Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Sun, 11 November 2007 10:49 |
I have been doing a lot of mastering lately.
I have also been aware that my room does not sound the same way that it did when Don Mitchell, my acoustical engineer, had finished tuning the room a couple of years ago. We had added some additional sound modifying devices with his approval and added some equipment since the last time he had checked out the room with his sophisticated equipment. I decided, on whim, to check out the room and found it lacking so after a couple of very productive days and lots of time with my AKG measuring microphone, an RTA and some pink noise my room is back to being the way it was before.
This got me wondering how often others on this forum take the time to check out their monitoring system/room and what, if anything, do you find that needs tweaking. Since we all use our spaces as our final checkout for how something sounds it seems that we should also be checking the room for changes on a more or less scheduled basis. Is that the case or do you instantly know when something is amiss?
Any thoughts would be most welcome. Thanks in advance.
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Last month, over a period of a couple of weeks, I was getting the feeling that something was amiss with the stereo sub balance to the mains.
I had been using the monitoring system for well over a year so I was very used to it.
But I now I started wondering why people were sending me in mixes with kicks that were a little hot! It was subtle, but a definite pattern was emerging.
Finally, I asked my tech to see if anything was amiss. We have active subs and an active monitor controller so I figured those were the first things to check.
As it turns out, the monitor controller, which is programmable, had glitched and changed the values of the sub volume by + 1 dB. Fortunately, my tech guy had written all the programming down so we didn't have to retest everything. Once he changed it back, it felt exactly the same as the day we did the last room tuning with our designer.
Other than changing rack gear around, there really isn't much we could change in our room from the day it was finished, furnished, room tuning checked and monitor system calibrated.
The one thing we are thinking about trying is raising the couches at the back of the room by making platforms for them with bass trapping material. This would be to see if we could get the sub frequencies to come down a dB or 2 by getting the ears closer to tweeter height and by absorbing a little more sub frequencies.
Our designer says an unintended result might be to make us want to raise the sub levels as the sweet spot may be affected by the extra trapping which of course would undo the benefit of any extra trapping! However, raising the couches with no trapping will help for sure as I have sat back there with various sized cushion to raise me up and it sound more like the sweet spot when the ears are higher up.
At any rate, a project for January!