It almost killed me but….

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Studio rejig is somewhat complete.

Hard to say when this journey began (my girlfriend compares it to building a city as it’s never complete), but it really picked up steam when I heard my old ATC SCM25A’s with Neumann’s MA1 correction. I’d used sonarworks with them, but what MA1 did essentially made the speakers feel like they disappeared and put me inside the music. They also made the ATC’s sound how I wish they always did - while they’re great speakers, I simply find them too soft/lacking detail in the very top end and they were slightly low on low end without a sub.

A day later and I traded them for the KH420’s you can see here. I used those for a while on my Ultimate Support stands, although they were right on the weight limit for the speakers and I never felt that comfortable resting speakers of this size on the Ultimate Support base plates.

Fast forward a few weeks and a smaller desk comes up for sale fairly locally. Unused, and 1/3 of the new price without any import fees. That led to me hunting down some proper speaker stands, switching interfaces from UAD to RME, finding a Satellite Octo (so I can sell the Apollo), changing the cabling so I’m running digitally into the KH750. I temporarily tried a Dangerous Source as a monitor controller which was absolute tripe. Upon hearing how bad it sounded, I decided to switch to RME and use the ARC remote as a controller than deal with passive controllers.

In top of all that, perhaps the most exhausting aspect has been altering the room acoustics. Lots of moving huge panels around (the sides are 60cm x 60cm soffits with an air gap behind them). It was a week solid of 14 hour days moving stuff around, measuring, adjusting.

Anyway. The room is sounding, and feeling better than ever. It measures REALLY well, and feels less dead to be in (because the panels are placed more effectively in the room).


IMG_8704.jpeg


It’s quite remarkable how much of getting a room sounding great costs nothing, and you can do a hell of a lot without spending much. Just getting the speaker and listening positions optimised does SO much, and from there concentrate on absorbing first reflections. Most of my panels were bought 2nd hand or built myself
 
Most annoying shit:

- LH41 baseplates. Reluctantly ordered so the monitors would be safely attached to the stands. After ordering, realised the (extremely depressing) price was just for 1. No way am I spending £300+ for 2 sheets of metal
- before succumbing to RME, I wanted my Apollo in the rack to the side so I can keep my desk minimal and cabling out of the way. Thunderbolt has a 2m maximum cable length, so ordered a hub+cable to extend another 2m. Just BARELY far enough away with a hub in an inconvenient place. Then I read about connectivity issues and stump up for a (used) Caldigit hub which are much better. Works well and then I decide that switching to RME is better overall. Now I have 2 Thunderbolt hubs 🫠
- Artificial plants. Tbh when I “finished” the room really needed something to make it feel nicer. And they’re handy to cover up some looks and THUNDERBOLT HUBS. Dull thing to spend money on.
- the sheer number of times I’ve either redone the patchbay or moved panels in the room, only to go back to where I had it. Annoyingly with a rack and wiring, it’s so much better to get the big looms in first. So when the new interface came, everything had to come out. Also doesn’t help that the UCX and ADI-2 have all their I/O crammed into very little space, and having the wall wart PSU’s on the back of the rack tray makes it fiddlier still. I’ll upload a photo of the back of the racks for Halloween. The manual shit left me pretty bruised and cut from lifting panels, amps, cabs etc on my own. After a week solid of it I had a sauna (🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮) to recover and it was like a religious experience.
 
What is that controller/mixer/console under your monitor? (With the faders)

The faux plants work for the ambiance. 👍 I should mix some in around here :ROFLMAO:
 
What is that controller/mixer/console under your monitor? (With the faders)
old ass Avid Artist Mix in a Sterling rack tray. Annoyingly the S1 has some stupid iPad dock thing built in, and it can't be rackmounted. So it would block my screen, especially because I DON'T want an iPad plonked there.

The Artist mix is still killer, I love it. Being hands on while mixing really just works better for me, if I was starting a rig from scratch it would be one of the first things I'd buy. Eucontrol means it just works better than any of the other options, although the faders from Softube and SSL look quite nice. Softube's new MKIII faders look to have taken the best from the Artist Mix and corrected the things I don't like about the S1. If Avid open up Eucon, that could be a good option in the future.

Artist Mix's still work great and you can find them dirt cheap used.
 
Having natural light and a view to the outside is great. Sitting in a closed off space for hours and hours can be torturous. Im assuming that cloud offsets anything reflecting from there?
 
Having natural light and a view to the outside is great. Sitting in a closed off space for hours and hours can be torturous. Im assuming that cloud offsets anything reflecting from there?
For a while I had the window in front of me blocked off and I hated it. So much better having some natural light, plants and SQUIRRELS to look at.

Long post, I can’t help myself here.

Cloud is absolutely one of the most important absorbers you can put up.

The goal is to really absorb as much of the 1st reflections as you can, this reduces the influence of the reflections with the most energy by the time they reach you. and it’ll also reduce the energy of later reflections too. Our ears can’t distinguish between 1st reflections and later ones that are below approx 20ms. So anything <20ms is going to have the biggest effect on what we hear.

Having a good depth and air gap makes the panels extra effective. My rear wall is quite far away, so panels there actually don’t have that much influence on things. The sides and ceiling make a huge difference to the response at listening position, so focussing my absorbers around there yielded the best results.

One other interesting thing, is you’ll notice the front wall has no absorbers at all.

Sound at higher frequencies becomes more and more directional, so a lot of sound isn’t bouncing off the front wall (at least until it’s bounced around the room and come back much weaker). At lower frequencies, sound radiates in all directions, and below the Schroeder frequency, it behaves more like a pressure wave (and less like a ray). Furthermore typical 4-6” panels on the front wall aren’t going to be very effective at dealing with the bass that does bounce off that wall, and to a degree, it’s not a bad thing. The extra low end can help the efficiency of the speakers so they’re working less hard and you have better headroom/distortion. Positioning the speakers close to the front wall and using a sub is about the best you can do short of flush mounting them (which requires you to know exactly where to put your monitors of choice, and is hard to do properly so you don’t introduce other problems).

TLDR; a good DEEP ceiling absorber is well worth it.
 
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Cool pictures. I've been procrastinating with my ceiling absorption plans for several months. This is some good inspiration to push me. I dream of one day upgrading my monitoring to something like those Amphions. Does the Neumann room correction work with a passive set like those?


The fake plants are a nice touch.
 
I dream of one day upgrading my monitoring to something like those Amphions. Does the Neumann room correction work with a passive set like those?
It works, but MA1 isn’t designed for them. They’ve designed it to account for the crossovers and specs of their own speakers. I did use it with ATC’s and it sounded great but it just felt better using it in an all in one neumann rig as designed.

I’ve quite enjoyed the Amphions but honestly…. I don’t know if I’d recommend them. As I’ve learned more I’ve kind of come to realise how many of these brands are essentially just marketing, and selling pretty cheap parts in some basic/flawed cabinets. I do enjoy the amphions for balancing on, but side by side with the Neumanns they kind of sound like a kitchen radio.

Just personal preference, but I’d avoid Barefoot/Focal/Adam etc too, largely for the same reasons. I think Barefoot is technically a Vintage King brand. The more “old school” brands that have been around a while have proper R&D and are a much safer bet - I’d recommend the likes of PMC/Neumann/Genelec/Quested/ATC (with some caveats).
 
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