Acoustic Treatment Chronicles - Pt. 1 - The old room

Hey guys I just wanted to give a tour of the apartment that I'm leaving. This is where I was in school, where I recorded, mixed and edited all the songs that are going to be on my EP a bunch of other stuff too so I'm just gonna flip the camera around and let you guys see how it looks: the acoustic treatment and what-not. Ok I can't flip it Let me make another video. Ok so here's the little painting Karla made. Very nice. As you walk in here's the stuff that's going out Our shoes You begin to see the acoustic treatment Here's my production board for the EP. It was supposed to be a full-length album but I didn't realize it was such a big frickin task. There we have some four-inch, all the blue panels you see are four inches thick, the red ones are two inches. That multi-pattern, that patterned one over there is four inches over there you see some red across the corner and like, a blue towel over one those are two inch panels across four inch panels you see more four inch over there there's a cloud absorber two inches thick another couple two inches those two in the corner are six inches we have another reflection panel and then these two here which we always have to step over which is super fun. My subwoofer My beer, my little beer guy [music] ok oh Jesus now he's going to make noise So we have my keyboard and all that stuff now here's my desk and my listening position you can see here's my MOTU, ah audio.. I don't even know what it is but anyway My speakers which are set for a standing configuration. The tweeters, of course, ear height and I have this Mixcube which you might think is improperly positioned because it's not parallel to my ears when I move forward or back you'd think it would change but it's band-limited there aren't tweeters so it has pretty good off-axis response besides it's meant to almost, in a way, simulate consumer systems or other band-limited reproduction sound systems like an iPhone or so you know having a little off-axis, uh, action isn't the worst. I got my Radio Shack sound meter for making sure my speakers are at a good level and (for) testing to see what the ambient noise is in here. I also used it to adjust the volume of my system. You can see here my Audio MIDI Setup output I have my Mixcube at -18(dB) and the Yamahas at -26(dB), the headphones are down here at whatever and that corresponds to, um, I think the K.. Wanna say the K-14, the Bob Katz K-14 system so whenever things are loud in my room it essentially correlates to -14dBFS (in the computer). Again, the reflection points. The ones that I have in the front are like, com.., pretty much worthless. I didn't know that. And then when I move, all these red ones are going to become the same four inch thickness as the, the blue ones. We have some other plans: we're going to get rid of the frames (well the frames are still going to be there but we're going to cover them all in white fabric) so they're all the same color, same size, and we have some special, ahm, plans for the rear wall in the new place. So this is, again, a two inch thick with roughly two inch air gap back there and I would record my vocals here so that's at the back and then I had a little reflection (panel) here and then I'd say over 10ft in that direction although the ceiling up here wasn't treated so I had to deal with some weird room resonances when I recorded vocals. I don't, I mean, you're not gonna probably really get to appreciate what it sounds like in here but maybe I can like, put some Slayer on for you real fast. I usually just "Angel of Death" to figure out, like, if everything is coming through correctly cause we got the guitar just on the one side so. It's, uh, we're using Sound Check here in iTunes but it's, it's not 83dB because the room isn't really big enough. There's a Sound On Sound article, maybe I can link to, where you want to not have 83dB for a room this size because psychoacoustically, it sounds much louder. 83dB is actually for a room of like 10,000f3 volume and this room is only like 26(00) including the kitchen and the hallway. I have the panels across here - it seemed to have given the best response; maybe I can post links to images on my, uh, Room EQ Wizard response and then.. This kind of stepped rear wall, according to Ethan Winer, also helps in giving a, a slightly off kilter modal response in the room for the low end. So anyway, this is the room that I've been using for the past five years. At one point I had the desk set up this way. You can see all the little marks on the ceiling I had for the cloud absorber. At one point I had it in the corner. I did my Mata Leao video with the desk here and I just ended up here after taking the Critical Listening class and it's been working out pretty good. I'm going to continue this series in the new place. Oh yeah, the last thing I wanted to mention was the length. If you factor in the kitchen.. My listening position is 38% front-to-back from one of those distances. I don't know if it's from.. I think it might actually be from that wall. Uh, and I know my rear wall isn't treated ideally. Again I'm going to take all the things I've learned over the last few years and try to like, do it right this time. So, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.