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Sorry for any cross posting.
I was wondering if anyone has experience for integrating a sub into their studio environment. I use Mackie 824 monitors and am considering getting an hrs120.
When producing bass heavy dance music, I am sometimes having trouble tweaking the bass just right. The studio space is approx. 12X18X8 and is fairly well treated acoustically with bass traps in all corners and auralex / fiberglass pads to the front sides and top of the mixing position.
Any feedback would be appreciated. My concerns are that the 400W hrs120 might be too strong, issues with standing waves, etc. I have also heard that it makes it too easy to tweak really low bass and thus makes mixes less translatable on other systems.
Thanks for the feedback.
~Brian
www.circusofmind.com
I was wondering if anyone has experience for integrating a sub into their studio environment. I use Mackie 824 monitors and am considering getting an hrs120.
When producing bass heavy dance music, I am sometimes having trouble tweaking the bass just right. The studio space is approx. 12X18X8 and is fairly well treated acoustically with bass traps in all corners and auralex / fiberglass pads to the front sides and top of the mixing position.
Any feedback would be appreciated. My concerns are that the 400W hrs120 might be too strong, issues with standing waves, etc. I have also heard that it makes it too easy to tweak really low bass and thus makes mixes less translatable on other systems.
Thanks for the feedback.
~Brian
www.circusofmind.com
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 11:29 AM> Any feedback would be appreciated.
Are you sure? Most sound people try to avoid feedback. :-p
Seriously, though...
I use a subwoofer and recommend having one, so long as your speakers and room are calibrated properly. You also need to have a bass manager to redirect low frequencies to the sub.
When configured properly, you'll have a listening environment that can be totally flat down to (potentially) 10 Hz. If not configured properly, though, you could have all kinds of fun problems. :-)
Don't let anyone tell you that having a subwoofer is a bad idea in the studio. You are trying to get the most accurate depiction of what your mix actually sounds like, so using a subwoofer w/ bass management will allow you to properly hear the low end.
That said, I recommend having your speakers configured in a way that allows for disabling the sub and bass management, so you can test and see how the mix fits into a pair of speakers w/o the sub. -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 12:30 PMThanks Jory.
I have a presonus studio control which I can use to bypass the sub, but I am not sure what a bass management system is. I will do some searching to understand this better.
As for configuring properly. The aspects I know to consider are:
1. Sub placement
2. proper crossover and volume settings.
Is there anything else I need to know about proper configuration?
The only anti-sub responses I have gotten suggest that if my studio space is not acoustically treated well-enough, than it could make my listening environment and bass monitoring worse.
I feel the space is "adequately" treated, but should I be concerned?
Sorry if it seems these are a lot of questions, but for me, the sub is a big investment and I want to make sure that my money is not wasted.
Thanks for the help.
~B -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 2:07 PMunless you're ready to fall down the acoustic treatment rabbit hole you should think about hiring an acoustician to come in and identify any problem spots in your room. In a room that small, the conventional wisdom is you can't have too many bass traps, but you can have too much high end absorption.
A bass management system will properly crossover your monitors for you, sending say 80Hz and up to your mains and below 80 to your sub, often times the sub will have on-board bass mgmt and you will plug your main outs into the sub and run your main monitors out of the sub, companies like Blue Sky also make bass mgmt controllers.
Sub placement is only crucial concerning how it will transfer energy into furniture or the walls or the floor, as sub frequencies are omni-directional and you won't be able to tell which direction the are coming from anyway. I put a Gramma pad under my sub as I have hardwood floors elevated over open air beneath the flooring, it helps with stopping the sub from passing energy all over the house.
Try an acoustician if you can hire one in your area.
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 2:21 PMAs Jeremy stated, a bass manager is essentially a crossover. Many subs have bass managers built-in nowdays, such as the Genelec subs. The bass manager sits between the send to your monitors and the monitors (or any room EQs before the monitors). I have, for example, a THX CC4 acting as my bass management and monitoring controller. The CC4 has four 5.1 inputs, which I have configured for 1) Pro Tools main out, 2) LtRt monitor out (Dolby Pro Logic II encoding out), 3) DVD-Audio playback out, Dolby 564 multichannel decoder out. I can only monitor one at a time on the CC4.
The output of the CC4 then goes to my room EQs, which then feed the mains and sub. What the bass manager is doing, in effect, is behaving as a crossover. It redirects low frequency output from the mains down to the subwoofer, rolling off the low end from the main channels so as to free them up to do less work.
Bass management is essential and will provide your crossover, so focus on that directly.
As for sub placement, Jeremy left out only one thing, which is locating the sub away from any room modes. Typically, sub placement is done by putting the sub on a furniture dolly (or other low wheels) and moving the sub while playing 40-80 Hz band-limited pink noise and watching the frequency response on an RTA, such as SmaartLive. Once you've found a location that is as flat as possible, remove the sub from the furniture dolly and measure again, ensuring a similar reading.
Yes, low frequency energy is essentially omnidirectional, but not entirely. In smaller rooms, many acousticians nowadays recommend 2 subs, against adjacent walls. This helps cancel out more room modes. But it requires more expense, more space, more time adjusting and calibrating, and is not always as effective. I only have one sub in my room and it functions just fine. -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 3:24 PMSo let me make sure I am understanding this correctly.
I believe the mackie hrs120 has all the functions I would need for bass management. It can set the crossover for both stereo channels (LP the subs, and HP to the mackie 824s). There are different filter settings and input sensitivity settings as well as polarity switching on the sub.
With the presonus central station, I believe I can trigger the "subwoofer bypass" to test monitoring with and without the sub.
As far as placement. I read that an alternative to moving the sub around the room is to put the sub in the listening position and then crawling around the floor to find the tightest bass response and placing the sub there.
I understand the ideal of hiring an acoustician or getting the smaartlive, but these all are expenses I would like to avoid paying if possible.
I also understand the ideal of perfect acoustic treatment, but that could also be quite expensive. Right now I have auralex foam basstrap wedges in all corners of the room plus some DIY 2X4 wood-framed fiberglass topped with foam panel to the sides front and top of the listening position.
I know its hard to know what the space sounds like through description, but I am having an equally difficult time deciding if the sub will be a good investment without having one in my studio to listen to.
I guess I don't know what else to ask in terms of advice. Its hard to know how much I "could" gain by having the sub versus how much I "could" blowout my listening environment with uncontrolled low frequencies.
Hmmmm.....
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 3:41 PMThe HRS120 appears to be a bass manager, at least for a 2.1 system. (It doesn't have inputs for the other 3 channels, should you decide to do 5.1.) It's all pretty inaccessible, though, so keep that in mind. Inaccessibility will affect any time you wish to disable bass management to test that a 2.0 mix is functioning as expected. The Presonus won't help you turn off bass management in this case, as the bass management is being performed AFTER the Presonus, so low freqs will still be redirected to the sub.
While I strongly recommend having an acoustician, I realize it is out of budget for many studios. That said, you can do a fair amount yourself, if you learn how. SmaartLive is a decent RTA software that can help you tune your room. There are others, too. Then you just need a reasonably flat mic, like a B&K 4006 or an EarthWorks QTC-1.
Also, you should be aware that Auralex is pretty much crap. Foam isn't capable of absorbing much sound. For example, 3" wedges from Auralex are only capable of absorbing down to 1 kHz. And their "bass traps" are really bullshit. Foam just doesn't have enough density to deal with low frequency trapping.
So, here's my thought for you: how do your mixes translate to other environments currently? Are they bass-heavy? Bass-light? Just about right? If they're bass-heavy, then you aren't hearing a lot of bass in your room and the sub could certainly help, no matter what. If your mixes are light on bass, then you've likely got a lot of low frequency loading and you are mixing to compensate for that. (Remember, 50% of what you hear is the room!) Adding a sub to a room that is loading up in the low freqs is not going to help you until you start controlling those low freqs. If you find that things are just about right currently, then adding a sub will probably work out great, especially if you do a little tuning.
BTW, do you have any diffusion in your room? It is a good idea to diffuse as much as you absorb, or you'll find that you are likely emphasizing the room's inherent problems! -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 4:18 PMFirst, in terms is disabling the bass management.
The HRS120 has a bypass switch which supposedly is to plug in a foot control so that you could disable the sub and monitor with just the mains. I was referring to using the Presonus to act as the foot switch but maybe this isn't possible. (I could always get the switch...)
In terms of acoustic treatment, you bring up good points which I was probably unconsciously ignoring.
I know foam is not effective for low frequencies. I guess I should have said my studio is fairly acoustically treated and not "fairly-well acoustically treated".
The wall panels I built use 2" dense fiberglass elevated away from the walls with a pine frame. The foam is on the top of this mostly for high frequency absorption. However, you are right about the auralex "bass-traps" as they are only a temporary solution and were received from a friend without investment.
Perhaps I should get around to either making or buying better bass traps before even considering a sub.
As for diffusers. I have no specific pre-built diffusers. I have some books shelves which act as sort of cheap diffusers, but I am sure is not too efficient. Where does one commonly put diffusers?
These problems are evident in my mixes which do mostly translate bass-light. I have tried to "learn" my monitors (and room) which sometimes leads me to overcompensate and end up with heavy bass on other systems. Thats the problem. Its difficult to get those low frequencies under control.
Maybe acoustic treatment is for another tread. Everytime I really start to think about these issues, I realize I don't know as much as I would like about tuning a room for optimum monitoring.
What can an acoustician tell me? Any approximate costs of hiring an acoustician?
Thanks again.
~B
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 4:29 PMLots to cover in there.
First, it's interesting that the Mackie can be bypassed by footswitch. That was clever.
Second, I'm glad you're aware of the issues with foam as acoustic treatment.
My question to you before going further is: do you use this studio professionally or is it mostly hobby? Your answer to that question alone can mean the difference in whether it's worth investing thousands of dollars in improving the acoustics with or without an acoustician.
What an acoustician can tell you is several things: suggestions for improving room performance based on placement of monitors, listening position, treatments, etc, the performance of your room acoustically, in real numbers, and that your room fits within standards that allow it to translate to other listening environments.
No studio is an island. The projects you produce in your room are intended to be listened other places and so your room should be a place where you can guarantee that things sound correct. "Learning the room", as people far too often do, shouldn't be the normal mode of operation. You should be able to say, "this is what it really sounds like. Period."
And I think it is entirely possible to get 85% of the way without hiring someone. You can use treatments that are well engineered, such as the StudioPanel line ( studio-panel.com ) and room EQs with a shareware RTA and get things sounding pretty damn good. Then, if you have specific issues after that, you can hire someone to help you work them out.
That said, I'm a big proponent of the spend now, save later method of working. That translates to the idea that I will pay someone what they're worth because I only want to spend the money once. A very common mentality is the save now, spend later approach, which entails saving $$$ up front, but ending up spending more in the long run. This certainly applies to acoustics, as you may save a LOT by having a good acoustician give you a site visit and some simple recommendations BEFORE doing additional work. My acoustician charges around $175/hr. And one hour goes a LONG way, when it comes to simple recommendations. -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 4:59 PMThis studio is mostly hobby, but is involved in a few more professional projects as the years progress.
I understand your point about acoustic treatment and the possible money involved.
I am also a proponent of the spend now save later philosophy. The difficulty with this theory in terms of acoustics is that I rent the room with my studio until I own my own place (hopefully soon) so I would only want to invest in acoustic treatment which is mostly transferable to other environments. Obviously bass traps, diffusers, and absorbers can be moved, but specific site analysis might be an expense which is lost when I eventually migrate.
I see on the EAW site the smaartlive software has a 30 day trial. I guess I should learn what to look for in its analysis and how to compensate for what it tells me.
Either way. Can you possibly recommend an acoustician for me to talk to more directly? I see you live in the bay area, as do I. You can message me directly if this is okay.
I could fire off questions all day, but you have been more than helpful. Thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through all of this.
This thread definitely took a journey. I am sure it will be helpful for anyone in a similar situation (which I guarantee there are many).
~Brian
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 6:32 PMI totally understand about not wanting to spend on anything permanent. That's one of the reasons I recommended checking out StudioPanel. The system is based on your room size, which is unlikely to get smaller in future spaces, right? And the panels are attached to the walls in a manner that is extremely easy to remove and re-hang elsewhere.
As it happens, the acoustician I recommend is the same guy who designed the StudioPanel line-up. He's flat out brilliant with acoustics. His name is Tony Grimani and he can be reached at PMI Ltd:
www.pmiltd.com
(415) 454-2087
BTW, that same 30-day trial of SmaartLive comes with StudioPanel's setup disc, too. -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Fri, November 23, 2007 - 5:33 PMWhat kind of music are you making?
Seriously, unless you're writing film scores or doing movie sound FX HR824's should do the trick for you.
If you're making dance music you really don't need a bunch of bass, you'll run the risk of your bass levels being over-represented in your monitoring, leading to under-represented bass in your mixes.
If you are continually making tracks that end up having too much bass try using the controls on the back of the speaker unit. If you have it up against a wall it should be set to "half space" and if the speakers are in corners, "quarter space" is the correct setting. There are also bass controls as well as high controls, and that 8.5 inch woofer can play sound down to 39 hz, which should be plenty low.
Make sure your bass cutoff is set to "normal" (39 Hz) on both speakers -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Fri, November 30, 2007 - 1:40 PMOkay, my focus has shifted a bit from adding bass to controlling bass.
Now I am looking more into getting my acoustic space sounding better with bass traps, absorbers, and diffusers. The high end is fairly taken care of already. However, the topic of this thread is about the sub frequencies, and that is where the problem lies.
This should be controlled with effective bass traps. Jory recommends MSR ,who I have recently talked with in order to get a price estimate.
Their spring trap (reportedly effective at 100hz down to 40hz) runs at $599 each!
There are other more affordable companies such as realtraps, and GIK which sell their bass traps at around $350 and $150 each, respectively.
Now these are big differences in price. Can anyone who has owned any of these products tell me how effective they are at what they do?
I agree with Jory in that it is better to buy what works best ASAP instead of the more long term expensive route of a series of up upgrades over time.
Any thoughts or suggestions? -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Fri, November 30, 2007 - 8:02 PMI have had MSR's SpringTraps in my studio, although the reason I currently don't is not a reflection of their abilities. (When building the studio, they were having a tough time sourcing a manufacturer, so they didn't include them in my pricing, so I subsequently didn't have them in my budget when I got my business loan.)
That aside, the SpringTrap works very very well. One thing to know about bass traps is that there is no standard of measuring the effectiveness of the SpringTrap. So there really isn't a reliable method of comparing manufacturers' products, such as MSR vs. RealTraps.
What I can say about effectiveness of the SpringTrap is that I could tell it was doing its job. The SpringTrap is a combination Helmholtz absorber and pistonic membrane. (Sounds complicated, eh?) Essentially, the SpringTrap is made up of 3 cavities of air that are tuned to absorb sound. The rear-most cavity has a Helmholtz port on it and is designed to be most effective when placed in a corner, with a solid surface 4 inches beneath it. (Hence the triangular design and 4" feet that the SpringTrap stands upon.)
The pistonic membrane portion is what really makes the SpringTrap special. The front of the SpringTrap is a membrane that is mounted on specially sized springs. Those springs allow the front membrane to move in relation to low frequency sound energy, converting that sonic energy to kinetic energy.
You can see how it is built in this pictorial:
msr-inc.com/pdf/springtrap.pdf
If you want to find out if it is working, just put your hand on the front membrane. You'll actually feel it vibrating!
Here's my thought for you: do you need to make a purchase before January? If not, why not come down to the NAMM show in Anaheim and check out the SpringTrap yourself? I can even give you a personal tour of it, as MSR has asked me to come help them in their booth again. -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sat, December 1, 2007 - 10:45 AMI have read the specs for the MSR stuff and am pretty sure it all works as it claims. My question is if the cheaper companies are of significantly lessor quality. I know you generally get what you pay for, but I know some big names use some of the smaller priced companies. For example, Bob Katz uses the realtraps mondo traps for his mastering room bass traps.
I know this isn't necessarily an argument for effectiveness, but moving parts and fancy design may be an overkill (or not, I don't know).
The other big issue is that MSR spring traps are beyond my personal skills to make myself. The other companies like GIK or Realtraps are all made with materials that are cheap to buy and fairly easy to make oneself. (I have actually made a couple of absorbers that are near identical with GIK and realtraps with 702 2" fiberglass, pine frames, and foam face, which work great in mid to high frequencies.)
But these are essentially broad band absorption right? and don't necessarily focus on low frequencies absorption. I know realtraps and GIK suggest putting these broadband absorber type traps in as many corners as possible (including ceiling-wall corners). But MSR suggest only
two 4' springtraps in the two corners behind the monitors.
I guess I am just thinking outloud here, and price is an issue, especially when the difference between options is $1200 a pair versus (could probably build myself!).
Anyone in this tribe have experience with realtraps, GIK, or other "broadband absorption" type traps? -
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Re: Sub in the studio
Sat, December 1, 2007 - 11:58 AMFirst, I want to remind you that I am not an acoustician, so I cannot really talk to this issue as much as you probably really are looking for.
That said, here's my take:
I have not worked with any of RealTraps or GIK's absorbers, so I cannot speak to them. But I do know about the SpringTrap, as I first met its designers when they were first beginning work on it. I know that they designed an initial version that worked well, but opted to send it to an acoustics research company for further assessment. (The amount they spent on that assessment and subsequent design improvements was significant and had never been done in the same way by anyone previously.) The assessment discovered that, while the SpringTrap was effective, that the design could be improved and optimized. At some expense, they re-designed the SpringTrap to be the current design, which significantly increased its efficiency. But it also increased the complexity to build.
Currently, the SpringTraps are built by a speaker manufacturer, as they were the only ones who could follow the directions and keep the quality and build to spec.
One more thing to consider: you may not need two SpringTraps. You could always buy one and add a second if you need it. You might also see if MSR is willing to provide a SpringTrap as an eval. (I imagine they couldn't do it until after NAMM, though.)
Now you know more about the SpringTrap.
Here's my thought about whether the other stuff is worthwhile:
Since there is no standard for qualifying the effectiveness of low frequency traps, there's no real way to compare the products.
Incidentally, which products from other companies are you look at?
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