such a challenge, especially those deep nulls in the 100Hz-150Hz range. It's wild how they can wreak havoc on the frequency response, making it a real struggle in "normal" home setups. Dealing with 20dB nulls is like wrestling with an audio black hole. Have you found any effective strategies to tackle these nulls in your own setup?

room treatment, optimal monitor placement, optimal listening position, subs, sonarworks

Short version: ditto.

The longer version....

I was always struggling with it. I had the good fortune to intern in a very nice studio and took a few studio-y classes as electives for a completely unrelated degree. So, I knew how things could sound. My wife and I decided to buy a house, and finding a suitable room was a part of the deal. GiK was great...they helped consult on which rooms would be easiest to work with, and when we found a house with an unfinished basement, they helped with our contractors to adjust some dimensions and get things right, then suggested a treatment strategy.

It worked out great. Placement was easy and almost exactly what they recommended/predicted, and the treatments made more of a difference than I could have imagined.

Then, I spent about 2 months buying & returning speakers until I came across some that I knew would work. Only had to try a couple models of subwoofers (and like 5 variations of placements). I did the XO and delay compensation "manually" with plugins between my DAW and audio interface with another piece of software (which has changed a few times over the years).

Sonarworks was the icing on top. I think the biggest single correction is about 5dB, in the low mids, and I don't really question my choices.

Except the choice to spend 5-figures on something that's about the equivalent of 4-figures on a headphone setup that honestly does sound as good, even if it feels totally different. For that one, I just bought the pieces, plugged it in, and turned on CanOpener.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

I haven't watched any of the posted material, but I got a little obsessed with room Acoustics around 2017-18 after I took a few courses with a brilliant engineer and acoustician who worked with Meyer Sound. This is my kind of thread!

Around that time, I got some advice from the John Sayers' Studio Design team, built my own sand-filled speaker stands and room treatment with Owens Corning Safe and Sound and tweaked my room to hell and back before getting Sonarworks software to top it all off. The room was a small bedroom box shape with most of an entire wall consisting of a sliding glass door and a connecting side of the room was raised up and a half closet installed (in the form of a dividing wall a few feet away from the actual wall) to cover up what used to be a fireplace. It was small, it was hell, but it was all mine.

A couple years later (and another kid) I had to move out of that room into a much bigger yet shared space (bedroom: boo) where I can't acoustically treat anything. SonarWorks software is really saving my ass in my current room and my mixes translate well. No more speaker/room hopping. I will check on my cans and through a mono small speaker tho.

Now I want a sub since I have the space for it.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I haven't watched any of the posted material, but I got a little obsessed with room Acoustics around 2017-18 after I took a few courses with a brilliant engineer and acoustician who worked with Meyer Sound. This is my kind of thread!

Around that time, I got some advice from the John Sayers' Studio Design team, built my own sand-filled speaker stands and room treatment with Owens Corning Safe and Sound and tweaked my room to hell and back before getting Sonarworks software to top it all off. The room was a small bedroom box shape with most of an entire wall consisting of a sliding glass door and a connecting side of the room was raised up and a half closet installed (in the form of a dividing wall a few feet away from the actual wall) to cover up what used to be a fireplace. It was small, it was hell, but it was all mine.

A couple years later (and another kid) I had to move out of that room into a much bigger yet shared space (bedroom: boo) where I can't acoustically treat anything. SonarWorks software is really saving my ass in my current room and my mixes translate well. No more speaker/room hopping. I will check on my cans and through a mono small speaker tho.

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Now I want a sub since I have the space for it.

You might be able to reduce that peak around 150hz slightly with monitor placement, either adjusting the distance between them, distance from the rear wall or the height.

REW is better for testing because with sonarworks you have to do about 40 sweeps just to check if something is an improvement or not. Once you get the best response you can with REW then measure in Sonarworks.

Your room response looks fairly typical to what a lot of people have, a sub can help smooth that right out, but you’ll need to get phase and crossover values dialled in right. Would totally recommend a sub (or pair) to improve that curve, but be prepared to measure and adjust a fair bit to get it right.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

You might be able to reduce that peak around 150hz slightly with monitor placement, either adjusting the distance between them, distance from the rear wall or the height.

REW is better for testing because with sonarworks you have to do about 40 sweeps just to check if something is an improvement or not. Once you get the best response you can with REW then measure in Sonarworks.

Your room response looks fairly typical to what a lot of people have, a sub can help smooth that right out, but you’ll need to get phase and crossover values dialled in right. Would totally recommend a sub (or pair) to improve that curve, but be prepared to measure and adjust a fair bit to get it right.

If this room weren't also my bedroom and my wife's home office I'd have more freedom but I leave it up to Sonarworks to flatten it out.

Agreed in regard to REW vs Sonarworks for simple measurements I have and use both.

This brings up a burning question about this process: what should I do with my chair when measuring? In my mind the chair should probably be where it usually is, but that often gets in the way of taking measurements and not sure if it interferes with the measurement process in SW.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

If this room weren't also my bedroom and my wife's home office I'd have more freedom but I leave it up to Sonarworks to flatten it out.

Agreed in regard to REW vs Sonarworks for simple measurements I have and use both.

This brings up a burning question about this process: what should I do with my chair when measuring? In my mind the chair should probably be where it usually is, but that often gets in the way of taking measurements and not sure if it interferes with the measurement process in SW.

I wouldn’t worry. I think your body and head probably have a bigger influence over the speaker response than the chair (unless you normally sit on some kind of rockwool throne).

 

[JasonE]

When I invested in buying my recording equipment, I went off the recommendation of a couple of guys I know that do this a lot and have official training in it. One told me that he needs a subwoofer and the other said he did not. I bought the monitors they both recommended and decided to buy the sub as well at that time. The nice thing about it is it has a volume control on it so I was able to put it where I wanted it to be and then set the volume of it so I hear it nicely where I sit. I can't really treat the room I am in so I have just learned the room. I also listen to my mixes on various devices, including my car, to make sure they are coming out like I want them to. I also use reference tracks so I hear how they sound in the room compared to mine.

I have had the desk in two different places in the room now. I like it much better where it is now. It ended up getting moved due to me starting to work from home due to COVID about 3.5 years ago.

 

[marsonic]

This brings up a burning question about this process: what should I do with my chair when measuring? In my mind the chair should probably be where it usually is, but that often gets in the way of taking measurements and not sure if it interferes with the measurement process in SW.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.

There are a lot of necessary "things" in recording studios that screw with the sound....like recording consoles, desks, and the engineer.

A big desk (perhaps with a console on/in it) is probably the worst thing that people just kind of accept.

IOW, don't worry about the chair. Just get it out of the way to take measurements.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.

Yeah, I've been there. Back when I still had egg crates on my walls and learned about the real way to go about things I convinced myself that I couldn't make any music or mix until I got it all sorted. It was silly of me, I had never let that stop me before and have since convinced myself to do better.

IOW, don't worry about the chair. Just get it out of the way to take measurements.

Not overly worried about it anymore, just remembered that I had thought about it a bunch but never really had the discussion with anybody so I figured this was a good opportunity.

I actually leave my chair where I usually sit and measure with it in the way. My thinking is that I'm going to be there with the chair anyway so why not just measure with it there.

 

[marsonic]

I actually leave my chair where I usually sit and measure with it in the way. My thinking is that I'm going to be there with the chair anyway so why not just measure with it there.

It depends on what you're using to take the measurements.

If you're using trinnov, sonarworks, or possibly the moving mic method...either it or you will be in the way.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

It depends on what you're using to take the measurements.

If you're using trinnov, sonarworks, or possibly the moving mic method...either it or you will be in the way.

Using Sonarworks most of the time. The chair isn't as tall as I am so ear level clears the height of the chair enough to do the Sonarworks Measurement Dance