Hi,

Could someone please have a look at these measurments for me? Any help would be great!

A little info,

Last month I finally brought a set of PMC Result6. Waited a fair few years to grab these so was really excited. They replaced my Adam P11a's which I've had for 12 years.

As I had to rearrange my setup to fit the PMC's in, I thought it was about time I'd take (attempted!) to have a go at REW and get some measurments so I borrowed a Behringer ECM8000 of a mate.

After getting lost for a few days, I jumped on AV Nirvana forum for help, I finally got some measurments down! Great helpful lot there, especially John!

Now I have some measurements down, I get why I always thought my room was punchy and middy with low, lowend. If I am reading correctly, I have a huge peak at around the 140Hz mark and a noticable dip in the lows, sub. Highs roll off a lot too.

I have tried various placements these last few weeks, but everyone is getting annoyed with my clutter everywhere now!

My room is a frankenstein build. No walls are really the same build type/construction. Mostly soild-

13ft.11" Length
8ft.5" wide (front wall end is external wall, where speakers/mix spot is. A water tank/airing cuboard buldges out by 6" left corner, so thin plasterboard type wall and door, plus a small window to the left. The right corner, is soild block and brick type, external wall.)
7ft 9" height. (The ceiling is really thin fibreboard type which above is the loft.)

To top it off I have a large window to the right of me that pretty much is 5ft.6" long and 3ft.5" high inbetween floor and ceiling. The left wall is soild. Guess thats why my measurements are pretty different each speaker!

As you can see, it's not ideal at all, but it's what I have.

Treatment wise, so far I have-

I have 2x GIK tri traps stacked in both the corners on the front wall. (I have to move the left ones when someone needs to get to the tank/cuboard, isn't often!)

I have a 6" GIK monster trap above my mix postion with a 6" air gap. I had to go the joist and chain route. The fibreboard ceiling is so weak! I can't really touch most of the ceiling, so was lucky to get one up! I did rip quite a few spots, so had to fill!

2" Panels on 1st reflection point where I can.

2x GIK 4A Alpha panels on back wall.

I do have full carpet on the floor.

I also have 2 more GIK monsters and 2x4" corner traps to use.

I can't really get to the back corners due to a single bed rammed into the right corner, and the left corner is a really small alcove with door enterance. I could just move panels on door enterance if needed.

Could someone please checkout my measurmets. Any help on how to solve any problems would be great!

Thanks!

In the mdat files I included 2 tests. One with speakers 3" from front wall, the other with 13.5" away. The mic was around 5ft 4" away from front wall.

The 3" away does have more lowend info, but a big drop at the 90-100Hz zones, also mids sounded more off to me.

13.5" away, has a noticble bass drop off and that nasty 140Hz peak raises a bit more, but the overall sound sort of sounds clearer and tighter, but bass light!

My centre does shoot to the left a bit, worse when closer to front wall I found. Quite annyoing now I know that!

Due to the different dimensions of my new PMC Result6's and the axis is inbetween the woofer and tweeter, a lot different to my Adam P11a's dimensions.

I have raised my Result6's with tiles and ISO puck minis on my stands so the axis and my ear height is around 49.5", 4ft, 1".

I have been trying a load of speakers placement options and re arranging things. Not getting much better results on that big 140-142Hz peak. After researching on here and online, looks like my rooms height mode and also length are the cause. If I move the mic up to the ceiling the 140Hz zone peak drops a lot.

Annoyingly, I have now busted my computer screen. I was trying to experiment with panel placement and a small G clamp fell! The smallest chip, but today the screen is like squid ink! New cheap screen replacement on the way.

My next plan of action when new screen arrives is to push the speakers to around 7-8 inch away from the front wall. The Result6's are around 14 inch long. In the manual they recommend distance from walls to be 0.5m. I am never sure if they mean from front baffle or back when they say this in manuals, any one know?

Treatment wise (this is all I have to work with for awhile)

4x GIK Tri Traps in corners front wall.
1X GIK Monster Trap on 1st refelction points (probs around 2ft 5" away if I am still going with 5ft 4" away mix spot from front wall.)
1x GIK Monster with 7" gap on ceiling between mix postion
2x GIK 4A Alpha panels back wall
2x Custom 4" corner straddle traps maybe stacked against the tri traps, floor end?
1x GIK 242 maybe stacked on top of the Monster cloud to thicken that zone up?

If anyone could help in any way, that would be really cool and a big help! I am no way a academic head, always been wired on the creative side, plus left handed so a bit cack handed too top it off!

Cheers!

I am also going to aim to go more narrow on the speakers placement front, probs around 3ft 2". Narrow, but makes sense as I hardly have any width to work with.

Also to point out, I have a small jazz size drumkit in the room. I worked out the floor tom and rack tom resonate a fair bit in the low mids, especially floor tom. I'll remember to take those out when measuring again!

I brought the drumkit and had a fair few lessons a few years back as I was feed up of using samples, loops. Made a huge difference to feel. I work with Soul, Jazz, Electronic and Funk. Hybird of analog and digital. Mostly overdubbing/layering due to small space! I can get an all right sound going, plus we send our bits of to a cool mastering engineer!

Sort of wished I stayed with not knowing my room measurments a bit! Trying to work it out eats away all the free time, but I know it will be worth it even if it's a small improvment in my tiny room!

The manual remark

'Ideally, the monitors should be placed more than 0.5 metres from the side and rear walls of
the room so that reinforcement and cancellation (peaks and dips) of the bass output caused by wall reflections will be moved higher in frequency and thus less influential'

seems incorrect. Moving speakers away from surfaces decreases the frequency at which SBIR operates, not increases (longer distance = longer soundwave).

Usually recommended is to either push them towards the surface of interest (usually front wall) to raise SBIR frequency, leaving a distance equal to the bass port diameter
OR
to move them further than e.g. 1.5m from said surface to get the problematic frequency low enough to not disturb (however that would still make an SBIR or around 57Hz).

When you identified the least problematic listening position it is indeed time to share the measurement so we can help to find out where to put which treatment.

In generic terms: corners and back wall deep and fluffy traps. early reflection zones could be less deep, but cover floor to ceiling, left to right.

Hi Tom,

Cheers for taking the time to get back. Really appreciated.

My old Adam P11A manual had a recommendation of 40cm from wall. I remember trying that and thinking around 70Hz-80Hz sounded really low. These new Result6's are a fair bit larger in all dimensions other than width and weight. I never knew a few inches matters a lot!

Just looking online at distance from wall charts, makes sense to try placing the speakers closer. I can probs get to about 4" (back of speaker to wall). These Result6's are quite long, cables poke out too.

I did see on a Genelec chart, first cancellation at 0.60m, would be around 143Hz. Would that bring down my peak at that area? I'm pretty sure it's my dimensions, especially height that is causing the peak though. Quite a few postions I have tried doesn't seem to affect it much other than rasing the mic really high. It clears it, but then around 70hz'ish rises.

As soon as my replacement screen arrives tomorrow I will get testing again.

I will remove all panels, drumkit and whatever items can physically be removed (it is a bedroom, but I all ready have sacrificed pretty much all space for my setup) and start fresh measurements with just speakers placement.

Like I said in my 1st post, it is a frankenstein of a build this room. No one wall or corner is the same! If you like I could message over pictures of the room so you could physically see?

I can't moan too much though, I could have nothing.

You mention when raising the mic the 140Hz peak drops a lot (does it also when lowering the mic?), so probably a height mode. This would mean moving speakers will not help you. This is also suggested by your earlier measurements having speakers 3" or 13" from the wall, at least that is what is in your description.

Only option, if that is indeed a mode, is to treat the ceiling down to the frequency of interest, as it is a height mode you can only treat 50% of the contributing area (floor is not treated), so whole ceiling with around 10" of pink fluffy like material, something in that ballpark.

Indeed, schematics or some pictures will help assessing.

If the room is not rectangular, modelers will fail to guide you and you'll only have your own measurements and comparisons to rely on

Thanks for getting back again!

I will test lowering the mic to the floor tomorrow. I defo remember the 140'ish peak dropping by a fair amount when the mic was rasied around 2 ft away from it and seem to remember around 70Hz's getting boosted/peak.

The bedoom I am in is upstairs. The floor is soft wood type boards, most likely pine or some sort, fully carpeted. Kitchen is below.

The ceiling is made of really thin fibreboard covered in artex (it's a fairly old house, built after the war.) Above the ceiling is the loft. The loft has fairly thick insulation on the floor, not been boarded out ect.

We don't own the house, so can't unfortunately go chopping around or doing too much damage! I all ready made a fair few tears and small holes when trying to find joists for a ceiling cloud!

Ah, thanks for the heads up!

The room is sort of nearly rectangular!

What makes it off is the door enterance/alcove in the left back wall corner that is 1ft 8" deep, 2ft 11" long and also their is an airing/water tank cuboard that sticks out 6 inches in the front wall left corner. So both left side corners have a door to deal with.
The cuboard is made of single board. It's thin as and full of pipes and a water tank, plus boiler switch and boiler programmer (the boiler is now outside in a small out building, used to be in the kitchen under the room hence the layout.)

The right side is no better! A large 5ft.6" long, 3ft.5" high window and is all solid wall. Meaning the right front corner is solid, left side is the airing cuboard and the rest of the left wall is soild. It used to have a small fire place that was blocked in years ago (before us)

The front wall is external solid wall with a small window to the left that meets the airing cupoard in the left corner.

The back wall is internal and solid on the right corner, the door enterance I mentioned is on the left.

All walls have been skimmed/plastered and painted. Back wall has wall paper.

Looking at my last measurments I attached. The 142-3hz peak does seem to drop by about 4 dBs the closer the speaker to the wall, but then there is a large dip at 90-120Hz and boost at 70hz-80hz.

Makes sense as, if I have read correct, the null notch moves up closer the speaker/s to front wall. I might have to try 3" again. Think that might be a good start to re set from.

Not sure if I am seeing/reading that right? I am new to REW.

Looks like SBIR non resonant issues and some modal positioning. The double whammy one has to deal with when using free standing monitors.

Also the fact the room is small, which limits the choices in terms of possible locations for a viable speaker/listener combination, plus limits the depth of treatment needed for dealing with these issues, all compounds the problem.

Bottom line, is at a certain point you will have to compromise somewhere in terms of the final result and you have to decide at what point will the result be useable enough for working.

Hi,

Thanks for jumping in on the input. Appreciated!

Yeah, really limited on space here.

I am going to start with 3" from the wall tomorrow again and stay around the 38% mark. Seems a pretty cool spot overall here. So 5ft 2-4" away from front wall. Means I have to sit a bit futher away from the triangle, but the Result6's seem to be quite wide firing, so not too bad. Also happy to go more narrow as long as I have around 1m/3ft or so spacing. Not a big fan of ultra wide sounds anyway.

I'll defo keep the tri traps and monster cloud up and want to try a monster trap at my 1st side reflection point.

Not sure if the 4a Alpha's are doing much on the back wall as their only 4" thick. I might try them at the 1st side reflection point and the 2 monsters on the back wall.

I have a spare 242 I'm tempted to stack on top of the monster trap cloud. Might be pointless though. Also have 2, 4" solid frame corner traps spare. Tricky in my room to get to the back corners though. I might use them in the front, so adding thickness to the tri traps floor end.

If your room is a rectangle and the walls are all made of the same materials, try the Room Simulator in REW to get an idea what different speaker/listener location combinations will give you for a response. Its pretty good at times in the result, in terms of how close it can get to the real world measurements.

Unfortunately my room isn't a perfect symmetrical rectangle or the same build type in all walls, corners ect. I did have a go at a few room and mode apps.

As Tom pointed out, it will have to be mostly measuring and experimenting my end.

Right, I have just repostioned my speakers again (so many times!!!) whilst waiting for my new computer screen.

Speakers 3.5"/4" away from wall (speakers back)
38" from speaker axis to axis/tweeters.
38" triangle
Speakers are 3ft 5" away from side walls.

It's quite narrow, but for my room layout may work a lot better due to the airing cuboard on the left needing access from time to time. The door can now fully open this way.

It would mean I would have to move closer and sit around 4ft 4" from the front wall if the speakers backs stay at 3"/4" from front wall. I will be out of my 38% zone which was around 5ft 4". Around a foot difference, seems quite a lot. I could stay at 5ft 4" and just be sitting outisde a narrow triangle. The Result6's apparently have a wide dispersion, maybe it won't matter as much. The manual states 0.5m axes cross behind you.

I have taken pictures of the front wall and both it's corners along with airing cuboard door open, closed if anyone's interested, would help you vision better? I took them without the tri traps in corners.

As soon as the screen turns up I will take measurements of left and right.

Thanks for the help so far!

Cheers.

Researching on here, I am guessing I won't have enough treatment to do a decent job, so placement of what I've got will be my top priorty. I used to just randomly pop them up anywhere. So many screw holes everywhere!

Just a heads up panels I own-

4 x GIK Tri Traps
3 x GIK Monster Traps
2 x GIK 4 inch 4A Alphas
2 x 4" Custom made 4" Corner traps (soild, straddle corner frame type, easy to move.)
1 x GIK 242 (brought only because I liked the colour one day! I have the metal GIK legs for it.)
3 X Small custom made 2" panels.

You'll have to consider you need large surface to cover with deep enough treatment down to the frequency of interest. e.g. 140Hz is 2.45m so covering at least that area on the right spot will be required to 'trap' such a wave.

While GIK traps are effective (check their specs), they have their limits in size and 'down to frequency', which is usually not lower than 80Hz.

Monsters and Tri traps go down to around 80Hz, 4 alpha maybe down to 100Hz (I dare to counter that figure ), 242 maybe down to 200Hz effective IF i interpret the graphs correctly on their website.

2" or 4" of whatever material will never help to trap low enough to get a balanced absorption.

Just to give you an example of what you might need I have 10 Monster bass traps as my cloud in a 5.5 metre x 4.3 room.

Yeah, I am beginning to realise that now after a load of research. I am hoping at least with what I have, it will do something. Taking it all out I can defo hear a difference with or without. Whever measurements will pick up a big difference, I am not sure.

Is it cool to message you some pictures over of the room?

Cheers for your input. Yeah, there's no way I can do that to this ceiling. We don't own the house and it's really thin fibreboard type. I maze well take down my lonely single monster trap above my mix postion lol. I found a few joists around it to hang it.

The only thing I was thinking, as the room is upstairs, with loft above the thin fibreboard ceiling, will the loft above being insulated help in anyway as it's not a solid type ceiling ect? The loft hasn't been boarded out or anything floor wise.

I have managed to mix in this room for a fair few years, also recorded tenor sax, trombone, drums, percussion, bass, voice over all with all right'ish results. Just spend a bit of time micing and moving panels ect.

I send my finished mixes off for mastering to a cool engineer here in the UK. I don't get a lot of tweak points nowadays.

These new Result6's have made me want to try and get the room as best as I can. My old method was, 'Yeah I will stick a panel up there'

Trouble is now I have done my 1st REW measurments, I've fallen in that rabbit hole mode and overthinking, plus forgetting I'm not in a custom built room, all built around my system!

If I can nail as best of a speakers postion first, something which I never really did with my old Adam P11a's. I'm hoping someone could then help me, suggest a plan of attack on which areas would be best to treat with the panels I have. I may not even need tri traps on the left airing cuboard corner side, if the right corner is soild. Maybe the right would be better with a monster stacked against tris ect. That's where I'm at a loss as I'm no way clued up there!

I can do another test and measure session tomorrow. New computer screen was delayed today.

New tests done. I have done two measurements for left and right. These are without any treatment in the room. Man, it sounds a lot boxy without the panels!

Due to being a small house, I had to keep my bass drum snare, and stands in the room. I noticed toms really resonate, especially floor, managed to take them out! I have them tuned open, jazzy. The other tiny room was rammed full of my panels...again lol.

If anyone could have a look at these measurements, that would be really cool and I would appreicate any help on what a decent plan of attack would be with the panels I have. I have spent weeks trying to work it all out! Everyone here is getting feed up of my mess everywhere now, so have to settle on the best I can soon!

Panels I have to hand-

4x GIK Tri Traps
3x GIK Monster Traps
2x GIK 4A Alphas
2x 4" Corner traps (pretty much a tri trap face that stradles a corner. Solid wood frame so can stand free on floor ect. A local studio owner built me them.)
1x GIK 242
3x 2" Panels ( a bit smaller than 242 in length, but more square)
3x 2" panels

If I am looking right in REW. My left and right side are fairly off. Makes sense due to the sides are not the same material. If you read previous posts, I have talked a on that.