Studio desk against wall or in the middle of the room?

[purpleduck]

When I bought the Yamaha HS80M monitors, all I read in the instructions, repeated more than once, was that it was better to have them at a distance from any of the room's walls. This baffled me as basically all recording studio pictures I've seen, even when they have plenty of space, have the desk against a wall, and monitors with their back facing at it at not great distance, usually with acoustic foam there.

A friend of mine insisted I should have placed the monitors closer to a wall, arguing that it's good the bass reflex on the back faces against a wall. But I went with what stated on the instructions and other sources that said that the more dinstant the speakers are from walls, the better. So I placed the desk with the monitors basically the the middle of the room as in this pic...

http://postimg.org/image/wg8qhupvl/

Can you give some advice on positioning/treatment of the room? It's probably not ideal the way it is now...why does the manual of the Yamaha say the speakers should be away from walls yet most studios have them against them? From the manual:

"For the most accurate response your speakers should be positioned away from walls and especially corners, which can play havoc witrh a speaker's frequency characteristics. A minimum of about 1.5m away from walls would be ideal".

Hearing this I'd think I've placed the speakers in the best possible position available in my room...on the side of the right speaker, there is the same distance from the wall that you cannot see in the picture as the left one. It's actually about 1 meter, not 1.5.

Everything I read on acoustic treatment tells me that objects make sound bounce and color it; does that mean the ideal recording room is a big and EMPTY one!? I can only imagine a lot of echo in it...maybe a large, empty one all covered with acoustic foams, would be the perfect monitoring environment? Waiting for enlightenment, thank you

[login]

The manufacturer knows what is best. I have the hs80m far from the wall and they sounded better before I moved and had to put them against the wall.

About acoustic treatment there are 2 principles: diffuse and absorb. The first takes cares of the high freqs and absortion of the bass. Good treatment employs both.

Also there are quite a few types of difusor and absortion panels, the best way if you are building an studio maybe to hire someone with expertise.

There as some books on the topic too, its a dense subject in architecture.

[ImNotDedYet]

Middle of the room is too far.

The problem with placement away from walls is SBIR - basically bass reflections off the wall behind the speaker. Lower frequencies emanate from speakers in a sphere in all directions (whether rear ported or not) while higher frequencies are more directional. Lower frequencies are also longer wavelengths. You'll likely wind up with nulls for frequencies whose wavelength is 4 times the distance from the speaker to the wall. The reason you see more control rooms with the speakers closer to the wall is the closer distance actually makes those nulls mentioned above higher frequencies, and it's easier to treat higher frequencies than it is lower.

And, the middle of the room I believe is a big no no as well because you have the same distance behind and in front of the speakers.

Genelec speakers have a lot of great information on speaker setups. Their recommendation, and many others I've seen is to place speakers within a meter of a wall with only really a small distance needed between the speakers and the wall.

Having said that, each room is different, levels of treatment, etc. So, see what works best and perhaps look into downloading and using REW's free software to measure frequency response of different speaker locations.

[fishmonkey]

experiment. up against the wall will almost certainly not be the best. apart from that there are no hard and fast rules, as the best position depends greatly on the dimensions of your room. so if you have freedom to put the speakers anywhere, then experiment with different positions. if you want a more scientific, quantified approach, then use Room EQ Wizard or FuzzMeasure to measure the room with the speakers in different locations.

a room mode calculator (search the web) and some basic math will tell you which are likely to be good and bad arrangements...

[Tarekith]

Acoustics can be a tricky thing to put into practice, oftentimes what works best might not be ideal according to the theory, especially in smaller rooms. Personally I probably wouldn't want to start experiment with the listening position dead center in the room, that's typically (but not always, see above) where you get the worst standing waves.

Best thing is to experiment with different positions while listening to some music you know really well. See where things sound the best for both the highs and lows, and don't be afraid to continue to experiment with moving things around over the coming weeks as you get more used to the how the new monitors sound.

Here's some good beginner articles that might give you some more advice:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/a ... tics1.html

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb06/a ... diosos.htm

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec09/a ... ustics.htm

[fishmonkey]

playing low sine tones will also give you an idea about how radically room modes can affect your bass in particular, you can even use Live's test tone (in the Live audio prefs) for this. you will probably be shocked at how just how much some bass notes are hidden or boosted in different areas of your room...

[purpleduck]

thank you everyone.

fishmonkey, I did a sinewave test a few weeks ago. As I suspected, I dont get good bass listening. I am always fighting with bass being all over the place. Some notes resonate terribly and others are muted. What I dont understand is - shouldnt the phenomenon apply to mixed released music as well? How come the bass there is perfectly balanced there? Do the get to override the coloring of the environment?!!

The test featured a sine wave that was always of the same volume, but from my speakers i would perceive it much higher or lower as it evolved. I just couldnt believe it was all at static volume. So I get that I could have sme improvement on that area.

I have more room AHEAD of my desk than on the back - its so I can have a better view. But I'm thinking usually, monitors are...yeah, by the wall with a small distance from it.

I will check out the measuring software - hope it doesnt require some special expensive mic. But I guess it does.

I think I'll need to move the desk and apply some acoustic foam as done in most studios.

[ImNotDedYet]

thank you everyone.

fishmonkey, I did a sinewave test a few weeks ago. As I suspected, I dont get good bass listening. I am always fighting with bass being all over the place. Some notes resonate terribly and others are muted. What I dont understand is - shouldnt the phenomenon apply to mixed released music as well? How come the bass there is perfectly balanced there? Do the get to override the coloring of the environment?!!

The test featured a sine wave that was always of the same volume, but from my speakers i would perceive it much higher or lower as it evolved. I just couldnt believe it was all at static volume. So I get that I could have sme improvement on that area.

I have more room AHEAD of my desk than on the back - its so I can have a better view. But I'm thinking usually, monitors are...yeah, by the wall with a small distance from it.

I will check out the measuring software - hope it doesnt require some special expensive mic. But I guess it does.

I think I'll need to move the desk and apply some acoustic foam as done in most studios.

You can use Room EQ Wizard, which is free with an SPL meter from Radio Shack, which won't get you the best results, but will get you results. However, for almost the same price you can get a simple mic to be used with it, recommended in their FAQ and get far better results. (I use the Behringer ECM 8000)