Turtlerock Forum

I have bottom end issues
I'd like to fix them

I know nothing about it myself, I guess I could learn, but at the same time I just want it done.

Ideally, I'd love to find someone who would like to trade skill / knowledge / assistance / guidance for studio time

Any suggestions (Melbourne) ?

Eat more grains....?

But seriously, it is a hard nut to crack with little money.
Ive had a couple of rooms in the past that I had problems.
Having little to no money to rebuild a properly designed room and spend a fortune (which is pretty much the recipe) the few things I did learn from some experts I brought in, was to 1st find out and learn the exact frequencies that are problematic before the experts came in, move your monitors around the space until the problem lessens, put a wide deep shelf for the monitors to sit on, get some low end diffusers into corners, build specific DIY diffusers that attenuate the problem lumps.
Place lots of equipment to diffuse standing waves (like racks behind the monitoring position), Empty rooms are a much bigger problem than rooms full of lumpy objects like racks etc.
One thing Richard Priddle (RIP) showed me which was a great experiment, go to your local whitegoods store, and ask for lots of different size cardboard boxes, and put lots in your room, sometimes put smaller boxes into bigger boxes. The great thing I learned doing this is how easy it is to get rid of most problems.
Doing all the above and experimenting it is surprising how much improvement you can make.
Hopefully you will get closer to a much more even sounding room.
1st - move the monitors around, then try the other tips.

These are all no budget recommendations, not pro acoustic advice, but they worked wonders for me in a couple of spaces where I worked and had no money, but problems were solved enough to become small issues.

Perfection, or even vaguely close is expensive to do to as a retrofit (rebuild properly) a space.
Good luck Lee

Thanks Chris, all good thoughts
Move the monitors around, will do, take measurements I'll do, but the room itself is well populated with a range of stuff, large seating arrangement comprising of wood, lots of insulation, carpet, oddly shaped. Two 2 seater couches, rack gear, large bass trapping in the rear wall, corner traps, console, more equipment rack and tape machine. and it's a tight squeeze as is, certainly not much more I can add here

I should mention that my problem is a big lack of bottom end, and nowhere in the room does it seem to 'collect'. The subs are moving a lot of ear but i'll be buggered if I know where it's going.. boo room

Any chance of a problem with the actual monitors themselves?
I've only used NS10's down there but the room never really seemed light in the lows.

Hi Lee,

If you could provide a plan view drawing of your room with dimensions and surfaces noted I could help out.

-Peter

That's fantastic Peter! I'll try and have something for you tomorrow

Speakers are Barefoots MM27 (and NS10s), definitely no problem with the speakers, came with me from my last place where I had again major issues with how they interacted with the room. But I took them over to Paul at Indie Masters who also has a pair and we put them up side by side, and while there were minor differences (mine had an earlier mid driver) the bottom end was very much the same. So, it's the room.. i think

Sometimes lack of bass indicate a room
That doesn't have the real problems and your just not hearing
All the usual problems most ( nearly all ) rooms have .
Which can defy common sense but is actually what's going on

And of coarse lack of real bass also can indicate standing waves
Thats are nuking the bass sound In which case
You can acheive all kinds of better results playing acoustic clever guy
but really without skill luck and money
Your fucked .

But if you just cannot hear real sub bass ANY where
in the room
Consider yourself lucky and buy a sub woofer .

Lack of bass, I agree with Rick - put in a subwoofer and experiment more from there.

Ok, re buying a sub, that seems crazy
The barefoots have in total 1000W pushing 4 10" subs, surely I don't need to buy a sub, I need to correct the problem

Hi Lee,

I assume you've done all the obvious things like checking the phase and cables, mono-ing and left-only / right-only tests...

Can you record something and do a spectrum analysis of it to see where the freqs are? I can do a print out of that for you (just in Wavelab) if that would help.

Last (silly) suggestions - does it sound different with the door open?

Barefoot's worry me a bit....ie a speaker which points sound in many different directions, front and sides....call me insane, but sure that causes all sorts of bullshit to arise. I'm not an acoustics expert...nor much of an "audio engineer"...but their premise seems flawed? unless someone can explain the logic behind it.
ontop of that, on their site, they dont publish their frequency response, nor is it easy to find online.
if you have home hi fi speakers, with a 10-15" seperate sub, i'd try giving them a blast in your room and see if they have the same problem.
i know this isnt a helpful post considering the outlay on a pair of speakers like that.

Having sat in on a mix in your new room lee I would just make the point that all the subs get sucked into the rack closet behind the barefoots but as we discussed when I was there, the mix room is extremely consistant no matter where you sit.

The problem as I see it (uneducated guess) is the proximity of the speakers to that little rack closet. Maybe look at treating that space or.... The barefoots may NOT be the right speakers for that room...

How are mixes translating?

The couple of times Ive used Barefoots, from memory, they did not seem to go down very low.
I would still try a sub - as in borrow/hire one to do some research, cant be a bad move at all.

You have to start somewhere, that costs little, and reveals much info.
A sub will tell you a lot that you will never hear with the Barefoots.
Plus moving the speakers around the room.
You could spend a fortune on improving the room, get all the pro's in, go to the bank....

So your not getting the "thwack " in your chest you used to
Get and your thinking the room is even in its loss of bass
And it's somehow magically getting sucked up and you want to fix it ?


Unless you find out you have a "thwack " stealing
Bass standing wave

Re read my post .. Borrow a sub a big one and see
What's what

4x10 side firing subs is not even nearly enough air movement
For a room that is not " bouncing back down low "
To give the same thwack that a room that bounces
The bass back at you does .
Not even nearly


I have 2 x 18 inch subs to install in my room
The 2 x 12 i have now is about right

Your room could well be moving the bass around and creating a standing wave
But if so it also must have the boom hiding somewhere

Got a Ladder ?
Check to see if its up high near the roof
It is sometimes then you can move it back

The common theme is of course the monitors... you've tried them in two well designed rooms (in which literally 1000's of records have been made) and you're still dealing with bottom end issues. I know what it's like to be attached to an expensive monitor, and I also know what it's like to be in denial about how they are interacting with the room... I loved my big PMCs dearly, but I never actually heard them sound properly great until they found their new home at Barney's place.

Might be good to get your hands on some other high end monitors with similar LF performance and see what's going on. Which is not to say that the room isn't the issue - it was never designed to be anything more than a decent tracking environment. I think we did have a sub in there briefly, plus my PMCs very early on for a laugh (but there was no 'critical' listening as such, just jazz whilst soldering ;-). Oh and I remember we had some PMC AML1s in there for evaluation (32Hz, but way different to the barefoots) and they sounded stunning.

There is also the minor issue of you being a serious bloody perfectionist ;-)

Indeed, no thwack
I've felt that thwack before from the very same speakers in my old control room, so I know they can put it out. The previous room had about 2/3 volume of the new one, so this is bigger but it's not too big (as I understand, they MM27s should be right at home in a control room of this size). I appreciate what you're saying here Rick about the room bouncing back, I guess it comes down to wall density and potentially excessive bass trapping? there's a lot of that here.. and the walls are 50mm compressed straw, two skins thick with air gap I believe

I got my ladder out and listened all over the room, no real bass pockets except for in the front top corners near the large bass traps. The back wall is about a meter deep at minimum, 1.5 at the max thereabouts. In that wall are the Dave Flett special, hanging low end energy absorbers. So there may well be some bass collecting back there but I wouldn't know it

Hi Jamil, the idea with the barefoots is that sub-bass frequencies are omnidirectional, so those subs could be front side or rear and it wouldn't make a difference to the listener. The speaker is actually a really clever design that allows for them to operate vibration free even at very high volumes.

As Mark points out yes there's a machine room that has an enormous amount of bottom end energy collecting in it, but I wouldn't say that it's being trapped in there and not let into the control room. There's just some low end resonance happening back there,

Moving the speakers around within reason didn't cause any discernible difference, but there's only so many places I can actually move them. Switching one off also made no difference. Doors open or close, no difference

I found a 12" sub upstairs (with Myles's name on it) so I've been playing around with that, in fact yes indeed it does add bass, but... I dunno, I just think it's strange to have to do that after buying such capable speakers in the first place. I've heard from many that the barefoots are particularly room dependent. but I love their mids and highs! I'll keep poking around, maybe, two subs would just be the cheapest way to do it in the end anyway

I'll definitely explore the sub idea more, but Chris I won't know where you heard the barefoots before (shit maybe everyone is have room issues with these) but they go LOW, rated to 30Hz I assure you they get there. They definitely put out all the information

Hey Wez
ha well crap man, I just want this to be as good as it deserves to be! I dealt with that crap in the old room for 4 years, I plan to be here much longer than that so I want to get it right from the start. And you got me, yep I'd agree I'm attached to the idea of the barefoots, I mean their mids and highs are stunning and great to work with, but by all means if I can't sort this out i'd start looking elsewhere. I have thought about the Geithain RL 901K monitors instead because of the cardioid bottom end.. I hope it doesn't come to that

Well lee you have a pair of NS10's and a horrortone, many fine records were made with that combo........


Joking ok...

Cya in a bit.

i have spent a bit of time on barefoots ..

obvious question is they are not mounted ON the console are they ..?

2 big subs .. i bet

i will give you a 2 year head start .

Or humour me and deactivate the bass traps
Unhook them .. ( membrane types ..?)
Those things are specific to particular monitors and the
Amount of air they push for a given volume

Unless they were made for your speakers
Having them active in a room is bullshit .

For what it's worth
The room that I haven't built yet to house the
Neve that I don't use yet
Will most likely be using barefoots
....
And subs

...
And great sounding walls

...
And no bass traps
Mostly they are bullshit
....

Mostly

rick wrote:...
And great sounding walls

...

And there you go
Unfortunately that's something I don't have it seems, they just don't have the density. Adding a sub can definitely give a better listening experience, but anyone else in the place might not be happy Potentially, this involves adding an extra skin or two to the wall

They're on sound anchors

And I will definitely explore what reducing the trapping does (at some stage)

Hi Lee,
I had a look at the controlroom picture on the Sunshine website and those speakers look too far apart to me.
It could be the angle in the photo maybe ...
Also what is left in the soffits, is it void behind there?

Hi Jason, I've actually moved studios 2 months ago, I should update the website eventually..

Here's a video from a mix session on Monday, showing the new room
http://www.vimeo.com/75243065

And one more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8_UpZmPdmQ

Lee Cardan wrote:Hi Jason, I've actually moved studios 2 months ago, I should update the website eventually..

Here's a video from a mix session on Monday, showing the new room
http://www.vimeo.com/75243065

And one more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8_UpZmPdmQ

who is the artist in the second video?

would like to hear the album


cheers

Peter

Good clips - thanks Lee

After thinking about it today Lee I reckon taking out the bass traps in the rear corners (behind speakers), filling that machine room void with some absorption and making sure those doors are closed would give you some low end back in the room. Whether or not it might be flabby, un focused low end - experimentation will only tell.

I just don't think there's enough mass in those walls IMHO. Having that small sub flat chat and the monitoring level at a very pleasant listening volume, there was an unideal amount of low end leakage into studio B CR so creating another few skins should help to isolate it to the control room. But that means ripping the place apart and band-aiding it hey!

Flett wouldn't have tested or built the room on anything remotely alike the Barefoots in Hawthorn & Port Melbourne I'm assuming so there's another point to factor in.

My 2c's on it all....

Lee because i am seeing glass pretend walls
and i am hearing about bass traps in the front walls

I hearby lower the challenge to you needing two subs within 1 year !

yes you need 2 ..

no bass is NOT undercernibly omnidirection at low freqs
that is NO it not .

doesnt matter much omnidirection .. sure


then if your really clever you will tune the subs to the room so that the cones barely if ever seem to move fast only slow and steady in time with the music no flaps .

when i figure out how perzactly to do that i will let you know !

My guess is I think your standing wave null will be out in the recording room ..
and i cant guess how your going to change or factor that in .. ever .
and really it doesnt matter .. if you want thawak down low and you havent got it now
freq is not going to ever help . nor will an outside shell .

you sir ..have a sound laberinth..
and unless it was built to make your particular speakers rock .. they wont .
probably does everything else but thawk .. so smile .. '

labierinths are much more desirable then boxes for making records ..
learn it .. sub it .. tune it as best you can and get on with it .

Yeah I totally agree Dave, and while putting a sub now may fix the problem it'll also make it worse for whatever else goes on in there. But now that I've played with a sub a little I really would like to add them but walls first, and come to think of it there's plenty of ways to add density to the walls. Thanks again for dropping by!

Hi Peter,
The artist is Aurora Jane and it's her fourth studio album
Recorder by herself all over the place, mixed here. She did a great job!
www.aurorajane.com release is October 31st.

And I really appreciate the straight up advice Rick
Would you agree that adding density to the walls wouldn't be a bad idea even if only for soundproofing? Or is this a kind of whole redesign thing?

does the bass response change throughout the room?
In the videos it looks like there isn't a huge front to back dimension in the room (5-6m?)
Also aside from those corner traps I can't see any low/lowmid absorption.

I'd try getting some kind of large (~1mx2m) resonant panels up between the speakers and the front wall.
You could build something quite cheaply.
try two layers of dense 100mm fluffy stuff (acoustisorb/polymax) and build it into a basic frame with castors.
This will let you 'try it out' before you go drilling into walls and other things of that nature.

You could always then modify those panels with some thin ply and fabric to create more of a panel absorber to get their achieve a specific increase in absorption in the LF range.

Hang something from the ceiling too.

Basically I think you need to trap the first order reflections down to the lowest frequency that you can. Try and stop LF pressure waves folding back on themselves.
Strategically placed panel absorbers will be able to do this without affecting the HF reverb time too much.

If you have transmission issues with your room leaking LF around your nieghbours
an extra perimeter wall or internal wall is always a great idea or even getting serious about our current walls and doors and air locks leaks will do wonders .. if its just sound pressure ( air ) noise it really just gets down to the space to build on top of what you have and mass to get in there

.. if the sound is structure bourne
then its going to get down to money and brainiac solutions .

personally I think that all rooms have issues and unless they are mind numbingly bad the best answer for most people is learn the flaws and work your strengths .

I build rooms because I enjoy the tinker and i have learnt a lot over the decades of building and working in various rooms and tinkering and pulling apart other peoples studios to salvage stuff.

Mostly the real world art of acoustics is bullshit
Mostly...