Importance of (or lack thereof) your room when dialing in sounds

[sheky]

You can by using the vst version of sonarworks in a vst host (like Cantabile for example) and routing the out of the axe fx into your soundcard.
The only downside is that it adds a bit of latency since the axe fx signal has to go thru the pc.

Thanks for this. I've tried it before in my DAW (samplitude) but somehow was only managed to apply correction going into the axe, not at the output after the amp sims. I'll look into this again.

 

[sheky]

What do you mean with no accurate? Frequncy spectrum?

I mean at my listening position certain frequencies will be interfering with each others and will cancel out. Maybe my guitar will sound better with 10db cut at 90hz and an 8k boost at 2khz, but it won't be accurate.

 

[Fab8040]

I mean at my listening position certain frequencies will be interfering with each others and will cancel out. Maybe my guitar will sound better with 10db cut at 90hz and an 8k boost at 2khz, but it won't be accurate.

Well obviously if we talk about small or larger room but in any case not professional studio we cant expect the perfection but the highest result possibile.. So sometimes you can play without compromises. Most of times you have to equalize some frequencies.

 

[DLC86]

Thanks for this. I've tried it before in my DAW (samplitude) but somehow was only managed to apply correction going into the axe, not at the output after the amp sims. I'll look into this again.

Don't forget to disable direct monitoring in your interface

 

[Smittefar]

I think the great thing about the iLoud micro monitors (that I also have) is that you can be very close to them, so they do not have to be very loud, and in turn they will excite the room to a lesser extent AND, since I am closer to them I hear a larger fraction of direct sound compared to room sound.

My Adam A7s are set up following all the guidelines. I have bass trapping in the two nearest corners and broadband absorbers at the early reflection points (will soon add ceiling) - The problem is that I still have a -20dB dip at 80-100 Hz.

Here is a REW plot of my room. It is difficult to work in - So I often choose headphones

 

[JamesBWood]

Yeah the room can make a noticeable difference if your space is problematic. Supposedly using non-parallel surfaces are a good way to deal with things like standing waves. I've seen big, slightly angled wall and ceiling panels used to that effect. If possible, you can move your Axe and monitors to a different room to see if anything sounds drastically different.

My office/cave is quite small (10x12 I think), but is full of junk to help break up reflections. It's got ugly carpet in it now which helps too, but I want to yank that crap out at some point. Having lots of stuff on the walls helps a lot.

If you want to get really wild you could try something like this.

I feel sorry for the person that has to dust that room.

I bet the spiders love it.

 

[DLC86]

I think the great thing about the iLoud micro monitors (that I also have) is that you can be very close to them, so they do not have to be very loud, and in turn they will excite the room to a lesser extent AND, since I am closer to them I hear a larger fraction of direct sound compared to room sound.

My Adam A7s are set up following all the guidelines. I have bass trapping in the two nearest corners and broadband absorbers at the early reflection points (will soon add ceiling) - The problem is that I still have a -20dB dip at 80-100 Hz.

Here is a REW plot of my room. It is difficult to work in - So I often choose headphones
View attachment 74744

Play with the room sim in REW, it might give you a hint on what to do to fix that dip

 

[Smittefar]

Yeah, I have looked into different kinds of simulation tools - I found a cool one online that showed the room modes.

But this is damn difficult and so much work

 

[DLC86]

Yeah, I have looked into different kinds of simulation tools - I found a cool one online that showed the room modes.

But this is damn difficult and so much work

The REW one is pretty simple to use, you just insert the dimensions of your room, speakers and listener's positions and then you play with the absorption coefficients for the walls/floor/ceiling and see which one is responsible for that dip (my bet goes on floor or ceiling - but it might also be the desk if your speakers are placed on it without stands and in that case the room sim shouldn't show that dip)

 

[LiamH]

Sorry, jumping in late, but have been stalking this thread. Headphones is my only solution for setting up presets at them moment, as my current music room is a disaster at about 140 Hz (really resonant). Whoever said reading the manual for monitors is absolutely right, but if the room is an incurably horrible space with hand claps in multiple positions, there are limitations to how good the result can be, especially if bass traps are not an option for half of the corners.

Has anyone found a simulation tool that deals with non-parallel walls, floor and ceiling? Will be going from one tiny and impossible to fix room (acoustically at least, it will go back to being a perfectly good bedroom), to having a decent size control room, and a really decent size live room. I'm going to angle the wall where they meet, and will make sure floors and ceilings are not parallel with one another too. My plan is mainly "suck it and see", as the intent is definitely not for an acoustically perfect (or even worse, dead sounding) pair of rooms, but it would be good to know which resonant frequencies I'm going to need to worry about.

Going back to the OP, I can take out 6-10 dB around the nasty resonance in my music room, with really good monitors already high pass shelved, and I just don't know what those frequencies are doing. I can hear them, but I can't know if I have controlled them well. If I need to know what the preset sounds like at volume, headphones (ATH-M50X for me - not the flattest, but they are OK) is the only way. At lower volumes, with monitors well placed, life is fine. Once you start working the air in the room a bit harder, doesn't really matter where you place the monitors or EQ them, it's just a bad sounding room. Unfortunately good sounding rooms tend to come at a higher price than the best monitors money can buy. I'm determined to find out if it's worth it.

Liam

 

[mr_fender]

Here's a pretty cool room mode calculator I found online. You put in your room dimensions and it shows you the modes and where they exist in 3d space. Even plays sine waves at node frequencies. It's trippy to move around the room and find the node spots where that frequency disappears.

https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=12&w=10&h=9&ft=true&r60=0.6

 

[Smittefar]

Yeah that's the one I found earlier. Thanks for posting it, I forgot the address.

The REW one is pretty simple to use, you just insert the dimensions of your room, speakers and listener's positions and then you play with the absorption coefficients for the walls/floor/ceiling and see which one is responsible for that dip (my bet goes on floor or ceiling - but it might also be the desk if your speakers are placed on it without stands and in that case the room sim shouldn't show that dip)

Cool tip. I have used the room simulation tools, but for some reason it never occurred to me to play with the absorption coefficients to simulate treatment

 

[DLC86]

The last issue I have is that Sonarworks only works with the sounds coming out of your soundcard. Unless I'm getting this wrong, you can't apply Sonarworks to what's coming out of the Fractal. What I did was create a peq block (actually 2 of them) and tried to emulate the sonarworks curve as closely as possible and I put the peq blocks at the end of the chain. This works pretty well.

I just thought about another solution for this: capture the IRs of sonarworks correction for the L and R channels and load them into your axe fx in a second cab block placed just before the output

PS: I just recalled that I had made a wish for a useful function a couple years ago: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/correction-ir-loader.137037/

 

[mr_fender]

EQ compensation is not a true fix for room modes. The EQ curve applied will only be valid at the exact point the room is sampled. If you move a few feet in any direction, the curve will no longer be accurate. It's a workable improvement as long as you always sit in exactly the same location in your room when listening.

 

[DLC86]

EQ compensation is not a true fix for room modes. The EQ curve applied will only be valid at the exact point the room is sampled. If you move a few feet in any direction, the curve will no longer be accurate. It's a workable improvement as long as you always sit in exactly the same location in your room when listening.

Exactly, it works well only on a fixed listening spot, but for lower frequencies, which usually are the most problematic, the correct listening spot becomes much larger.

 

[Bruce Sokolovic]

Sorry, jumping in late, but have been stalking this thread. Headphones is my only solution for setting up presets at them moment, as my current music room is a disaster at about 140 Hz (really resonant). Whoever said reading the manual for monitors is absolutely right, but if the room is an incurably horrible space with hand claps in multiple positions, there are limitations to how good the result can be, especially if bass traps are not an option for half of the corners.

Has anyone found a simulation tool that deals with non-parallel walls, floor and ceiling? Will be going from one tiny and impossible to fix room (acoustically at least, it will go back to being a perfectly good bedroom), to having a decent size control room, and a really decent size live room. I'm going to angle the wall where they meet, and will make sure floors and ceilings are not parallel with one another too. My plan is mainly "suck it and see", as the intent is definitely not for an acoustically perfect (or even worse, dead sounding) pair of rooms, but it would be good to know which resonant frequencies I'm going to need to worry about.

Going back to the OP, I can take out 6-10 dB around the nasty resonance in my music room, with really good monitors already high pass shelved, and I just don't know what those frequencies are doing. I can hear them, but I can't know if I have controlled them well. If I need to know what the preset sounds like at volume, headphones (ATH-M50X for me - not the flattest, but they are OK) is the only way. At lower volumes, with monitors well placed, life is fine. Once you start working the air in the room a bit harder, doesn't really matter where you place the monitors or EQ them, it's just a bad sounding room. Unfortunately good sounding rooms tend to come at a higher price than the best monitors money can buy. I'm determined to find out if it's worth it.

Liam

The one thing that drastically improved my mixes I theorize will also improve my presets is the new slate headphones.

 

[sheky]

I just thought about another solution for this: capture the IRs of sonarworks correction for the L and R channels and load them into your axe fx in a second cab block placed just before the output

PS: I just recalled that I had made a wish for a useful function a couple years ago: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/correction-ir-loader.137037/

I thought about using REW to create an ir to use as a cab block, but it was beyond my technical ability. How would I capture the sonarworks correction to an ir? I didn't think it was possible.

 

[DLC86]

I thought about using REW to create an ir to use as a cab block, but it was beyond my technical ability. How would I capture the sonarworks correction to an ir? I didn't think it was possible.

It's possible with a particular virtual routing.
Basically you need to connect the output of REW to the input of the vst loader and the output of the vst loader to the input of REW.

You can do this by making a patch in your axe fx with just an input1 block directly connected to out1 and the usb input block directly connected to out2, then set input 1 source to "usb" in the global settings.
Lastly set inputs and outputs accordingly in REW and in the VST loader.

Another alternative is using Voxengo deconvolver:
Generate a sine sweep file, load it into your DAW, load sonarworks vst as an insert effect and export the new wave file.
Then deconvolve it with voxengo

Whichever way you choose remember to do an IR for both L and R channels

 

[sheky]

It's possible with a particular virtual routing.
Basically you need to connect the output of REW to the input of the vst loader and the output of the vst loader to the input of REW.

You can do this by making a patch in your axe fx with just an input1 block directly connected to out1 and the usb input block directly connected to out2, then set input 1 source to "usb" in the global settings.
Lastly set inputs and outputs accordingly in REW and in the VST loader.

Another alternative is using Voxengo deconvolver:
Generate a sine sweep file, load it into your DAW, load sonarworks vst as an insert effect and export the new wave file.
Then deconvolve it with voxengo

Whichever way you choose remember to do an IR for both L and R channels

Well that is amazing, but its like when I try to fix my washing machine, I'll need a youtube video.

 

[luke]

Yeah the room can make a noticeable difference if your space is problematic. Supposedly using non-parallel surfaces are a good way to deal with things like standing waves. I've seen big, slightly angled wall and ceiling panels used to that effect. If possible, you can move your Axe and monitors to a different room to see if anything sounds drastically different.

My office/cave is quite small (10x12 I think), but is full of junk to help break up reflections. It's got ugly carpet in it now which helps too, but I want to yank that crap out at some point. Having lots of stuff on the walls helps a lot.

If you want to get really wild you could try something like this.

I feel sorry for the person that has to dust that room.

Once a year you blow it off with an air compressor.

I used sound insulation in three full walls.