Do I need bass traps?

[PieBerger]

Unless you cover every inch of your walls and fill every corner in the room, with panels/traps/insulation, which you're pretty unlikely to do because of budget/space/other-half reasons, you can't go that wrong imo. I'm working in a very odd little space in my bedroom and with about £150 of DIY broadband panels and superchunks, with Sonarworks Reference on top, I can get a pretty decent frequency response and create mixes that translate well enough (considering my potato ears xD and compromised environment) to other playback systems.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

If you are at the begining of your learning process room treatment is vital. I sorted mine not so long ago and I now realize how many mixing errors I used to make, basically I now learn how to mix from the ground up. So the earlier you sort this the faster your progress will be.

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and provide a different argument.

What mixing "errors" are you referring to exactly? Is it possible for there to be such a thing as a mixing error that is not actually better described as an "arrangement error"?

Because something that strikes me is that, I'll listen to entirely acoustic ensembles, such as a folk group or chamber orchestra play, and I'll hear a brilliant performance, where everything has just the right amount of "punch", it's all balanced in terms of level and timbre, and absolutely every part is crystal-clear. Yet, these people aren't mic'd up, they don't have access to equalizers and compressors, or anything like that and they still sound like a professional mix.

It's been my experience that this translates directly into recorded music as well. If something's not sounding clear, it's 9.9/10 times because your part-writing is bad and you've got something else playing in the same pitch as another instrument. So why not just fix that instead of assaulting it with an equalizer? If the dynamics of something aren't uniform enough to your liking, why not just play the part again instead of mangling it with a compressor? If you don't like how your drum sample sounds, or you think your guitar tone isn't so great, then why not just get a better drum sample and go back to your guitar and amp and try different settings?

It just seems to me like every one of these "mixing" concepts, with possibly a few exceptions like maybe rolling off some resonant low end you don't need, is to make up for not getting things right at the source, and the most egregious, glaringly-obvious problems, generally are so no matter what gear with or where you're listening.

I recall in school hearing mastering engineers, one of whom was a several-time Juno winner (those count) say that "the mix should be so good that I barely have to do anything to it." Okay, so then logically, shouldn't the arrangement and composition be so good that the mixing engineer barely has to do anything to it?

The conclusion I've come to is that, in this era where almost every musician is recording from home, it seems to be folks who primarily consider themselves recording/mixing/mastering engineers and companies that sell products specifically aimed at that field who are most evangelical about how you need to have an acoustically-treated room, great monitors situated at precise angles and placements, these expensive plugins from waves and Izotope, and a great mixing engineer perched behind the ProTools in order to get the absolute best mixes. Or you could just save yourself the cash and the headache and hire someone who already has all that stuff and expertise. Someone like me?

In short: I think that the sooner one sorts out their composition and arrangement, the faster their progress will be.

[recursive one]

I'm working in a very odd little space in my bedroom and with about £150 of DIY broadband panels and superchunks, with Sonarworks Reference on top, I can get a pretty decent frequency response and create mixes that translate well enough (considering my potato ears xD and compromised environment) to other playback systems.

I wonder about your experience with Reference. I thought about it but still undecided.

For what I know, it measures the room and creates some custom eq curve applied to your soundcard output, but i'm not actually sure what's the point of that. I guess the interference caused by room reflections must be a more complex fenomenon that what a static eq could actually fix, it may depend on the speakers volume, the position of your ears and such...

My studio is my bedroom, very small one, about 10 square meters, I have rocwkool superchunks in my corners floor to ceiling and also rockwool panels with some air gap on my sidewalls. I don't think my room sounds actually flat but this has drastically improved the sound of my speakers, the bass has much better definition and my mixes translate nowh better to other speakers.

Then the question is, while my room sounds still not ideal it is much better than it used to be and I can now adapt to it's sound, compare my mixes to references and learn how to mix to them (still in the process). Then if I add Reference, what I will get will be just different frequency response, I guess still far from being flat - and I'll have to adapt to this again.

I guess Reference may be useful for some really problematic spaces or the cases where no phsyical treatment is possible, but using this on top of an actual room teratment - does it make any sence?

[recursive one]

What mixing "errors" are you referring to exactly? Is it possible for there to be such a thing as a mixing error that is not actually better described as an "arrangement error"?

Actually these were both mixing and arrangement/sound-design errors. I make 100% electornic music with synths, which means that I take a synth and shape it from the init preset into something that is supposed to fit the arrangement and the mix. But because I used to hear things wrong I was taking many bad decisions already on this stage.

It may be totally different if you mainly work with acoustic instruments.

[PieBerger]

I'm working in a very odd little space in my bedroom and with about £150 of DIY broadband panels and superchunks, with Sonarworks Reference on top, I can get a pretty decent frequency response and create mixes that translate well enough (considering my potato ears xD and compromised environment) to other playback systems.

I wonder about your experience with Reference. I thought about it but still undecided.

For what I know, it measures the room and creates some custom eq curve applied to your soundcard output, but i'm not actually sure what's the point of that. I guess the interference caused by room reflections must be a more complex fenomenon that what a static eq could actually fix, it may depend on the speakers volume, the position of your ears and such...

My studio is my bedroom, very small one, about 10 square meters, I have rocwkool superchunks in my corners floor to ceiling and also rockwool panels with some air gap on my sidewalls. I don't think my room sounds actually flat but this has drastically improved the sound of my speakers, the bass has much better definition and my mixes translate nowh better to other speakers.

Then the question is, while my room sounds still not ideal it is much better than it used to be and I can now adapt to it's sound, compare my mixes to references and learn how to mix to them (still in the process). Then if I add Reference, what I will get will be just different frequency response, I guess still far from being flat - and I'll have to adapt to this again.

I guess Reference may be useful for some really problematic spaces or the cases where no phsyical treatment is possible, but using this on top of an actual room teratment - does it make any sence?

I find it's a great compliment. EQ obviously won't fix distortions in the temporal domain i.e. ringing but that's what the treatment is for. The EQ curve in Reference will help further compensate for the distortion in the frequency domain, caused by your speakers and room combined. I find it an invaluable tool. I have the full studio version and the headphone correction is decent too; at the very least I can work at lower volumes, for longer periods significantly reduced ear-fatigue (and risk to damaging my ears). A great piece of kit imo.

[recursive one]

I find it's a great compliment. EQ obviously won't fix distortions in the temporal domain i.e. ringing but that's what the treatment is for. The EQ curve in Reference will help further compensate for the distortion in the frequency domain, caused by your speakers and room combined. I find it an invaluable tool. I have the full studio version and the headphone correction is decent too; at the very least I can work at lower volumes, for longer periods significantly reduced ear-fatigue (and risk to damaging my ears). A great piece of kit imo.

Thanks, will read more about Reference. I still have difficulties with understanding how a static eq can fix what happens dynamically but maybe I just don't understand how it actually works.

[PieBerger]

I find it's a great compliment. EQ obviously won't fix distortions in the temporal domain i.e. ringing but that's what the treatment is for. The EQ curve in Reference will help further compensate for the distortion in the frequency domain, caused by your speakers and room combined. I find it an invaluable tool. I have the full studio version and the headphone correction is decent too; at the very least I can work at lower volumes, for longer periods significantly reduced ear-fatigue (and risk to damaging my ears). A great piece of kit imo.

Thanks, will read more about Reference. I still have difficulties with understanding how a static eq can fix what happens dynamically but maybe I just don't understand how it actually works.

That's because it doesn't fix anything dynamic ie in the time domain, it just helps with peaks/dips in the frequency domain from room modes etc. I have a nasty peak around 160Hz and Reference levels it out and a few other lesser peaks/dips. Any time-dependent stuff needs to be corrected with treatment, which you already have.

You could measure the room yourself using REW and then create a custom curve in your EQ of choice, but that's a pain in the butt imo and you also miss out on the headphone correction (if you go for the full studio version).

[recursive one]

I find it's a great compliment. EQ obviously won't fix distortions in the temporal domain i.e. ringing but that's what the treatment is for. The EQ curve in Reference will help further compensate for the distortion in the frequency domain, caused by your speakers and room combined. I find it an invaluable tool. I have the full studio version and the headphone correction is decent too; at the very least I can work at lower volumes, for longer periods significantly reduced ear-fatigue (and risk to damaging my ears). A great piece of kit imo.

Thanks, will read more about Reference. I still have difficulties with understanding how a static eq can fix what happens dynamically but maybe I just don't understand how it actually works.

That's because it doesn't fix anything dynamic ie in the time domain, it just helps with peaks/dips in the frequency domain from room modes etc. I have a nasty peak around 160Hz and Reference levels it out and a few other lesser peaks/dips. Any time-dependent stuff needs to be corrected with treatment, which you already have.

Thanks, I see.

Well, must be a better investment than yet another softsynth I don't actually need

[andymcbain]

Personally, I think that the only rooms that don't need treatment are large asymmetrical spaces with ceilings that are at least 12 feet high. Most rooms will benefit greatly from judiciously applied treatments.

All my years of reading Sound on Sound certainly got me in this mindset too... judicious floor to ceiling corner traps won't do any harm - though excessive broadband / high frequency treatment might.

[andymcbain]

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and provide a different argument.

What mixing "errors" are you referring to exactly? Is it possible for there to be such a thing as a mixing error that is not actually better described as an "arrangement error"?

Because something that strikes me is that, I'll listen to entirely acoustic ensembles, such as a folk group or chamber orchestra play, and I'll hear a brilliant performance, where everything has just the right amount of "punch", it's all balanced in terms of level and timbre, and absolutely every part is crystal-clear. Yet, these people aren't mic'd up, they don't have access to equalizers and compressors, or anything like that and they still sound like a professional mix.

It's been my experience that this translates directly into recorded music as well. If something's not sounding clear, it's 9.9/10 times because your part-writing is bad and you've got something else playing in the same pitch as another instrument. So why not just fix that instead of assaulting it with an equalizer? If the dynamics of something aren't uniform enough to your liking, why not just play the part again instead of mangling it with a compressor? If you don't like how your drum sample sounds, or you think your guitar tone isn't so great, then why not just get a better drum sample and go back to your guitar and amp and try different settings?

It just seems to me like every one of these "mixing" concepts, with possibly a few exceptions like maybe rolling off some resonant low end you don't need, is to make up for not getting things right at the source, and the most egregious, glaringly-obvious problems, generally are so no matter what gear with or where you're listening.

I recall in school hearing mastering engineers, one of whom was a several-time Juno winner (those count) say that "the mix should be so good that I barely have to do anything to it." Okay, so then logically, shouldn't the arrangement and composition be so good that the mixing engineer barely has to do anything to it?

The conclusion I've come to is that, in this era where almost every musician is recording from home, it seems to be folks who primarily consider themselves recording/mixing/mastering engineers and companies that sell products specifically aimed at that field who are most evangelical about how you need to have an acoustically-treated room, great monitors situated at precise angles and placements, these expensive plugins from waves and Izotope, and a great mixing engineer perched behind the ProTools in order to get the absolute best mixes. Or you could just save yourself the cash and the headache and hire someone who already has all that stuff and expertise. Someone like me?

In short: I think that the sooner one sorts out their composition and arrangement, the faster their progress will be.

All good points! Though I would say that artificial enhancements have become ingrained in the sound of modern music to an extent. If you’re crushing the a pair of drum overheads with a compressor for example, that’s not really an effect that can be achieved by capturing at source – whereas the discipline of recording say, classical music is to capture the sound of the performer(s) in the room and leaving processing to a minimum.

With regards to arrangement / mixing errors – the line between mixing and arrangement often blurs in electronic music production – and I do believe that a good sounding room, full range monitoring and the minimum of errors in the time domain will help you make the correct arrangement decisions. The problems for “bedroom producers” are usually in the low end – so if you’re choosing a kick drum sample you don’t want the sub enhanced by a spike in low frequencies, extended by a room resonance, or obscured by a dip in response.

Of course a lot of people in less than ideal environments manage just fine with trial and error. But it really is quicker and easier if you can properly hear what you’re doing.

[recursive one]

With regards to arrangement / mixing errors – the line between mixing and arrangement often blurs in electronic music production – and I do believe that a good sounding room, full range monitoring and the minimum of errors in the time domain will help you make the correct arrangement decisions. The problems for “bedroom producers” are usually in the low end – so if you’re choosing a kick drum sample you don’t want the sub enhanced by a spike in low frequencies, extended by a room resonance, or obscured by a dip in response.

Yes, that's exactly my experience.

I was making psytrance for few years in untreated rooms, mostly small and awkward ones (first I just didn't realize the importance of the treatment then didn't have an opportunity as I moved few times to different appartments). Now I have these projects and currently I'm busy with remixing them to bring them to somehow acceptable state and it is freaking pain. I had to replace the kick and remake the bass from scratch in each of them, also most of them have issues with how the leads were synthesised, they just have wrong frequency content that no equing can fix, unnecessary processing and layering which was supposed to make them "fat" and other issues, so I have to entirely replace these parts.

Somehow I'm attached to these tracks and want them to see the light of the day eventually, but remixing them is actually much more work than what making a new track from scratch in an acceptable listening environment would take.

[jabe]

Doesn't stuffing a duvet/eiderdown in a corner of a room do a half decent job of bass trapping? I'm sure I've read that somewhere.




Uh oh! Turns out mentioning DIY bass traps in a thread about bass traps is out of context! Who knew?
viewtopic.php?p=7508750#p7508750

[dark water]

^^ quick answer is 'no' - and especially 'no' if your duvet is not about 5 metres thick and can't cover a wall from floor to ceiling.
(Which is highly unlikely).

[jabe]

^^ quick answer is 'no' - and especially 'no' if your duvet is not about 5 metres thick and can't cover a wall from floor to ceiling.
(Which is highly unlikely).

Well, you live and learn. I wonder where I picked that up from. Thanks.

[reggie1979]

Just make sure it's not "trap bass" and it's all good