Setting Up a Recording Studio

Recording Studio Stuff

Setting up a recording room is easier if you do it in order. Moving a speaker is free, but unsticking foam from a wall is not. This post is an order of work for setup day, built on advice from Sound On Sound writers Hugh Robjohns, Paul White and Chris Mayes-Wright. The reasons for treatment are covered elsewhere, for instance in the series post Acoustic Treatment vs Soundproofing: They Are Not the Same Thing. Here I am concerned with doing it.

Step 1: Place the speakers first

Treatment should follow the speakers, because the reflection points depend on where the speakers are. Robjohns’ advice, from a May 2004 reader question, is that you and the two speakers should ideally sit at the corners of an equilateral triangle, with your head the same distance from each speaker as the speakers are apart. Something between 1 and 2.5 metres (3 to 8 feet) should be about right, depending on the room. He says the speakers should be mounted symmetrically on rigid stands with the tweeters roughly level with your ears, the right way up.

White says in his July 2000 FAQ column that putting speakers too close to corners tends to emphasize the bass in an unpredictable way. He suggests staying away from room boundaries, keeping the setup symmetrical, and moving the speakers forward or backward while playing known commercial material until the bass sounds smooth. He also advises putting monitors on stands behind the mixer, not on the meter bridge, because that creates a strong early reflection.

Step 2: Find the reflection points with a mirror

Robjohns describes a simple trick: sit in your listening position and have someone move a mirror along the side wall (or ceiling). When you can see a speaker’s tweeter in the mirror, that is the place to centre an absorber. He says early reflections from walls beside the speakers can disturb stereo imaging at mid and high frequencies, and that if you can’t avoid placing monitors near side walls, foam tiles or even duvets on the wall between the speaker and the listening position can absorb them.

Close-up of grey acoustic foam with an egg-crate pattern of rounded peaks

Image: A close-up of acoustic foam by Chlod Alejandro, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The SOS team’s January 2021 piece makes the same point in shorter form: as a minimum, basic “mirror point” absorbers are a must, and if you have space, proper bass trapping in the corners will tighten things up. It adds that this means real bass trapping, “not just foam”.

Step 3: Add the cheap soft things

White’s suggestion for a domestic monitoring room that is too lively is to carpet the floor and add a few soft furnishings. He suggests fixing a square metre or so of acoustic tiles to the walls on each side of the listening position to kill flutter echoes, and says a soft sofa at the back of the room, along with shelves, can help break up reflections from the rear wall.

Step 4: Plan the panels on paper

Mayes-Wright’s December 2009 account of treating a small project studio is a good guide to the practical part. His advice is that once the treatment is delivered, it needs a plan: where each panel goes affects how well it works, and how the room looks. He says sketches on the back of an envelope would do the job, though a printed room drawing makes a useful map to use during installation, and it lets you move panels around on screen rather than ripping them off the wall.

Step 5: Measure twice, stick once

His marking-up tip is a formula for evenly spaced panels: measure the wall length, subtract the total width of the panels, and divide by the number of panels plus one. Mark the corner points in pencil before fixing anything, and use a spirit level and a spare pair of hands. His quick tips include double-checking that you have as many panels as your plan.

How you fix them depends on the type of treatment. He says large framed panels come with brackets and sturdy fixings, whereas foam tiles are glued. He found aerosol spray-mounting gave unsatisfying results. His fixing tips also warn against standard plastic wall plugs for heavy-duty fixings on plasterboard, and say that leaving an air gap behind rigid panels makes them more effective.

A microphone stands in a vocal booth in front of a large window showing trees and a sunset sky

Image: A vocal booth with a window view at Studio Malibu by StudioMalibu14, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Step 6: Listen, then adjust

Mayes-Wright says that after the treatment went up, his main room was well controlled, if a bit live. He judged that by listening to speech intelligibility, and notes that it would be easy to add small foam tiles later if the room was too “roomy”. That is a good habit: put up the main panels, listen, and then fine-tune.

Step 7: Only then cable up

My own suggestion: leave cabling until the treatment is done, so that you do not glue panels over cable runs or trip over them while on a ladder.

A caution

Treatment is not soundproofing. White is blunt that acoustic foam and egg boxes are virtually useless for soundproofing. If sound leaking out is the problem, that is a separate job.

Sources