{"id":7106,"date":"2021-03-17T17:34:28","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T17:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sonarworks.com\/soundid-reference\/blog\/?p=7106"},"modified":"2024-07-01T13:39:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T12:39:23","slug":"how-to-set-up-your-studio-for-better-mixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonarworks.com\/blog\/learn\/how-to-set-up-your-studio-for-better-mixes","title":{"rendered":"How To Set Up Your Studio For Better Mixes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Can you really call yourself an audio engineer if you haven\u2019t gone from being proud of a mix to ashamed of it in less than 24 hours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my first mixing gigs was for a radio station that hired me to remix their live concert recordings for broadcast. After working on my first mix for a week straight I brought it to my boss for revisions. It was terrible, but he let me down easy. \u201cIt\u2019s alright kid, we\u2019ve all been there,\u201d he said. \u201cI listened to a mix in my car last week and got so mad I threw the damn CD out the window.\u201d John was a good audio engineer and a great mentor. He taught me that the problem wasn\u2019t with my ears\u2014it was my room. Specifically, the acoustics of my room was the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article will get you on the road to properly setting up your control so you don\u2019t follow my path of producing sub-par mixes due to bad room setup and acoustic problems. Sonarworks\u2019 blog contains a lot of information about setting up your room and acoustics, but this article will teach you the basics. At the end of this article, you\u2019ll find useful links to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting Up the Guest Room as Control Room<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many engineers dream about working in facilities like Abbey Road, Record Plant, and Blackbird\u2014but the reality is most of us (including pros) work in bedrooms, attics, and basements, which typically provide less-than-ideal acoustics. Square rooms with surfaces like drywall and concrete can cause sound to bounce around the room and smear your perception of the sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, there\u2019s quite a bit you can do to improve the acoustics of an existing room without having to hire an acoustician or a construction crew. We\u2019ll cover some simple room setup tips that will help ensure that you can produce mixes that sound good on any system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening Position<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Good mixes start at the source. It goes without saying that high-quality studio monitors are a must for achieving pro-quality mixes, and their setup and placement within a room can have a big impact on their sound. In fact, the acoustic treatment of your room will make a larger impact on the accuracy of your monitoring than the monitors themselves. Great monitors in a poorly treated room will sound awful. Conversely, modestly-priced monitors can sound fantastic when properly set up in a well-treated room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When setting up your mix position, it\u2019s best to aim the speakers so they\u2019re firing down the long dimension of the room. The more distance between the speakers and the far wall, the less chance they have of creating unwanted reflections. Additionally, your listening position shouldn\u2019t be too close to the rear wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideal listening position is 38% into the length of the room, centered between the left and right walls. However, this distance will vary from room to room, depending on the layout. For most home studios, it\u2019s best to find your listening position before you determine where to place your monitors. Use the technique at the end of this article to help locate your ideal listening position. Once you\u2019ve identified the ideal listening position for your room, it\u2019s time to place the monitors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locate Your Listening Position<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You can easily find the best listening position in your room with no measurement tools except your ears. For this exercise, it\u2019s best to program a midi pattern playing a stepped bassline with a smooth sine bass sound. (The default patch on Logic\u2019s EXS 24 is a sine wave) Program a bassline that starts at low C (three octaves below middle C), which is about 31 Hz. Then program a half-step increase for every eighth note up to middle C. Then reverse the pattern to descend one half-step for each 8th note. Set the tempo to 100 and loop the pattern.  Or download and loop this audio or midi file<\/p>\n\n\n\n