Originally Posted by Tunes10 ➡️

Hi twkfrq,

I’m familiar with mixes that sound honkey in the 500Hz area. Like you, I use a17’s. Like you, I use an rme interface.

But it wasn’t the gear that messed up my sound. It was the room. More exactly: the desk between me and my monitors. I had major suckouts and peaks around the 400-500Hz area in the first graph I got measuring from my listening spot. Looked like a lie detector’s test from a very nervous liar. Treating the ceiling, front wall, side walls and back walls helped iron out some of the bumpy lows and highs. But the lower mids still looked messy. This changed when I took care of the first reflection points on my desk.

I directed the reflected sound down by tilting the desk surface in front of the left and right speaker (I flush mounted controls there, at an angle). Reflections now hit my chest rather than my ears. More direct signal, less phasey interaction. It straightened out my frequency plot around 400-500. I can show you the before and after graphs.

The low mids are the frequency area where desk reflections make themselves known. It is worth investigating what your room and speaker set up do to your sound before swapping gear. The weakest link in many mixers’ tool kit might be their room. Seeing my first room measurement in REW made me wanna cry. But room treatment can loosen the grip that modes, nodes and comb filtering have on your sound.

You mentioned you cross check your mixes in another room. How are both speaker sets set up comparable? Desk/no desk?