Homeward Bound The Move to the Small Studio

By Bob Hodas
Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM
Part One: Isolation Issues and Speaker Placement
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PART ONE: ISOLATION ISSUES AND SPEAKER PLACEMENT
Most people don't understand that converting a bedroom into an accurate recordin
g/mixing room is more difficult than building a facility from the ground up. The
process may not be fast or cheap, although sometimes we get lucky. As the audio
phile community discovered long ago, you can't just put a pair of speakers into
a room and expect it to sound good.
There are a number of issues that engineers need to pay attention to if they wan
t a professional, accurate home working environment. Home studios are plagued wi
th the same problems as large facilities and some small spaces are even gnarlier
. If you've been reading articles in Mix or have visited my Website (www.bobhoda
s.com), some of what I say here might sound familiar, but it is all worthwhile b
ecause the laws of physics haven't changed much in the past 20 years.
The most expensive issue is isolation, but we also need to look seriously at roo
m orientation. Next is symmetry. First-order reflections definitely need to be a
ddressed and, of course, that monster problem of how to control the bass. (I'll
address these two topics in Part 2.) For this article, let's assume that your ro
om has parallel walls
your basic shoe box.
YES, SIZE MATTERS
A room's dimensions are the first restriction when building a home studio. This
is the first issue that all studio designers face when working from the ground u
p, but in most homes, you're stuck with what you've got. Designers calculate roo
m modes for rooms with parallel walls, so be aware that the charts shown here ar
e based on assumptions that won't always apply to every room.
In these measurements, the assumption is also made that a room is infinitely con
tained; i.e., a concrete bunker. The less contained a room is, the more low freq
uencies will pass through the walls. Of course, you will be subject to the first
peaks and dips of the wavelength, but some of these frequencies (starting with
the lowest) are going to pass right through walls and windows and just keep on g
oing. Wavelengths that escape are not going to bounce back into the listening ar
ea out-of-phase to haunt you in the form of cancellations. It all depends on the
stiffness and density of your walls. Some studio designers even work this conce
pt to control the room response by letting some bass escape. It doesn't work too
well if you have neighbors who are on the receiving end of all the bass you jus
t let out of your house without a license. Or, maybe you need isolation from you
r neighbors or airplanes. Depending on how they are built, walls may vibrate and
absorb some frequencies. Studio designers may also use this technique, although
the safest bet is to build your walls as stiff as possible so that they don't f
lex. You can always add strategically placed membrane absorbers once the room is
scoped out.

The mode charts also assume that the speaker is against or in the front wall. Th
is works for some home studios, but obviously not many. The speaker's distance f
rom the walls is going to determine reflections that will mix in with the direct
signal either in or out of phase, causing dips or peaks in the response. The se
ating placement determined by the mode chart isn't necessarily the right spot to
put that chair. And don't forget that you must have parallel walls and floor/ce
iling: No cut-off corners, no L shapes, no angles, no wet bar along the sidewall
, no open walkway into the next room. A big rack of gear right behind the mix po
sition doesn't help much, either.
If your room has parallel walls, your speakers are on the front wall and your st
udio is in the basement or just very well-built, then there is merit to the char
ts here. And as I stated above, even if you don't fit this criteria, checking th
ese factors is not a bad place to start. JBL offers a free, easy-to-use and accu
rate Excel-based calculator on its Website at www.harman.com/wp/index.jsp?articl
eId=131.
Most home studio owners will be stuck with the existing room dimensions, but if
you have the freedom to move a wall, consider creating a room size that fits int
o the Golden Ratio: a ratio of length-to-width-to-height that minimizes the effe
cts of modes. It spaces them so that they do not pile up, causing large bumps or
dips in the frequency response. There are a number of well-accepted ratios depe
nding on the room's volume. You can play around with the mode calculator mention
ed above to find a good ratio that works within your current room size restricti
ons or use a program that helps determine an ideal room size. I use two programs
: AcousticX from Canadian designers Pilchner Schoustal (www.pilchner-schoustal.c
om/old/acoustic-x/index.html) and RPG's Room Sizer, located at www.rpginc.com/pr
oducts/roomsizer/index.htm. Once your room size is scoped out, it's time to see
if you can make noise in it.
KEEP IT QUIET
Isolation is key: Unless you live alone, you generally can't make as much noise
as you want at all hours of the day. This also applies if you have neighboring a
partments. Addressing isolation in an existing house structure is a difficult is
sue. Most homes are not built with much sound isolation in mind, and the hollow
walls and stud spacing are not ideal. Unless you are prepared to build a room wi
thin a room, you will never be totally isolated from the rest of the house or yo
ur neighbors. Many of my clients know their neighbors and made arrangements to l
isten in the neighbor's house while they had the music cranked in their studio.
This will give you a good idea of how much work you have ahead of you.
On the cheap, you can do several things: Replace your interior door with a solid
-core exterior door. Make sure you address the air spaces around the doors with
some type of insulation. Remember that any little air space will leak sound like
a sieve. This also applies to your HVAC ducts, but most home studio budgets can
't accommodate that. If budget allows, purchase medium-priced, mid-quality doors
that are used in home theaters, such as the ones available at www.owenscorning.
com/around/sound/products/door.asp.
Basic isolation can be added to the walls and ceiling by simply adding another l
ayer of mass. If you're going to go to this amount of trouble, instead of using
?-inch Sheetrock, try MDF or Wonderboard. These materials have much more mass th
an Sheetrock. Be sure that when you install an extra layer, it is glued and scre
wed and that the new seams do not overlay the existing seams. A new material on
the market, called QuietRock and QuietWood, has a significantly increased amount
of isolation. For more information, visit www.quietsolution.com/construction-bu
ilding.html. I recommend it, and you may find that you will simplify the constru
ction process with this material. Any of these wallboards can be made more effec

tive by floating them on a resilient channel. This creates an insulating air spa
ce and isolates the new wall movement from the existing wall
very effective, and
, of course, more labor and money. There are various forms of this channel, so s
hop around. Visit www.silentsource.com/rsic.html, www.kineticsnoise.com or www.a
uralex.com/sound_isolation_rc8/rc_discussion.asp to get started.
I hope I don't have to tell you that two or three layers of glass are better tha
n one. Glass is expensive, but if your neighbors complain, you're history. Find
a good window dealer that carries insulated windows.
Unless you plan on floating a floor (which is expensive), you'll have to live wi
th structure-born transmission. It is tough to control, but an alternative is to
treat the ceiling in the room below you with QuietRock, but that will still onl
y give you minimal low-frequency isolation because the bass will travel througho
ut the house via supports.
PLACING THOSE SPEAKERS
The old wives' tale that states, having speakers in your face eliminates room pro
blems is a crock: There is no escaping the laws of physics. Before you can think
about acoustic treatments, you need to optimize the speaker positions in your ro
om. This is the single most important thing that you can do to improve your syst
em response. It is very important that you become extremely familiar with your s
peakers. Take a good look at the manufacturer's frequency response charts. Remem
ber that these are anechoic measurements, and as soon as you put your speaker in
a room, the bass response will start to change significantly. Bass response wil
l build up even more when you place the speaker against the wall or in a corner.
But the response charts are useful for knowing the speaker's limitations. For e
xample, Yahama NS-10s can roll off dramatically after 100 Hz, so you don't have
to be too concerned about deep bass problems when positioning them. Using a wall
or corner may even be to your benefit. You will also want to pay close attentio
n to the recommended position for proper phase alignment. For some speakers, it'
s directly aligned with the tweeter; for others, it's a point between the woofer
and tweeter. It depends on the design, so check the manufacturer's literature.
When you position your speakers and listening position, make sure this alignment
point intersects your ear position.
Again, I am assuming that your room has four walls with equal spacing; i.e., the
common rectangle
no L shapes. Step one is determining which wall your speakers
should be on. If your room is square, then this doesn't matter. If your room is
rectangular, then there is no rule of thumb as to whether you should put your sp
eakers on the long wall or the short wall
it all depends on the dimensions. This
is not an easy thing to figure out without an analyzer. It will take some time
and effort, but the payoff is tremendous. The speaker distance from the front an
d sidewalls will also dictate the listening position. This is one of those chicke
n-or-the-egg situations: All of these factors are interactive, so plan on moving
things around a lot.
To figure out which wall to use, place the speakers on two intersecting walls: o
ne on the short wall and one on the long wall. Place the speakers at listening h
eight in an approximate left or right speaker position as if you had stereo spea
kers. (Remember the chicken/egg problem.) Run a mono send from your CD player to
one speaker at a time and seriously listen to the bass. Keep yourself centered
between the sidewalls, and move forward and back six inches at a time. Your dist
ance from the speaker will play a part in the frequency response. You should als
o move the speaker forward and back and side-to-side six inches at a time in thi
s process. You should be able to get a feel for which speaker has a flatter bass
response. Remember, more bass is not necessarily better! Listen for smooth and
connected bass from mid down to low.

Figure 1: Bass response of a speaker against a short wall, 8 to 200 Hz

Now you've done the hard part! While finding the proper wall, you also found the
proper speaker and listening position. Take measurements of the winning speaker
distances from each wall and set the speakers up symmetrically. Figure 1 and fi
gure 2 are examples of just how different the walls can be and what you should l
isten for. Remember that there is no rule of thumb here; sometimes the speakers
will perform best on the long wall and other times they'll be better on the shor
t wall. Sometimes they want to be right against a wall. However, I've never seen
a room where putting the speakers in corners worked.
Figure 2: Bass response of a speaker against a long wall, 8 to 200 Hz
If you don't want to go through the process mentioned above, you could hire a gu
y like me to do the math, analyze your room and tell you where your speakers sho
uld be placed. Or you could buy Room Optimizer by RPG Inc. (www.rpginc.com/produ
cts/roomoptimizer/index.htm) and try to figure it out yourself. While these calc
ulations work quite well in theory, they are neither perfect nor fool-proof. The
program is based on perfectly symmetrical rooms with walls that do not flex or
pass signal. I normally compare the direct measurement results with my calculati
ons, and have found that the RPG program is often very close; I usually only mak
e minor changes to positions to fine-tune the system. But there are times when,
due to construction, for example, the program doesn't get the job done and an an
alyzer and your ears are needed.
I can't stress the idea of symmetry enough. If your speakers are not placed symm
etrically in the room, then they will have different frequency responses. This m
eans that your music will sound different in the left and right speakers, your c
enter image will be off-center and your depth of field will suck. So make sure t
hat the left and right speakers are equidistant from the sidewalls. The same app
lies to the speakers in regard to the front wall.
Why is the above true? Below 200 Hz, your speakers are fairly omnidirectional. T
he signals that bounce off the walls and ceiling are going to mix in with the di
rect speaker signal. This delayed bounce will cause comb filtering. The time del
ay, and thus, frequency of interaction are dependent on the speaker distance fro
m the walls. If the left and right speakers are different distances from the wal
ls, then the cancellations will occur at different frequencies. You wouldn't put
one speaker on the floor and the other on a stand, would you? (This is also tru
e for first-order reflections above 400 Hz, which will be addressed in Part 2.)
Figure 3 demonstrates what happens to the bass when speakers are placed asymmetr
ically in a room. One speaker looks great (red curve), but the other (blue curve
) is in bad shape. If you try to treat the above bass problem acoustically, you
will run into trouble. A treatment that works for one speaker will not work for
the other, and perhaps make it even worse.
Pay attention to the placement of your equipment in the room. Most people don't
consider this factor, but having a bunch of gear on the right side of the room a
nd nothing on the left is going to change the way the speakers behave. Try to de
sign a layout that is balanced side-to-side as much as possible. Remember, it's
all about symmetry! Next month, I'll tackle room reflections and acoustic treatm
ent, including the tough task of bass control.
Bob Hodas is one of the top acoustical consultants in the business, known for hi
s 30 years of experience in detailed testing and measurement techniques, plus am
azing ears to boot. He's first-call for studios all over the world, tuning rooms
and tweaking speakers, and he's published dozens of articles on the subject. La
tely, however, he's been busier than ever tuning project studios: As more produc
ers and engineers make the transition to home rooms, they realize how difficult
it is for mixes created at home to translate to the commercial studio. For those
considering building a studio in their existing space, Hodas shares his tips in

this two-part design series. In part one, he discusses the unique isolation cha
llenges in existing rooms and details the finer points of speaker placement. Nex
t month, he breaks down room treatment and EQ.
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