Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

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braedenalter
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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#1

Postby braedenalter » Thu, 2020-Apr-16, 00:10

Just wanted to start out and thank Stuart for being so educational. In the past, I have studied his replies for years and have moved my studio and treated my rooms multiple times, and with great results thanks to him among others.


My studio remodel is under construction! I'm stuck at home so why not tear down the ceiling, that's a normal thing right? :lol:


So I went into this phase with just the goal to open up my ceiling for the additional height/industrial feel it will give my music / gaming space - as well as build out my front wall, wire up some ceiling lights and additional outlets/switches, (there are no lights in this room!! It been dark and depressing..) and I am also going to put a ceiling fan in, or at least the wiring and receptical for one. I want to run some conduit behind my build to feed cables to my monitor and other gear, and in general cable manage my room to perfection. I also plan convert my existing 4ft x 4ft owens 703 panels (6 of them) into new panels and a cloud that are more fitting to the design I want to end up.

With all that being said, you may notice I'm not covering the whole studio acoustics build, but I am wanting to future proof so that when It's phase 2 that I am not having to "unbuild" this work, but I will have actually made progress and prepared for the rest of the room. I will easily be able to fill the entire ceiling with a layer of roxul and then fabric it, trim it off, the lighting will already be in the right spot, build slot walls down the entire room and fill the corners solid for bass trapping etc.


Im loud but not worried about isolation. We've been in this home for a few years and my band regularly practiced/drummer comes over and practices on his own and my neighbors have never had an issue. Sure a sound proof room from the family will be awesome but we're not in our forever home just yet!


The room is on the bottom level, right off our entryway. The wall with the window is my front porch, one wall is exterior both of which are drywall, insulated, and then brick. One is a hallway, and the front wall is our living room. It was actually open but I closed it all off to be my space. We don't have a use for two living rooms. And now that a ripped out the ceiling, well there's a lot of different things happening there as you will see in the pictures, but look at how HUGE it made the room!


The room is 17' 6" Length x 12' 4" Width x 9' Height (after ripping out the drywall on the ceiling to expose some pretty awesome tounge and groove pine + 12 inch joists. That's all going to be painted black.

Ran through Bob Golds Room Mode Calculator:
Room Dimensions: Length=17.5 ft, Width=12.33 ft, Height=9 ft
Room Ratio: 1 : 1.37 : 1.94
R. Walker BBC 1996:
- 1.1w / h < l / h < ((4.5w / h) - 4): Pass
- l < 3h & w < 3h: Pass
- no integer multiple within 5%: Fail (ratio3 = ratio1 * 2)
Nearest Known Ratio:
- "5) M. M. Louden: 1971: Best ratio as per Louden" 1 : 1.4 : 1.9


Here's the design example I am planning to start with but my room is a different size so I'm want to make it for my dimensions.

http://johnlsayers.com/Stuff/components.skp

I am currently mixing on Kali Audio Lp6s which are front ported but think I'm going to go bigger, that being said I can build the soffits for these and mount them, but I will want to have the flexibility to pull the baffles off and install replacements according to what monitors I may end up with. For now I can just leave the front corners at the proper angle (30 degress?) and just treat them as a panel and keep my monitors mounted on stands, but I'll see what input I get back.

Future slot walls 12 degree angle? I assume I need to have that planned so I know where my soffit corners framing extends to?

Pictures of my room
8BD07D9C-E713-41F3-A2F7-6B7B55521EFA.jpeg
B54A637A-1B53-48D3-9A9A-1A0974A9201C.jpeg
67055426-70C5-418C-8749-DADBBA9DFBEF.jpeg
CA1ED616-0B54-4445-811C-350B2F33556B.jpeg
658D32CB-AD6A-4B82-93D3-79417366208C.jpeg
93E2EAA8-B6AF-4415-A8E1-9D84D628E5FB.jpeg
08FF9C79-C9E4-4BB4-8BF1-FDACDB71916E.jpeg
5B790CFD-E589-4E0D-BB67-5C34E11F9196.jpeg



So now that you essentially know where I am at now, I am seeking help on my design. I don't want to undo anything in the future that I am doing now, but I cant do the entire room right at this time. It also doesn't have to be modular, I just like that layout. I wanted the room to feel bigger, have plenty of light, build out my front wall and hang a cloud, and again maybe a ceiling fan because my other room did and in gaming sessions it was great to have cooling me off. I have a two week old baby and just want to use my extra time at hometo be with our baby and with getting my room a step closer to where I want it.


Budget - For this phase I need to stay below $400. I already have all of my fabric, probably for the entire room but may purchase some more of another color. I already have lumber to frame the front wall. I already have all my lights, wiring and plugs, outlets, etc. What I know I need is more roxul, and my local stores sell safe n sound readily which I will post the details of here if it is unknown. I also have the owens 703 from my existing panels I wanted to use in the new builds.



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#2

Postby Starlight » Thu, 2020-Apr-16, 04:23

braedenalter wrote:Source of the postI'm stuck at home so why not tear down the ceiling, that's a normal thing right?

Absolutely normal!
braedenalter wrote:Source of the post
... as you will see in the pictures ...

I am looking forward to seeing your pictures (including, I hope, a plan view) as it sounds like a great project.



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#3

Postby Soundman2020 » Thu, 2020-Apr-16, 13:54

Hi there "braedenalter", and Welcome to the forum! :thu: :)

Just wanted to start out and thank Stuart for being so educational. In the past, I have studied his replies for years and have moved my studio and treated my rooms multiple times, and with great results thanks to him among others.
Thanks for the kind words! It's always gratifying to know that the efforts are useful!

you may notice I'm not covering the whole studio acoustics build, but I am wanting to future proof so that when It's phase 2 that I am not having to "unbuild" this work,
Very smart! Plan ahead.

well there's a lot of different things happening there as you will see in the pictures,
Pictures? It looks like they didn't make it! I checked the forum data base for any "orphaned" images, but there weren't any from the time you posted, so it looks like they never uploaded. Please try posting them again. It would be good to see what you are describing.

The room is 17' 6" Length x 12' 4" Width x 9' Height
That's a fairly decent size for a control room. The ratio is a little off, but don't sweat it. I wrote an article about that a while back: not sure if you have seen it... https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=557

Here's the design example I am planning to start with ...
That's a rather "old-school" design, from way back! The principles are sort of OK, but there's probably a better way of getting the results you are looking for. That soffit design, for example, is a rather dated...

currently mixing on Kali Audio Lp6s which are front ported but think I'm going to go bigger, that being said I can build the soffits for these and mount them, but I will want to have the flexibility to pull the baffles off and install replacements according to what monitors I may end up with.
Right. There are was for doing that, but the basic idea is to make the soffit somewhat modular, so you can simply slide out the part where the speaker is actually mounted, and replace it with a different "module" later, with your new speakers. One big thing to take into account here, is to make that removable module much larger than your current speaker! In fact, larger than any speaker you think you might want to use in the future.

One issue: acoustic axis. You always want to have your speaker mounted with the acoustic axis at ear height, or a little above that. Standard height for that is 120cm (47", and a bit). So the removable module needs to be able to accommodate different sized speakers, with different locations for their acoustic axis, such that it ends up with the axis at the right height. The new speaker might also be wider, taller, or deeper than the current one, so leave space for that. And there's some extra things you need to do for soffit mounting a rear-ported speaker.

I did this for Studio 3 Productions ( https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14 ). Originally the owner had a pair of Genelec 1032s, but planned to upgrade later... however, he hadn't decided which make or model. So I designed slide-out "trays", much larger than the 1032s, to allow for pretty much any size speaker. A couple of years later, one of his 1032's died, so he used the occasion to upgrade. We eventually decided on the Eve Audio SC-407s, so I designed a new module that would hold those, and fit in the same spot as where the Genelecs were , with the acoustic axes in the exact same location. Here's some shots of how the room looked while under construction, with the 1032's in place:
Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-01-BLR-SMLs.jpg


Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-03-BLR.jpeg


Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-02.JPG



You can see the outline of the oversized removable module. And here's how it looked after we replaced those with the SC-407s

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-03.jpg


Here's a partial internal shot of one of the Eve's mounted in its module, inside the soffit:

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-04.jpg
Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-04.jpg (52.2 KiB) Viewed 23265 times
Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-04.jpg
Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-04.jpg (52.2 KiB) Viewed 23265 times
(some proprietary details are obscured in this view! :) ): You can see that even with this large speaker mounted vertically, there's still some space left over in there for an even larger speaker.

For now I can just leave the front corners at the proper angle (30 degress?)
Perhaps.... but not necessarily! Read this... https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=442

and just treat them as a panel and keep my monitors mounted on stands, but I'll see what input I get back.
To start with, Sure! That will help give you an idea of the room, and allow you to do some initial tests with REW. Then you can use those results to plan your acoustic treatment... and your soffits!

Future slot walls 12 degree angle? I assume I need to have that planned so I know where my soffit corners framing extends to?
Soffits come first. They are the single best, most important, most effective thing you can do for a control room. Any control room, but especially small ones. A good pair of soffits will make a very substantial difference to the acoustics. Then, once those are in, you can do another set of tests with REW, and see what needs doing next. It might of might not involve slot walls for the soffit wings. That isn't how I normally do things. There are better ways ... :)

Pictures of my room
:?: :( Not there...

I am seeking help on my design. I don't want to undo anything in the future that I am doing now, but I cant do the entire room right at this time.
It is always smart to plan and design the entire room BEFORE you start building it! Spend a lot of time doing the planning. The room will be much better for doing that, as well as being easier and faster to build. The more time you spend planning, the better it will be. Even if you can't build all of it right away, at least you have the plan there, so you know that everything will ft together physically, and work together acoustically. No surprises. Normally, the two biggest things for your starting points, are the rear wall bass trapping, and the soffits at the front. Those should be your priorities. Then comes the ceiling cloud and side wall treatment, followed by additional tweaks as needed.

It also doesn't have to be modular, I just like that layout.
The layout is fine! The details... can be improved... :)

and again maybe a ceiling fan
Not a good idea! A bunch of very large rotating surfaces will screw up the acoustics greatly... not to mention the ccchhhopppppoopppooopppoopppopppppiiinnnnnggggg sound they will create as the slice up your nice clean audio into ugly chunks and pieces, then splatter it all around the room every which way... you won't be able to mix in there, if you put a ceiling fan up. The solution for studios is simple: https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=141

Budget - For this phase I need to stay below $400. I already have all of my fabric, probably for the entire room but may purchase some more of another color. I already have lumber to frame the front wall.
I would use that money to get a start on the rear wall. Keep your speakers on stands for now, and invest every last cent in that rear wall. It's the biggest, nastiest problem in any room, and even more so for small rooms. Taming the rear wall monster is a really good way to get started. But before you do even that, first measure the response of your room using REW ( https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5 ). Based on that, you can see what your biggest rear-wall issues are, then plan how to best treat them on a tight budget.

What I know I need is more roxul, and my local stores sell safe n sound readily which I will post the details of here if it is unknown. I also have the owens 703 from my existing panels I wanted to use in the new builds.
You are n a very tight budget, so re-use whatever insulation you have on hand first, then buy the least expensive stuff that will do the job. Ordinary "pink fluffy" insulation is usually not too expensive, and some polyester stuff is coming down in prices, so those might be options: take a look around your local Home Depot or equivalent, to see what they have, and post that here so we can help you decide which is best. For the bass trapping, you need low density insulation: Likely around 20-25 kg/m3 if it is fiberglass, or 35-45 kg/m3 if it is mineral wool. But different products have different specs, so let us know what you can get, and we can comment on your options.

But first: get into the testing and planning! You have plenty of time on your hands, probably, so make the most of it to do the boring part now...


- Stuart -



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#4

Postby braedenalter » Thu, 2020-Apr-16, 15:37

Thanks for such a quick reply! I want to put the room somewhat put together this week after I paint the ceiling.

Pictures? It looks like they didn't make it! I checked the forum data base for any "orphaned" images, but there weren't any from the time you posted, so it looks like they never uploaded. Please try posting them again. It would be good to see what you are describing.


Sorry I typed all this up on my laptop and was going to grab my phone and upload the photos from there after posting, but my post had to be approved by a mod, I added the photos so once approved you should see the space!

That's a fairly decent size for a control room. The ratio is a little off, but don't sweat it. I wrote an article about that a while back: not sure if you have seen it... https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=557


I've read you talking about it before, but not on your own site so I'm still going through everything you've posted on here.

That's a rather "old-school" design, from way back! The principles are sort of OK, but there's probably a better way of getting the results you are looking for. That soffit design, for example, is a rather dated...


Okay well I'm totally open to your input for a "new school" design. I'll send you a PM to inquire for design work.

Right. There are was for doing that, but the basic idea is to make the soffit somewhat modular, so you can simply slide out the part where the speaker is actually mounted, and replace it with a different "module" later, with your new speakers. One big thing to take into account here, is to make that removable module much larger than your current speaker! In fact, larger than any speaker you think you might want to use in the future.

One issue: acoustic axis. You always want to have your speaker mounted with the acoustic axis at ear height, or a little above that. Standard height for that is 120cm (47", and a bit). So the removable module needs to be able to accommodate different sized speakers, with different locations for their acoustic axis, such that it ends up with the axis at the right height. The new speaker might also be wider, taller, or deeper than the current one, so leave space for that. And there's some extra things you need to do for soffit mounting a rear-ported speaker.

I did this for Studio 3 Productions ( https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14 ). Originally the owner had a pair of Genelec 1032s, but planned to upgrade later... however, he hadn't decided which make or model. So I designed slide-out "trays", much larger than the 1032s, to allow for pretty much any size speaker. A couple of years later, one of his 1032's died, so he used the occasion to upgrade. We eventually decided on the Eve Audio SC-407s, so I designed a new module that would hold those, and fit in the same spot as where the Genelecs were , with the acoustic axes in the exact same location. Here's some shots of how the room looked while under construction, with the 1032's in place:
Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-01-BLR-SMLs.jpg

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-03-BLR.jpeg

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--genelec-1032-02.JPG



You can see the outline of the oversized removable module. And here's how it looked after we replaced those with the SC-407s

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-03.jpg

Here's a partial internal shot of one of the Eve's mounted in its module, inside the soffit:

Soundman-_Studio-3--Speaker-Baffled--Eve-SC407-04.jpg (some proprietary details are obscured in this view! :) ): You can see that even with this large speaker mounted vertically, there's still some space left over in there for an even larger speaker.


Yes I have followed a ton of your posts regarding soffit mounting and remember all of this! But at the time just built some stands filled with sand that are pretty great, just a little bulky and want a minimalist studio. Also, I am pretty set on staying with front ported monitors with them pushed all the way up to the front wall, or soffit mounted. I'm probably going to go to the bigger kali's due to such great price and sonarworks, but if I wanted to spend more, I love the adam a7xs, as well as the nuemann line.

Perhaps.... but not necessarily! Read this... https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=442


Yes I have read this. I feel like my room is a really good size and want to avoid wasting space and want my position as close to the front wall as possible. I am building a new desk right now that has way less surface area compared to my last and want a really clean setup with lots of open room behind me for when there is a drumset in there and a few chairs for my mates. Based on your suggestion of having the monitor spread 55% of the room's width that would place my monitors 6.765' apart, but I don't want my listening position to be 1/3rd of the room back so I'd like some guidance here.

To start with, Sure! That will help give you an idea of the room, and allow you to do some initial tests with REW. Then you can use those results to plan your acoustic treatment... and your soffits!


If I don't do full soffits right now but the wall is framed as big panels, what's your stance on have my lp6s wall mounted vs on the stands? I have a feeling your going to shoot this down but again this is me just going for a clean look and my beefy stands aren't successful at that minimalist look...

Soffits come first. They are the single best, most important, most effective thing you can do for a control room. Any control room, but especially small ones. A good pair of soffits will make a very substantial difference to the acoustics. Then, once those are in, you can do another set of tests with REW, and see what needs doing next. It might of might not involve slot walls for the soffit wings. That isn't how I normally do things. There are better ways ... :)


This has me excited as I see I'm still attached to some posts and builds on JS that I realize are over a decade old and want a more up to date plan/design! I definitely want the better ways.

:?: :( Not there...


Should be there once approved!

It is always smart to plan and design the entire room BEFORE you start building it! Spend a lot of time doing the planning. The room will be much better for doing that, as well as being easier and faster to build. The more time you spend planning, the better it will be. Even if you can't build all of it right away, at least you have the plan there, so you know that everything will ft together physically, and work together acoustically. No surprises. Normally, the two biggest things for your starting points, are the rear wall bass trapping, and the soffits at the front. Those should be your priorities. Then comes the ceiling cloud and side wall treatment, followed by additional tweaks as needed.


I really get this. I guess I really need a design and for now focus on the rear wall bass trapping as well as my front wall.

The layout is fine! The details... can be improved... :)


Understood, I could use help with this.

Not a good idea! A bunch of very large rotating surfaces will screw up the acoustics greatly... not to mention the ccchhhopppppoopppooopppoopppopppppiiinnnnnggggg sound they will create as the slice up your nice clean audio into ugly chunks and pieces, then splatter it all around the room every which way... you won't be able to mix in there, if you put a ceiling fan up. The solution for studios is simple: https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=141


So I just want to clarify, I wouldn't put a fan on to mix or record with, but this is kind of my man cave, so I game and also hit my workouts in this space. I have air conditioning, but the AC on my house is 20 years old, and the routing of HVAC in my house in not efficient. Set it to 75 degrees F and our master bedroom is 65, but our living room and my studio will be 78. I just want some air circulation, but wouldn't have the fan on when I mix, or are you still saying NAY to this? I could get a dyson blade less fan or another 'Super Fan' That I use in renovations and set it up somewhere in the room the blow the air around. I can post a photo if you don't know what these are.

I would use that money to get a start on the rear wall. Keep your speakers on stands for now, and invest every last cent in that rear wall. It's the biggest, nastiest problem in any room, and even more so for small rooms. Taming the rear wall monster is a really good way to get started. But before you do even that, first measure the response of your room using REW ( https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5 ). Based on that, you can see what your biggest rear-wall issues are, then plan how to best treat them on a tight budget.


Okay a couple things here. I agree with putting my resource and supply into the rear wall. I just want my front wall panels at least up, so I am not looking at the studs. Even if the front panels aren't even filed with anything, just fabric wrapped frames that can pop off when its time to fill them up. Is that okay? This could even end up being the panel behind the front wall that gets built down the road depending on the design.

Regarding the REW can I use Sonarworks XREF20 Measurement Mic? I don't have measurement mic right now so this comes out of my budget.


You are n a very tight budget, so re-use whatever insulation you have on hand first, then buy the least expensive stuff that will do the job. Ordinary "pink fluffy" insulation is usually not too expensive, and some polyester stuff is coming down in prices, so those might be options: take a look around your local Home Depot or equivalent, to see what they have, and post that here so we can help you decide which is best. For the bass trapping, you need low density insulation: Likely around 20-25 kg/m3 if it is fiberglass, or 35-45 kg/m3 if it is mineral wool. But different products have different specs, so let us know what you can get, and we can comment on your options.


The Rockwool SafenSound is 40 kg/m3. 12 panels of 3 in. x 15-1/4 in. x 47 in for about $42. If I buy 12 or more it knocks the price down to $31.99 each.

But first: get into the testing and planning! You have plenty of time on your hands, probably, so make the most of it to do the boring part now...


The designing is fun! But the measurements are going to be boring :lol: But this week I have to run wires for lighting, and get the ceiling painted. I also have to some gaps in the joist that go out to my exterior wall because thats some bad leakage there, I found tons of leaves and acorns in that part of the ceiling so I'm closing that off, in line with my wall.



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#5

Postby braedenalter » Thu, 2020-Apr-16, 21:31

Quick update, today I ordered a PreSonus PRM-1 so I can get proper measurements with the room having no treatment. Should be here next week on the 22nd.



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#6

Postby Soundman2020 » Wed, 2020-Apr-22, 02:40

Great! I saw the photos now, so that makes things quite a bit clearer.

Okay well I'm totally open to your input for a "new school" design.
I think it's no secret that I'm rather partial to the RFZ design concept ("Reflection Free Zone"), as the basis, but then there's some things I like to do a bit different, since RFZ isn't easy to achieve in small rooms, for several reasons. Pretty much all home studios and project studios are "small", in the acoustic sense, so there's a few modifications that I do, to help with that.

But at the time just built some stands filled with sand that are pretty great, just a little bulky and want a minimalist studio.
That can certain work, yes, but there are limitations on how good you can get it. Flush-mounting removes those limitations, and the overall improvement is quite something. Here's a quote from a client for whom I designed flush mounting system for his room, similar in size to yours. After he built the soffits, but before completing the rest of the treatment, he said: "...music playing in the room already sounds loads better. ... the imaging with soffit mounting is fantastic. What surprised me the most is how much more even the room is already - whereas before moving my head even a little bit made a difference, I can walk around the room and still hear an excellent image and fairly stable bottom end." A few weeks later, when he finished the rest of the treatment he added this: "... I’m ... loving using the room - mixes translate brilliantly, imaging is awesome and it works great for tracking guitar and vocals too." And that's in a room where he had been using his speakers on stands before...

Many people on a tight budget do just put their speakers on stands, and manage to work fine like that. But after you try soffit-mounting, you'll never want to go back again... :)

Also, I am pretty set on staying with front ported monitors with them pushed all the way up to the front wall, or soffit mounted.
Soffit mounted! :) :thu: Speaker porting isn't really an issue for soffit mounting: even rear ported speakers can be soffit mounted successfully. Studio 3, for example: those SC407 monsters are rear ported, thus according to some, supposedly cannot be soffit mounted... and yet there they are, soffit mounted, and performing fantastically. Before I did that, I spoke to the chief engineer at Eve Audio, and he gave that arrangement his blessing, after seeing the design. He also agreed that mounting them vertically was the best method for that room, even though they are design to be mounted horizontally, preferably. Anyway, the point is that pretty much any speaker can be successfully soffit-mounted, with few exceptions. The only ones that cannot be mounted like that, are ones with drivers facing out the sides, top or bottom, or ones with very complicated cabinet shapes. Everything else is fair game. Even the famous egg-shaped Genelec speakers can be soffit mounted.

I'm probably going to go to the bigger kali's due to such great price and sonarworks, but if I wanted to spend more, I love the adam a7xs, as well as the nuemann line.
Now you are speaking my language! I'm a fan of Adam, for sure (I own some of those myself), as well as their close cousins from Eve, and the Neumanns are just incomparable. Especially their subs. I'm working on a room right now in New Orleans, where there are a pair of KH-805 subs, that we are using as a plane wave bass array. Tuning is in progress right now, and looking very good. Probably e posting some results from that in a few weeks... If you add a sub to a pair of mains, then you can do some "magic" with that combination, not just in filling out the low end, but also in using them together to deal with some of the acoustic issues in the room. SBIR and some modal issues can often be tamed with a good sub and careful tuning. If you really wanted to go that route, I would definitely recommend it! Not cheap, but the results ca be really good. The KH805s are great for that, because of the power, accuracy, and low end extension. Neumann claims they go down to 18 Hz, but that's not true: in reality, they are still doing good stuff down at 15 Hz! And still very much measurable down to 12 Hz. That's REALLY impressive for that size sub, and that price range.

Yes I have read this. I feel like my room is a really good size and want to avoid wasting space and want my position as close to the front wall as possible
Right, but don't get too close! The optimum range for the mix position is around 32% to 44% of the room length. If you get outside of that area, you run the risk of being in major modal problems. There's a procedure that I call the "walking mic" procedure, that can help you identify the optimum location in your room (once you have the speakers set up correctly). Here's how to do that: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24 . Its a very slow, boring, maddeningly repetitive process, but it produces a wealth of data about your room. It's then much easier to find the best spot for the listening position. Its a compromise, of course: you'll notice that as you move around, one parameter improves while another gets worse. But the data allows you to balance those against each other, trading off one for another, and find the overall smoothest spot.

I am building a new desk right now that has way less surface area compared to my last and want a really clean setup
:thu: I'm not sure if you have seen this, but it might give you some ideas to help build yours: https://www.digistar.cl/StudioShowcase/ ... SK-CMP.mp4 I call it the "M1" desk. I designed it to be very low profile, and open, but still with plenty of rack space, and comfortable to work at.

Based on your suggestion of having the monitor spread 55% of the room's width that would place my monitors 6.765' apart, but I don't want my listening position to be 1/3rd of the room back so I'd like some guidance here.
I guess the question here is: how accurate do you want your mixes to be? How well do you want them to translate? There's an optimal layout for that, which gives you good stereo imaging, a broad sound-stage that extends across the full width of the speakers, a true and stable "phantom center", as well as the usual acoustic clarity, tightness, etc. The further you move away from that ideal mix position, the further you also move away from all of those desirable characteristics. If you get too close to the front wall, you get into a region where the bass and modal response will be unpleasant and inaccurate, and you'll also have the sound-stage and stereo imaging too broad and unrealistic. I would try to not go further forward than about 32%. Theoretically, the best spot is at 38%, but that's not written in stone, and there's a decent range to play with there: about +/- 6%, thus 32% to 44%. As long as you are OK with losing accuracy and not having good mix translation, then you could go another couple of points beyond that each way.

If I don't do full soffits right now but the wall is framed as big panels, what's your stance on have my lp6s wall mounted vs on the stands? I have a feeling your going to shoot this down but again this is me just going for a clean look and my beefy stands aren't successful at that minimalist look...
Maybe you could draw up a rough sketch of what you have in mind, as I'm not certain that I understand what you are saying.

Let me give you some "brief" (!) background here, that might help you make the decision.... here's how it works technically:

If you have a speaker inside the room (not soffit mounted) then some of the sound is focused like a cone coming straight at the mix position, and some of the sound expands around the speaker in all directions, in a sphereical shape. The reason for that is very simple: at high frequencies, the wavelengths are short, and the front baffle of the speaker (the front panel) is much larger than the wavelength, so the baffle forces all of the sound to go straight towards you. And at low frequencies, the wavelengths are large, much bigger than the width of the baffle (cabinet), so they "wrap around" the speaker and go backwards behind it as well. This is called the "baffle step" problem, and it happens with ALL speakers, simply because of the way sound works: a sound wave is not affected by objects that are a lot smaller than the wavelength, but it IS affected by objects that are a lot larger than the wavelength. So a wave that is 10 feet long is not affected by much at all by things in the room, but a wave that is 2 inches long is affected by pretty much everything.

That's the basis. ALL speakers suffer from the baffle step problem. The only difference is the frequency where things change over from "focused forwards" to "wrap around". For physically small speakers, that happens well up in the mid range, while for very large speakers it can be down a lot lower. The ONLY factor that influences this, is the size of the front baffle. In the ideal situation, the front baffle would be larger than even the lowest frequency wavelength, so there would not be any problem! In other words, if the baffle could be "infinitely large", then there would be no baffle step problem, and ALL of the sound would be focused directly towards you.

And that's exactly what a soffit does! It emulates an "infinite baffle". It gets rid of this problem by putting a much larger baffle around the speaker, replacing the small one that is the front panel of the cabinet itself. So the baffle step problem is forced down to a much lower frequency, ideally below the bottom end of the speaker's range. That's why small speakers are really good candidates for soffit mounting, precisely because the "baffle step problem" with a small speaker occurs at a rather high frequency, somewhere in the mid range!

OK, so you might wonder: "What's so bad about having some sound focused forwards and some wrapping around?". Why is that a problem at all?

Actually it is not just one problem, but SEVERAL problems.

First, is power imbalance. Think of this: If ALL of the power put out by the tweeter is heading towards you, but HALF of the power put out by the woofer is NOT heading towards you (it's going the other way: away from you, off behind the speaker), then you have a power imbalance problem! The highs are 6 dB louder than the lows, because half of the lows wrapped around behind the speaker and went away from you. So there's a major issue here! Therefore, the speaker manufacturer has to pump TWICE as much power into the woofer, so that it puts out the same amount of sound heading YOUR way, as the tweeter, and you hear them at the same level. Have you ever wondered why speakers always have much more powerful amps for the woofers, compared to the tweeters? This is why: the "power imbalance" problem.

So there's the first problem: power imbalance. But put the speaker in a soffit, and now ALL of the energy is going straight to you, NONE is going backwards, and you don't need to waste all that power any more. So you can roll-off the bass, because the built-in compensation is not needed any more, and the entire speaker is acting the way it should: sending all of it's power to you.

Next problem: If the speaker is not in a soffit, then think about what happens to that "half of the low end" that went behind the speaker: it hits the front wall, and bounces back! And now it comes towards you again, but delayed a little (because it took a little bit of time to reach the front wall and come back again.... This is clearly NOT a good thing! It will interfere with the direct sound, causing phase cancellations, comb filtering, and other nasty problems. This is called the "SBIR problem", where SBIR means "Speaker Boundary Interference Response". It means what it says: the frequency response of the speaker is now all messed up, because the sound that bounced off the "boundary" (front wall) is "interfering" with the sound that came straight out the speaker. Not a good thing at all. It totally screws up the frequency response, and causes a very large dip in the spectrum at a frequency that is related to only one thing: the distance between the speaker and the front wall.

If the speaker is more than a few inches away from the wall, then you cannot get rid of SBIR by using treatment, since the frequency is way too low for that. There's basically nothing you can do about it.... except mount your speaker in a soffit! If your speaker is soffit-mounted, then there is no SBIR problem with the front wall! Because NO sound gets around behind the speaker anyway, and even if some did, it can't come back into the room again, because the soffit baffle stops it.

So there's another problem killed. SBIR from the front wall is gone. Impossible.

Then there's "edge diffraction", which is a bit more complex. It goes like this: remember that waves that are a lot shorter than the width of the speaker (higher frequencies) all go directly towards you, while ones that are a lot longer wrap around behind? OK, so what happens to the ones that are roughly the SAME width as the speaker? Well, they sort of try to wrap around, but they can't quite make it... and they also can't quite go directly forwards either! The problem happens at the edge of the speaker cabinet, just where they waves are reaching that edge. They sort of want to go around, but they sort of can't, so there's a kind of "push pull" fight going on right at the edge, with part of the wave almost getting around the corner, and part not quite making it.... (OK, for the technical purist acoustical reading this; yeah, I know that isn't accurate, but its a great way to get your head around the issue, and see visualize what is happening...) That creates all manner of ugly stuff, right at the edges of the box. So that's why it is called "edge diffraction". It's a problem, because it messes up the frequency repose, and the power response, and the phase response, for all frequencies where the wavelength is similar in size to the dimensions of the box. It creates interference patterns that mess things up. That's why many speakers have beveled or rounded corners and edges: to reduce edge diffraction, and some speakers (such as many Genelec's) are even egg-shaped, totally curved, to reduce it even more. But you can't get rid of the problem completely. ... Unless you mount the speaker in a soffit! Since the front baffle of the soffit is basically an extension of the front of the speaker box, there is no edge! So there is no edge diffraction!

That's yet another issue that soffit mounting eliminates.

The list is growing:

- Power imbalance
- SBIR
- Comb filtering
- Edge diffraction


All of those are eliminated by putting your speakers in soffits. Gone. Not there. There are other things that soffit-mounting fixes too, but those are the main ones.

But what does that mean, in terms of how it sounds? Major, big-time improvements! First and foremost, the bass is much tighter and smoother, and extends down lower. None of those artifacts are there, so they cannot distort the bass response. All you hear is the pure, deep, focused, rich bass of your speakers. And since the low end is extended by the infinite baffle, the speakers actually sound bigger than they are. Then there's the mid range: since it is no longer muddied by the edge diffraction problem, that is cleaner, smoother, and better defined as well. And for the high end, the soffit helps with yet ANOTHER problem, which is impedance mismatch! I haven't mentioned that yet, but in brief simple terms, it works like this. The tweeter cone is a hard, rigid, massive solid object, and it is trying to transfer energy to a softy, mushy, springy, compressible, floppy fluid, called "air". That energy transfer is VERY inefficient, because the the two materials are so very different! Try flapping your hands up and down in air, and see how well you can move it around.... But if you flap your hands up and down underwater, you do a LOT better! You can swim in water, but you can't swim in air, because the "impedance" of the water is closer to the impedance of your hands, but the impedance of air is very different. So you can transfer your "flapping hand" energy to the water, much better than you can transfer it to the air, because the impedance is better matched. If you wanted to transfer "flapping hand" energy into air, then you could attach ping-pong paddles to your hands, or better still, big pieces of cardboard or thin piece of plywood: That would improve the impedance of your hand a lot! It would be much more closely matched. The bigger the sheet of wood you used, the better it would be. You'd have to work harder, but you could move a LOT of air if you attached a really large piece of wood to your hand.... maybe the size of a soffit baffle, for example! :)

Speaker manufacturers go to a lot of trouble to carefully design the "wave-guides" around the tweeters of their speakers, to improve the impedance matching problem, so that the tweeter cone can transfer it's energy more efficiently into the air. That's the reason for the curved shaped plastic or metal "thingy" around the tweeter: to improve the impedance matching between the tweeter and the air... but that wave-guide is limited by the size of the box that the speaker is mounted in: it can't be bigger than the box! Unless you put it in a soffit.... :)

Yup, you guessed: The soffit also improves the impedance matching of the tweeter to the air. Not by a lot, but enough to be useful. So the high end is also cleaner, smoother, crispier, more "airy", better detailed, ... because the tweeter can do a better job of transferring all of its energy into the air..... (If you have ever heard what a tweeter sounds like when it is taken out of its wave-guide , and just working in the open, air, you have certainly noticed how tiny, thin, tinny and ridiculous it sounds!)

In other words, the soffit does many, many things a once to greatly improve the full spectrum of sound coming out of your speakers.

It's the best single thing you can do to our room, and your speakers. Everything else is "icing on the cake", but soffit-mounting your speakers is the cake itself. It makes a huge difference.

And smaller speakers benefit from it much more than large speakers.

what's your stance on have my lp6s wall mounted vs on the stands?
Wall mounted, as in attached to the wall with some type of bracket? I'm not a big fan of doing that. Maybe if the wall is thick concrete or brick, it might be acceptable, but not for a stud-framed wall.

this is me just going for a clean look and my beefy stands aren't successful at that minimalist look...
Soffits are clean! And minimalist! In fact, they are so clean and minimalist that technically, the speaker aren't even there! Acoustically, they are not in the room. so minimal that the only part of the speaker visible, is the front face... and you could even hide that behind suitable fabric, if you wanted to, so the speakers would be absolutely invisible... You can't get cleaner than that! :)

I really get this. I guess I really need a design and for now focus on the rear wall bass trapping as well as my front wall.
Yup. Those ate the two biggies, in pretty much all small rooms.

I agree with putting my resource and supply into the rear wall. I just want my front wall panels at least up, so I am not looking at the studs. Even if the front panels aren't even filed with anything, just fabric wrapped frames that can pop off when its time to fill them up. Is that okay? This could even end up being the panel behind the front wall that gets built down the road depending on the design.
Yes, that's fine.... I think! But it would be good if you could do that rough sketch of what you have in mind....

Regarding the REW can I use Sonarworks XREF20 Measurement Mic?
That should work fine. I've never tried with one of those, specifically, but the specs are pretty good. Do you have he calibration file for that?

The designing is fun! But the measurements are going to be boring
So true! Very much... But still necessary!

- Stuart -



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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#7

Postby braedenalter » Tue, 2020-Apr-28, 01:34

.del



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braedenalter
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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#8

Postby braedenalter » Tue, 2020-Apr-28, 01:42

I think it's no secret that I'm rather partial to the RFZ design concept ("Reflection Free Zone"), as the basis, but then there's some things I like to do a bit different, since RFZ isn't easy to achieve in small rooms, for several reasons. Pretty much all home studios and project studios are "small", in the acoustic sense, so there's a few modifications that I do, to help with that.


It is my goal, if I am to build anything, that it's working towards a RFZ.

That can certain work, yes, but there are limitations on how good you can get it. Flush-mounting removes those limitations, and the overall improvement is quite something. Here's a quote from a client for whom I designed flush mounting system for his room, similar in size to yours. After he built the soffits, but before completing the rest of the treatment, he said: "...music playing in the room already sounds loads better. ... the imaging with soffit mounting is fantastic. What surprised me the most is how much more even the room is already - whereas before moving my head even a little bit made a difference, I can walk around the room and still hear an excellent image and fairly stable bottom end." A few weeks later, when he finished the rest of the treatment he added this: "... I’m ... loving using the room - mixes translate brilliantly, imaging is awesome and it works great for tracking guitar and vocals too." And that's in a room where he had been using his speakers on stands before...

Many people on a tight budget do just put their speakers on stands, and manage to work fine like that. But after you try soffit-mounting, you'll never want to go back again... :)


I really want to build out soffits and treat my back wall in the month of May.

Now you are speaking my language! I'm a fan of Adam, for sure (I own some of those myself), as well as their close cousins from Eve, and the Neumanns are just incomparable. Especially their subs. I'm working on a room right now in New Orleans, where there are a pair of KH-805 subs, that we are using as a plane wave bass array. Tuning is in progress right now, and looking very good. Probably e posting some results from that in a few weeks... If you add a sub to a pair of mains, then you can do some "magic" with that combination, not just in filling out the low end, but also in using them together to deal with some of the acoustic issues in the room. SBIR and some modal issues can often be tamed with a good sub and careful tuning. If you really wanted to go that route, I would definitely recommend it! Not cheap, but the results ca be really good. The KH805s are great for that, because of the power, accuracy, and low end extension. Neumann claims they go down to 18 Hz, but that's not true: in reality, they are still doing good stuff down at 15 Hz! And still very much measurable down to 12 Hz. That's REALLY impressive for that size sub, and that price range.


That's insane. I just don't see myself needing a sub ever. In the studios I've engineered at I never liked the sub, sure it was fun to show off with but it was never useful except for just a few seconds of listening here and there. I like bass transducers attached to my chair more, silent sub, with an adjustable filter, super cool! And if money was no object, I would get some barefoots, or some Amphions. But until then, these Kali audios are so impressive, and adams A series above these. Or the Neumanns.


Right, but don't get too close! The optimum range for the mix position is around 32% to 44% of the room length. If you get outside of that area, you run the risk of being in major modal problems. There's a procedure that I call the "walking mic" procedure, that can help you identify the optimum location in your room (once you have the speakers set up correctly). Here's how to do that: https://www.digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24 . Its a very slow, boring, maddeningly repetitive process, but it produces a wealth of data about your room. It's then much easier to find the best spot for the listening position. Its a compromise, of course: you'll notice that as you move around, one parameter improves while another gets worse. But the data allows you to balance those against each other, trading off one for another, and find the overall smoothest spot.


Okay, another thing I'll be doing then. I guess im okay with the distance, I just need a design or direction based on my room to tell me where my monitors needs to be. I want to run dual screens (27inches each) and I'm not sure how screen placement needs to be taken into account when choosing speaker placement/soffit mounting.

:thu: I'm not sure if you have seen this, but it might give you some ideas to help build yours: https://www.digistar.cl/StudioShowcase/ ... SK-CMP.mp4 I call it the "M1" desk. I designed it to be very low profile, and open, but still with plenty of rack space, and comfortable to work at.


I don't think I've seen this! And this looks amazing, I always loved the argosy halo desk, and this reminds me of that! But I really don't plan on having much outboard gear. I have a decent rack for my band but hence, for the band, it needs to remain mobile so that's what I have. In the future though, maybe a few destressors and a 500 series but even then I really wont ever need much rack space at my desk. Ill post pictures of my desk build/desk restoration.

I guess the question here is: how accurate do you want your mixes to be? How well do you want them to translate? There's an optimal layout for that, which gives you good stereo imaging, a broad sound-stage that extends across the full width of the speakers, a true and stable "phantom center", as well as the usual acoustic clarity, tightness, etc. The further you move away from that ideal mix position, the further you also move away from all of those desirable characteristics. If you get too close to the front wall, you get into a region where the bass and modal response will be unpleasant and inaccurate, and you'll also have the sound-stage and stereo imaging too broad and unrealistic. I would try to not go further forward than about 32%. Theoretically, the best spot is at 38%, but that's not written in stone, and there's a decent range to play with there: about +/- 6%, thus 32% to 44%. As long as you are OK with losing accuracy and not having good mix translation, then you could go another couple of points beyond that each way.


I want 100% accuracy, forget any of my "wants" for placement, I'll do everything you tell me.

Let me give you some "brief" (!) background here, that might help you make the decision.... here's how it works technically:

If you have a speaker inside the room (not soffit mounted) then some of the sound is focused like a cone coming straight at the mix position, and some of the sound expands around the speaker in all directions, in a sphereical shape. The reason for that is very simple: at high frequencies, the wavelengths are short, and the front baffle of the speaker (the front panel) is much larger than the wavelength, so the baffle forces all of the sound to go straight towards you. And at low frequencies, the wavelengths are large, much bigger than the width of the baffle (cabinet), so they "wrap around" the speaker and go backwards behind it as well. This is called the "baffle step" problem, and it happens with ALL speakers, simply because of the way sound works: a sound wave is not affected by objects that are a lot smaller than the wavelength, but it IS affected by objects that are a lot larger than the wavelength. So a wave that is 10 feet long is not affected by much at all by things in the room, but a wave that is 2 inches long is affected by pretty much everything.

That's the basis. ALL speakers suffer from the baffle step problem. The only difference is the frequency where things change over from "focused forwards" to "wrap around". For physically small speakers, that happens well up in the mid range, while for very large speakers it can be down a lot lower. The ONLY factor that influences this, is the size of the front baffle. In the ideal situation, the front baffle would be larger than even the lowest frequency wavelength, so there would not be any problem! In other words, if the baffle could be "infinitely large", then there would be no baffle step problem, and ALL of the sound would be focused directly towards you.

And that's exactly what a soffit does! It emulates an "infinite baffle". It gets rid of this problem by putting a much larger baffle around the speaker, replacing the small one that is the front panel of the cabinet itself. So the baffle step problem is forced down to a much lower frequency, ideally below the bottom end of the speaker's range. That's why small speakers are really good candidates for soffit mounting, precisely because the "baffle step problem" with a small speaker occurs at a rather high frequency, somewhere in the mid range!

OK, so you might wonder: "What's so bad about having some sound focused forwards and some wrapping around?". Why is that a problem at all?

Actually it is not just one problem, but SEVERAL problems.

First, is power imbalance. Think of this: If ALL of the power put out by the tweeter is heading towards you, but HALF of the power put out by the woofer is NOT heading towards you (it's going the other way: away from you, off behind the speaker), then you have a power imbalance problem! The highs are 6 dB louder than the lows, because half of the lows wrapped around behind the speaker and went away from you. So there's a major issue here! Therefore, the speaker manufacturer has to pump TWICE as much power into the woofer, so that it puts out the same amount of sound heading YOUR way, as the tweeter, and you hear them at the same level. Have you ever wondered why speakers always have much more powerful amps for the woofers, compared to the tweeters? This is why: the "power imbalance" problem.

So there's the first problem: power imbalance. But put the speaker in a soffit, and now ALL of the energy is going straight to you, NONE is going backwards, and you don't need to waste all that power any more. So you can roll-off the bass, because the built-in compensation is not needed any more, and the entire speaker is acting the way it should: sending all of it's power to you.

Next problem: If the speaker is not in a soffit, then think about what happens to that "half of the low end" that went behind the speaker: it hits the front wall, and bounces back! And now it comes towards you again, but delayed a little (because it took a little bit of time to reach the front wall and come back again.... This is clearly NOT a good thing! It will interfere with the direct sound, causing phase cancellations, comb filtering, and other nasty problems. This is called the "SBIR problem", where SBIR means "Speaker Boundary Interference Response". It means what it says: the frequency response of the speaker is now all messed up, because the sound that bounced off the "boundary" (front wall) is "interfering" with the sound that came straight out the speaker. Not a good thing at all. It totally screws up the frequency response, and causes a very large dip in the spectrum at a frequency that is related to only one thing: the distance between the speaker and the front wall.

If the speaker is more than a few inches away from the wall, then you cannot get rid of SBIR by using treatment, since the frequency is way too low for that. There's basically nothing you can do about it.... except mount your speaker in a soffit! If your speaker is soffit-mounted, then there is no SBIR problem with the front wall! Because NO sound gets around behind the speaker anyway, and even if some did, it can't come back into the room again, because the soffit baffle stops it.

So there's another problem killed. SBIR from the front wall is gone. Impossible.

Then there's "edge diffraction", which is a bit more complex. It goes like this: remember that waves that are a lot shorter than the width of the speaker (higher frequencies) all go directly towards you, while ones that are a lot longer wrap around behind? OK, so what happens to the ones that are roughly the SAME width as the speaker? Well, they sort of try to wrap around, but they can't quite make it... and they also can't quite go directly forwards either! The problem happens at the edge of the speaker cabinet, just where they waves are reaching that edge. They sort of want to go around, but they sort of can't, so there's a kind of "push pull" fight going on right at the edge, with part of the wave almost getting around the corner, and part not quite making it.... (OK, for the technical purist acoustical reading this; yeah, I know that isn't accurate, but its a great way to get your head around the issue, and see visualize what is happening...) That creates all manner of ugly stuff, right at the edges of the box. So that's why it is called "edge diffraction". It's a problem, because it messes up the frequency repose, and the power response, and the phase response, for all frequencies where the wavelength is similar in size to the dimensions of the box. It creates interference patterns that mess things up. That's why many speakers have beveled or rounded corners and edges: to reduce edge diffraction, and some speakers (such as many Genelec's) are even egg-shaped, totally curved, to reduce it even more. But you can't get rid of the problem completely. ... Unless you mount the speaker in a soffit! Since the front baffle of the soffit is basically an extension of the front of the speaker box, there is no edge! So there is no edge diffraction!

That's yet another issue that soffit mounting eliminates.

The list is growing:

- Power imbalance
- SBIR
- Comb filtering
- Edge diffraction


All of those are eliminated by putting your speakers in soffits. Gone. Not there. There are other things that soffit-mounting fixes too, but those are the main ones.

But what does that mean, in terms of how it sounds? Major, big-time improvements! First and foremost, the bass is much tighter and smoother, and extends down lower. None of those artifacts are there, so they cannot distort the bass response. All you hear is the pure, deep, focused, rich bass of your speakers. And since the low end is extended by the infinite baffle, the speakers actually sound bigger than they are. Then there's the mid range: since it is no longer muddied by the edge diffraction problem, that is cleaner, smoother, and better defined as well. And for the high end, the soffit helps with yet ANOTHER problem, which is impedance mismatch! I haven't mentioned that yet, but in brief simple terms, it works like this. The tweeter cone is a hard, rigid, massive solid object, and it is trying to transfer energy to a softy, mushy, springy, compressible, floppy fluid, called "air". That energy transfer is VERY inefficient, because the the two materials are so very different! Try flapping your hands up and down in air, and see how well you can move it around.... But if you flap your hands up and down underwater, you do a LOT better! You can swim in water, but you can't swim in air, because the "impedance" of the water is closer to the impedance of your hands, but the impedance of air is very different. So you can transfer your "flapping hand" energy to the water, much better than you can transfer it to the air, because the impedance is better matched. If you wanted to transfer "flapping hand" energy into air, then you could attach ping-pong paddles to your hands, or better still, big pieces of cardboard or thin piece of plywood: That would improve the impedance of your hand a lot! It would be much more closely matched. The bigger the sheet of wood you used, the better it would be. You'd have to work harder, but you could move a LOT of air if you attached a really large piece of wood to your hand.... maybe the size of a soffit baffle, for example! :)

Speaker manufacturers go to a lot of trouble to carefully design the "wave-guides" around the tweeters of their speakers, to improve the impedance matching problem, so that the tweeter cone can transfer it's energy more efficiently into the air. That's the reason for the curved shaped plastic or metal "thingy" around the tweeter: to improve the impedance matching between the tweeter and the air... but that wave-guide is limited by the size of the box that the speaker is mounted in: it can't be bigger than the box! Unless you put it in a soffit.... :)

Yup, you guessed: The soffit also improves the impedance matching of the tweeter to the air. Not by a lot, but enough to be useful. So the high end is also cleaner, smoother, crispier, more "airy", better detailed, ... because the tweeter can do a better job of transferring all of its energy into the air..... (If you have ever heard what a tweeter sounds like when it is taken out of its wave-guide , and just working in the open, air, you have certainly noticed how tiny, thin, tinny and ridiculous it sounds!)

In other words, the soffit does many, many things a once to greatly improve the full spectrum of sound coming out of your speakers.

It's the best single thing you can do to our room, and your speakers. Everything else is "icing on the cake", but soffit-mounting your speakers is the cake itself. It makes a huge difference.

And smaller speakers benefit from it much more than large speakers.


I am having memories of reading this multiple times from you before, and I just want you to know how much I appreciate you taking the time to explain all of this, its almost overwhelming! For the time being my speakers are pretty small so it seems like its even a better reason to do it!

I'm not a big fan of doing that. Maybe if the wall is thick concrete or brick, it might be acceptable, but not for a stud-framed wall.


Ya im pretty much set on the idea of soffit mounting all the way or nothing. I understanding the variances but need to do my REW and get your input on where they will actually go.

Soffits are clean! And minimalist! In fact, they are so clean and minimalist that technically, the speaker aren't even there! Acoustically, they are not in the room. so minimal that the only part of the speaker visible, is the front face... and you could even hide that behind suitable fabric, if you wanted to, so the speakers would be absolutely invisible... You can't get cleaner than that! :)


Yes I just want to go for this. I'll expand the budget lets do it!

Yes, that's fine.... I think! But it would be good if you could do that rough sketch of what you have in mind....


Forget that, If i get can get direction based on REW measurements for my back wall and soffits lets start with that.

That should work fine. I've never tried with one of those, specifically, but the specs are pretty good. Do you have he calibration file for that?


I ordered the presonus you recommended just to make sure. Waiting on your response via PM/email on sound meter so I can start the measurement process for you.



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braedenalter
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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#9

Postby braedenalter » Thu, 2020-May-07, 00:46

Just wanted to reach out for some input on doing the REW and Walking Mic Test. I'm confused as to how to do these measurements without the exact speaker placement decided. Or do I follow the guidelines we discussed earlier? If so, I will go off of those and run all of these measurements, but I still want to make sure this sound level meter will be okay to work with.

Triplett SoniChek PRO Professional Digital Sound Level Meter Designed to EC651 (Type 2) and ANSI S1.4 (Type 2) Standards - A/C Weighted Measurement Reads 30 to 130dB (3550)

- for $79.98 on amazon. That's what it is named on amazon I'm not sure if the link will be allowed to be posted. https://www.amazon.com/Triplett-SoniChe ... 0F6521E6CE

I haven't sketched anything up and am trying to figure out placement but I've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks and am now going to be free to dedicate time to this room once I get some feedback on proceeding with this! Super excited.

P.S. - THE BUDGET

When I said $500 was the budget, it was more like, I can spend around $500 per month on my studio. So there is room in there and in a few months I would like to be done with the treatment and soffit build, and if that cant be obtained then I need to go with a simpler solution. Still though - It appears I am still going to proceed with these proper REW tests, so that we know where I am at with the room itself.



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Soundman2020
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Home Studio Remodel - I removed my ceiling! + Soffit mounting!

#10

Postby Soundman2020 » Fri, 2020-Jun-19, 21:14

Ooooops! I just came across this post again, and realized that I had not replied to a couple of your questions.... So...

I still want to make sure this sound level meter will be okay to work with.

Triplett SoniChek PRO Professional Digital Sound Level Meter Designed to EC651 (Type 2) and ANSI S1.4 (Type 2) Standards - A/C Weighted Measurement Reads 30 to 130dB (3550) ... - for $79.98 on amazon. That's what it is named on amazon I'm not sure if the link will be allowed to be posted.
That should be fine. It has both "A" and "C" weighting, and also both "Fast" and "Slow" response. Also, no problem with posting links like that!

Just wanted to reach out for some input on doing the REW and Walking Mic Test. I'm confused as to how to do these measurements without the exact speaker placement decided. Or do I follow the guidelines we discussed earlier?
Start with them up against the front wall, and roughly in the location I mentioned. The Walking Mic test is mostly about the low end, to help find the best mix position, and the waves are pretty darn long, so high precision with speaker location isn't too important.

Still though - It appears I am still going to proceed with these proper REW tests, so that we know where I am at with the room itself.
:thu:


- Stuart -




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