Today, studios in small rooms are no longer the exception; they are the norm. They are often referred to as home studios or project studios. Truth is, some of the best production being done today is actually produced in these small rooms. Best o all, it is not difficult to make a small room work reasonably well. You just have to be aware of some of the key challenges.

Room geometry
Although there are no set rules, most designers will tell you that creating a balanced room design will yield the best results. For instance try to lay your room out in such a way that the geometry on the left and right sides of the mix position is balanced. You should also avoid placing your mix position in the center of the room as this is often where nodes intersect which of course can cause certain frequencies to amplify while others will cancel out.

Living with parallel walls
In recording studios, parallel walls are avoided because they cause two major problems: chatter echo and standing waves. Reality check: most rooms have 6 parallel surfaces… side to side walls, front-to back walls and the floor and ceiling. Telling 'the wife' that we have to angle the dining room is an unlikely option. So we have to solve the problem best we can.

Chatter Echo
Chatter echo is the trailing echo you can hear when you clap your hands and is usually though or as a high frequency problem. Treating chatter echo is relatively easy. All you do is add some acoustic treatment to the walls. Following the LEDE approach, you would apply a good number Broadway panels to the source wall to create the dead end - between 50% to 75% coverage - and then apply a random dose of Broadway 12" x12' panels on the receive wall - between 15% and 35% depending on how dark you would like to room to be.

Standing waves
The real challenge in small rooms is treating standing waves. These tend to present a major problem in the 70Hz to 200Hz region. By following this simple math, you can see why:

Speed of sound (1100 feet per second -approx.) = Frequency
Wavelength (size of frequency in feet)

Let's say we have a rectangular room that is 13 feet wide and 15 feet long with an 8 foot ceiling. This would mean that we have 3 parallel surfaces that are working together to create a standing wave in each of these directions. We calculate the offending frequencies by using the above equation.

1100 / 13 = 84.61Hz 1100 / 15 = 73.33Hz 1100 / 8 = 137.50Hz

This means that we will have standing waves at these three frequencies. To absorb them, we start by using quarter wavelength calculations:

Wavelength divided by 4 = ¼ wavelength
Divide this by half (2) = to allow for angle of incidence

Example: To absorb 137Hz, you take the wavelength (8ft) and divide by 4 to get the quarter wavelength or 2 feet. We then divide again by two to allow for the various angles at which the sound will penetrate the panel and voila! You will need 1foot or a 12" deep bass trap to absorb 137.Hz. To absorb 73.33Hz, you will need just under 24" deep of material. The larger the bass trap, the more you will attenuate. The deeper the bass trap, the lower the frequency.

Oxymoron - Small rooms & large bass traps!
Think about it… you have a small room, which produces problems around the 100Hz region and the solution is a big fat bass trap! Where are you going to put it? Is there not another solution? Actually there is. And it is built into both the FullTrap and MaxTrap bass traps. Instead of using a bunch of soft porous material to absorb bass energy, we can extend the low frequency response of a bass trap by adding a limp mass to the equation. A limp mass can be thought of as a device that will vibrate when it comes into contact with powerful bass sound-waves.

Inside the FullTrap and the MaxTrap, behind the acoustic broadband panel is a limp mass. It is in fact a diaphragmatic resonator that is suspended and left to resonate freely as bass waves pass through the front membrane and cause it to move around. Because it is made from a heavy loaded vinyl, it will not make any noise. It will just quietly vibrate as it attenuates the lower bass. Best of all, this means that you no longer have to have a huge monolithic bass trap in your studio!