Monitoring/Room Correction Software.

[do_androids_dream]

Bass traps are really cumbersome and it takes a LOT of them to make a difference, figure 66% of the room covered in bass traps.

I only have 2 bass traps (homemade 5' x 2' and around 6 inches thick fibreglass panels) that straddle the corners behind my set-up and they make a huge difference to evening out and tightening up the bass response. I'm sure more would help too but I'm quite happy with the effect they have without feeling the need to add more presently.

[Breeze]

All great advice to the OP. One final word from me: if you can't hear or adequately judge your low end, use a quality high-pass filter on the 2-bus and bring it up to the point where it makes a difference, then back it off a tad. Better to have a slightly anemic mix than a completely unmanaged low end.

[camsr]

I think if we talk about basic monitor speakers and not necessarily Stage speakers or those beyond 8" (woofers), then we talk about a nearfield system.

Your room also doesn't need to be 66& covered in bass traps. That is a myth. Placing it at the right spot however is not. And that is usually in the corners and first reflection points. That is certainly not 66% of the room.


I recommend taking a dive over to GIK Acoustics and the Knowledge Base. Just one among many places where certain myths are debunked. I trust these people and can recommend them up and down. They are also active in the DIY acoustic panel realm, yet their shops is still running strong.



So the only three logical steps IMO are:
1) Measure your room, see what'S going on (Room EQ Wizard might help, GIK Acoustics has a great tutorial on that)
2) decide if whether or not you have to add absorber panels. Plenty of solutions around.
3) Then use a system like ARC to do the final correction touches.


I first started with ARC without treatment (years ago). Since then I built absorber panels with a price of about 30-40bucks each (the most expensive one was my monster bass trap, source material cost about 50EUR, plus work hours - think 80-90bucks). My first reflection points are covered, I have a bass trap behind the PC (where the most energy is building up) and I'll try to get some suitable corner traps in the future as well (due to the shape of my room, I can only cover the ceiling corners - so a Tri-Trap or a Foam absorber are my only solutions). I basically use ARC as fine tuning tool only - since my monitor speakers can't be setup in a very fine way.


So yeah... speakers can only sound as good as the room they are placed in.

Yeah but not all rooms are equal, some have bad dimensions that heavily skew the sound where the speakers are placed. If you have the bulk of the room covered with bass traps, the speaker positioning is less sensitive to boundary interference.

[Compyfox]

That is correct that "more bass traps = better frequency response". But even then, the absolute minimum points should be the corners and reflection zones. And that is usually enough for most applications. Especially if you can't morph a living room into a studio.


A dive over to the GIK Acoustic page (Glenn Kuras), or RealTraps page (by Ethan Winer) does help on that behalf.