The current speakers I have are HEDD 07’s (mk 1..). IF my listening position is pushed back all the way against the front wall (or close to) can I surround my speakers or encapsulate them in traps? (Front will not be obstructed)

Being that they are front ported, this makes me think it might work but I know some designs weren’t made for this kind of setup.

I have GIK monster traps w/ flex range and soffits on order, that I can arrange like legos, to accommodate my listening position. I plan on leaving a yuge air gap behind them and I can essentially recess the speakers into a hole, up against the wall.

HOWEVER, if my listening position is pushed out from the front walls a way, I can of course place the traps directly behind to help with SBIR.

Background: Dimensions are 13 length 11 width and 8 ft ceiling. Monster traps going in as much as I can fit with air gaps. Plan on taking REW measurements of bare room as a starting point when my carpet is removed. Also, I will want to be able to easily upgrade speakers, so building a soffit wall will not be ideal, especially with this small of a room

Thanks

Curious about this myself. Had an idea today..I could go down to Home Depot, drop a few hundred on rolls of insulation, keep the receipt, and stack them all around my speakers just to hear what happens (and of course take some measurements). Then I’d play with how few of the rolls i actually need to make a difference, move them around the room to various spots etc. It’s a low risk play because you can return everything the next day. Could be fun, could be a waste of time. I’m new to all this stuff, so somebody else please chime in if you have anything.

For fluffy insulation to work properly and can’t be compressed, so it would have to be removed from the bags.

Your best to identify the problems then solve them, unless purely for experimentation.

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To the OP- if your speakers are self powered make sure there is adequate airflow for the amps to vent, or remove the amps and locate them somewhere with adequate ventilation.

Gotcha. Knew it couldn’t be that simple. At that rate they’d just be pillars of mass and not absorptive, I’m assuming. I wonder if there’s another modular means of playing with the room’s treatment points (outside of REW sim) before committing to what materials you need to buy.

Will do. I am planning on having a row of 3 ft tall monster traps with flex range go underneath my monitors. It seems as if I’m using mostly flex range and scatter plates other than my first reflections (cloud and sides), which are broadband. I hope it works out

How’s it working out?

Unfortunately I haven't received my treatment from GIK yet.. it's been a long wait.

I measured about 20 different speaker position vs listening positions with my room empty, and the response was always best with my speakers backed up against the front wall, so I'll still be able to put a lot of panels up there. But my plan is to just place as many panels all over the place (scatter plates too) and start measuring. (and play with new positions)

Here is my temporary setup with about 1/3 of my panels including a ceiling cloud. That nasty dip past 200 hz 1/24 smoothing. no sure where I'm at with the waterfall graph in terms of how bad it is, if anyone wants to chime in

It looks like the reverb time recess' back a bit between 175-400. It definitely sounds that way, like there's weight missing. A bit too early to tell with only partial room treatment in

/\ Looks lightly treated but not too bad.

If the reverb time ends up being uneven in that 175-400hz area, after I get all my treatment in, is there a way to make the reverb longer in that specific area? Diffusion? (Which wouldn’t be practical in such low frequencies and I don’t have the space anyways)

Would you mind upload your mdat? (L & R measured separately)

It's a bit difficult to estimate details in reverb time from a plotted waterfall

Will do. I haven’t done this yet so bear with me. Looks like Mdat is exporting as text? I’ll delve into it later today

REW measurements can be exported in several ways. mdat is the prefered way to upload here directly (if the file is not too big...)

< 10MB or you have to upload a couple of smaller chunks

Best

Couldn't get the picture straight.

A few updates. I might just retitle this thread.

Speakers: Evolution Acoustics Micro Ones

I added the room empty with a very similar placement. Just a point of reference. With the room empty, the center of the room measured best. With treatment, I have the Listening Position scooted forward several inches. Speaker position is the same in empty as it is with treatment. (was the hedd's)

The Cloud consists of GIK 244's with a 3" air gap and closest to the front wall is 2 monsters with Range Limiters, tilted slightly. Golden Retriever likes to lay down where the sub might go

added

Only or with sub?
Will not explain the L/R differences. Different side walls? Mass / shape?

Best

Thanks! I’ll have to figure out exactly what I’m looking at. How bad is it?

Just the L/R - no sub (yet)

The room is asymmetrical and one panel to my right is different from the left

I plan on putting panels on the corner that doesn’t have a door, in such a way that it matches the doorway.

Ceiling is just under 8 ft

Another thing I should mention. Computer is on the right side. Was showing 48 db on the meter. Not sure how much of an impact that’ll have

I don't follow? What meter are y refering to?

Your Umik-1 includes sensitivity in the calibration txt file which means you are sweeping around 75-80 dB SPL.
Levels inside the system might be a lot different.

Best

PS I try to make an explanation of my plots . Not quite ready yet

In REW, I use the Generator for pink noise to hit about 75 db on the SPL meter (in REW) before I take measurements. When I hit stop on the generator, the SPL meter is only picking up the noise floor, which in this case is my computer fans that are nearby making the noise floor about 48 db.

No worries on the explanation, especially considering I have a bunch more treatment to put in.

I should get some more panels in this week so I’m excited.

48 dB SPL is quite normal. Depends if you are in a city or quiet countryside. (Traffic, rain, wind, HVAC, fans, machinery etcetera)
Ordinary house or purpose built (isolated) studio.

Important: When measuring...Don't sweep (too) loud and drive small speakers into distortion, which might make the measurement corrupt...

REW distortion window shows Fundamental (received sweep), THD (total harmonic distortion) and also Noise floor.
Noise floor collects when you hit the "measure" button. And is saved when you press start and the sweep starts

Best

BTW the Left speaker shows ≈ 3% THD @ 2.3kHz which is a bit high

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll set my target in the SPL at 70 db instead of 75. I’m a bit far away from the speakers, about 6 ft. Maybe pushing them to hard for the distance I’m at.

Also, it might be worth swapping my left with my right to see if the distortion follows. I’ll do these tonight tests tonight.

Let me know if I should consider anything else. Also, I’m not emotionally attached to the these speakers. If they seem like they aren’t good, I’d rather know and purchase different ones up to the task. (Obviously I’d rather continue to use them for financial reasons and I like the way they sound.)

So I took some more measurements. I swapped speakers (left and right). Swapped channels on the amp at one point, tried different (less) amp gain.

On this next set of measurements, you'll see that the distortion in the 2k range presents itself on the right side, so it's clearly a problem with just that speaker, as the left one doesn't show anything pokey in that area now. amp channel and gain changes made no difference.

The numbers in the names of each measurement represents where I set the SPL Meter using the pink noise Generator in REW. As you can see, the lower SPL, the distortion in that area goes away

Does this mean that one of my speakers is defective, or that the other one (that doesn't show distortion) can just handle more SPL at 2.3K?

Or, do you think I was just running the measurement too hot and I shouldn't worry about this?

fyi: I ran the speaker that measures better a bit too hot and it did show distortion in that area, but at a way hotter signal

I believe 2.3kHz is the crossover frequency for the HEDD's, so it could be the region where both driver amps are in their most 'uncomfortable' range. But for it to be real crossover distortion, it would be present at low levels as well.

You might ask the manufacturer if this is pointing to a defect or is to be expected.

I’m actually using the Evolution Audio Micro Ones now, which are passive. I just find it odd that the other speaker has so much more “headroom” in that regard.

I think I’ll have to live with it for now. I haven’t mixed with these yet, so I’ll play around with a parametric eq on some guitars and sweep around in that area, at moderate levels, and compare to the other side.

I found a thread on passive monitors and distortion: Harmonic distortion in passive versus active monitors...

If I read it correctly the crossover is done 'after' the amp for passive devices. Could be the cable, the driver or the crossover that has a defect. As you switched cables and amp outputs already only things left is in the speaker... With the monitors you have I'd expect support to come back to you with answer within 24h of you asking if this is expected :D

Thanks, I’ll read up on passive vs active.

They’re a small company and I bought these speakers used with many years on them. They’ve been cool to me so far so I don’t want to get hasty. I’ll see about repairs and services

I got most of my panels in and placed them close to what I had in mind for the finished result. I have 5 more panels on the way. All Monster traps and 6" alpha's. almost floor to ceiling wrapping around the room. Layered alpha/monster/air gaps on the back wall as seen in the sideways picture. corner traps hidden and tucked behind more traps... I have a lot of traps in here. Measured again - various positions, and the LP and speaker position proves out to be the best in the same spot as it was in an empty room. surprise surprise.

Can I get some feedback? go hard. I'm a bit disappointed in what I see on the waterfall graph, at how some of the tails are from 300 hz down. I was hoping to get a more even response down to 50ish with all of this trapping. Overall I'm underwhelmed by what I see. sounds good though. When I listen to the latest tool album I can hear some details I hadn't heard before.

see MDAT

Thanks

Can you include an overview or a drawing with a legend of what trap you have put where exactly, including (airgap) sizes? From the photo's I see the front corners are not treated, cannot judge for the back as there are no pictures of it.

From the comparison between your last mdat and this one I do see improvement, you have flattened out a big gap in the 95Hz range, and the crater at 230Hz disappeared.

You have, roughly spoken, a +6/-6dB variance up to 1kHz, which can be even made better with some room correction EQ software, or you can create a correction filter in REW and apply it to your favorite EQ plugin. To me this looks like a vast improvement.

What were you expecting? +/-5dB I would consider as unachievable for small rooms, +/-3dB would be a dream of dreams, not sure all professional studio's achieve this. Had to look a while for the link I used earlier: https://www.acousticsinsider.com/fla...ency-response/

It says basically:
So don’t worry if you measure your room and you see dips and peaks up to 10dB. It’s normal. In practice, they are tricky to remove from the measurements. And it doesn’t mean that your room sounds like crap.
AND
It means that all you have to do to get great sound in your studio is to get the fundamentals right! Anything beyond that will cost exponentially more, for a marginal improvement.

L+R matching I think is good, at least up to 1 kHz. Psy smoothing shows a mild bass bump from 45 to 125 Hz which depending on how you mix or produce may make your mixes a bit bass-light or "just right" (if you tend to over do it).

The hole between 300-500 Hz may cause your mixes to be a little honky if you compensate for it. However, my mixes are always pretty hollow in that range so it could also be beneficial if you work the same way.

Not sure how loud you were sweeping but you probably don't want to mix/produce much louder than that -- THD is always between 1-2%.

Despite the table, the impulse response is looking really good. May be caused by a tight directivity of the speakers. Several loud-ish reflections between 10 and 14 ms (rear wall?) that you may want to attack, at least partially.

Spectrogram looks good with no holes. The only oddity is around 135 Hz (floor reflection?).

What treatment do you have on the rear wall?

I will provide more pictures for you guys with better explanation of what goes where and why

Based on what you said about +/- 5dB being difficult to achieve, I’d say I’m closer than I thought to being to the point of diminishing returns, so that’s good. I’m actually planning on going the Trinnov route, Frenzy has been getting me in the right direction.

Ah yes, Acoustic Insider. Jesco is the man. I actually joined his course a few years ago and bailed unfortunately. Too much on my plate at the time. Hence why years later going the GIK route. My treatment plan follows everything I’ve learned from him, even though I didn’t complete his program. I heard the song he mixed by Ofenbach “be mine” playing while I was shopping at Target here in the states, a few months ago.