JBL room mode correction products

Steinberg Lounge
1

What do think about these things? Including their new “Big Knob” type monitor controller that comes with a measurement mic and correction utility.

At my previous house my music room had some treatment, but no bass traps, and it was fairly tamed in terms of reflections but did have the typical mode at the mix position.

When I sold that house a few years ago, I had to tear the Auralex stuff off the walls and of course the glue pulled a lot of the paint and a fair amount of the drywall off with it. It cost a good chunk of change to have it repaired.

In my current home I have no treatment at all in my music room (I’ve taken to putting up dual gobo’s made from heavy blankets when U mic something). and of course there’s the inevitable bass drop at the mix position.

So I was looking at this new JBL thingy. I seem to recall some people like Paul saying that they were a poor solution… but wouldn’t they be better than nothing at all?

2

Poor solution. EQ will only makes the room worse at every other piosition you clampo your head at and eat up ridiculous amounts of headroom in your monitor amps if you have to put back a huge dip in frequency response.

The frequnecy response of a room ias caused by relfections and standing waves and as such is time based. A standing wave takes time to accumulate as the energy is fed from the sound source and time to dissipate after the sound source is removed.

On the only errors you can succesuly EQ out is boundary bass response i.e the bass energy thrown out backwards ( speakers are omnidirectional in the bass region ) which is reflected off the front wall and combines with the bass thrown forwards.

bags of rockwool :slight_smile:

3

Okay… I knew there was a solid argument against it.

I’ve thought about constructing some absorbent panels that are free standing/movable that wouldn’t mess up my paint/drywall

I’m sacred of rockwool because I’ve read it emits particles into the air that aren’t good for the lungs – ?

4

Aloha guys,

Sort of on the same topic,

Anyone have any experience using the IK Multimedia ARC system?
Does this process work at all?


TIA
{‘-’}

5

Hello gentlemen,
I have quite a large room that i use as my project studio, and have been thinking a lot about acoustics in there lately. I thought it would be cool if there was a company that you could send a picture of the space, and they could inturn tell you the best way to treat the room based on the pic. Please excuse my ignorance if I am way off base On this idea.
My room is not horrible, but I think it could be better. Any advice would be appreciated.

Keep making music,

Krist Hochburger

6

The rockwool doesn’t ‘emit’ particles. If you don’t disturb it, it’s fine.

7

As a start. put as much absorption in the front half of the room ( including ceiling ) as you can and leave the rear half of the room more live - less absorption.

A good way to imagine refelctive4 acoustics, is to imagine your room was completely made of mirrors. your speakers are two light bulbs. For a completely clear sound you would see just two light bulbs, but the mirrors would show lots of light bulbs. Where you see these exta light bulbs is the place to put the most absorption.

The other acoustical problem is bass resonances ( room modes ). These require lots of absoprtion and corners are the best place to put it.

8

I use the ARC system and I found it made a big difference.
True, not the perfect solution, neither is your typical home studio room. Most are too small (like mine) or odd shaped.

Some room treatment is a must, or you will find it will try to correct big dips and peaks etc, as I found.
It was a case of then moving the treatment around until I got a happy medium.

I was getting dips and peaks of over 12db, some fine tunning and now their around or just under 6db.

I was shocked to find how out of whack my stereo image was!
I knew there was a problem before, when I mixed something it seemed ok on the monitors unitl I put my headphones on and found one side was hotter than the other, could never figure out what I was doing wrong.
Now I dont have that problem.
Mid lows and lows were also a problem, I’d always reduce them in the mix, play the track in the car and find the mix was ‘totally’ lacking in that area, go back and remix, play it the car again to find it was too much :unamused:

Now I trust what im hearing, and find I dont have to keep trying my mixes on different systems like I did before. so Im very happy that I bought IK’s arc system. It works for me.
But I wouldnt use the arc system in an ‘untreated’ room.

This is exactly what ive done and works pretty well, with the Arc system pretty much being the iceing on the cake :slight_smile:
My room is a converted garage, so the walls are all made up of different materials. Having the treatment symmetrical to the left and right of me (using the mirror idea) still wasnt cutting it and I wonder if the difference in material could have been the biggest cause of the poor stereo image? (just guessing)

I dont have enough knowledge in this area to give any in depth advice, all i can say is, for me, some room treatment and the arc system has given me a far better sweet spot for mixing.
I will try and upload a pic of the test results for any that are interested.

I would still like to work out how to get rid of the dips and peaks in the 150hz to 300hz area so the arc system wasnt working so hard in this region, but it doesnt give me any real issuse while mixing, when the finances are there I might look into it a bit more.

Krist, I think Auralex might do what your after http://www.auralex.com/pcf/

ARC system.jpg
ARC system.jpg846×516 96.9 KB

9

Don’t worry about the rockwool. Its good stuff. When you build your panels, just wear a respirator and upholster the panels with a breathable material like burlap (which is really cheap) or tighter weave fabric. My clouds are upholstered with bed sheets. The rockwool will not be a problem.

Moveable panels are in full force here. I have at least 8 that I move around and have stands for.

10

Sound isolation is different from acoustic treatment to sweeten the room

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You basically need more absorption. Once you get down to these frequency 4" rockwool panels don’t do much. You need big volumes of it.

12

Soundboard? Doesn’t sound like it’s gonna do much if its’ what I think it is.

13

The clue is in the name … :wink:

14

Which is why this medium to low grade sound isolation board won’t work


and if I made a box with that Sound Board and some cheap 1"X2" fir strips, doubled on two sides with an air gap inbtween two Soundboard surfaces, which is a softer material/surface, maybe it’ll work at least somewhat effectively as bass trap panels at the corners too?

NO, NO and No!!

15

The only thing that will do is give you horrible midrange boxy resonances. it might absorb some refelctinos at 10kHz, but nothing lower so will further mess up the sound

16

Sleeping bags are a lot different to that soundboard


Surely any softer material reduces some amount of reflections to a low level sound source? Be it just small nearfields, an acoustic guitar, vocals. Everything else I do is direct (bass, guitar, keys, drums)

Absorbent material is different from the soft soundboard you describe


As for my window letting sound out…basically for my singing which is likely the only place I may be heard by any neighbors…I’d like it to keep it between me and me while I’m doing vocal takes > :blush: > So our fellow Cubaser and buddy of mine, duncanjp…he has some left-over so-called sound-proof type of sheet rock from his studio that I may at some point buy from him, just enough to place over my window at times to reduce (not sound-proof) from anyone hearing me singing, in which I get overly self conscience and sing worse than usual > :unamused: > Sheet rock is heavy so I was also thinking of something lighter too.

best way to sort the window out is to build a 2x2 rectangular frame and screw as many layers of sheetrock to it as you can manage. insert it in the window. Sorted


I > never > intend to ‘sound-proof’ my home studio, I just want to reduce some room reflection during vocal takes and reduce that from any neighbors hearing me outside. At this point I’m getting by with nothing. At times I’ve blasted a boom box outside to drown me out if anyone happens to be in hearing range > :slight_smile: >

But…I was told that a recorded vocal take in an untreated bedroom studio would really come through to be any real problem…though I was also told my vocals sounded like they were in a bathroom > :confused: > But I did have some reverb and delay going so maybe that was it.

Vocals don’t have much in the LF range. Hanging a booth sleeping bags will certainl y improve the recorded sound no end, but to sort the room out for mixing a full range tune you ened decent absorption.

Rockwool isn’t that expensive :slight_smile:

17

The rockwool will do wonders for the room and is cheap. Another product is Owens Corning 703 accoustic insulation but is much more expensive. The big difference between the two is the OC 703 is ridgid and can be covered with fabric using spray adheasive, have picture frame wire strung on the back and hung like a picture on the wall. Rockwool is limp and needs a frame of some sort to support it. Just a thought. :wink:

18

Tanx for that info sav.

This is a great thread. After all these years I’m still learning stuff.

IMHO
The room in which you work and the quality of the artists are the two most important
aspects of professional music re-production.


{‘-’}

19

What about the popular Auralex 2’x2’ foam squares for taming the reflections? (leaving aside the problem of room modes/bass freq’s)

My old house had a bunch of those squares on the walls using the mirror trick… plus the wedges up in the corners and diffusors on the opposite wall

Seemed to help greatly

I can’t be bothered to attach a bunch of fabric on rockwool or 703!

20

Interesting topic lads, keep it up :smiley:
I have some interesting ideas forming in my head now :bulb: