Time for a few upgrades! I have most of my choices nailed down,but I’m struggling a little bit with monitor selection.
After spending the past few months reading reviews and listening to almost anything I could get my hands on or find locally, I’ve narrowed it down to JBL LSR305s or 308s. This is where I start second guessing myself.
I mix mostly rock - ranging from blues-ish stuff to metal. occasionally some pretty hard core stuff for one of my kids - but most of my work is for my own projects. So a lot of black sabbath/down/C.O.C. type stuff.
The room is…well… Strange.
It’s about 2 meters wide and 4 meters long.
The ceiling is sloped from about 2.5 meters at the back of the room to 175cm at the front. The front of the room is open. It’s a mezzanine built over a larger 4x7 meter room. Acoustic treatments are somewhat minimally applied along the large rear wall.
Now that I’ve rambled for a bit, I’ll get to the point.
Given the odd shape and open nature of my work space, would a larger woofer on a 8 inch monitor be a benefit in the confines of such a small space? Or would it make more sense to go with a 5 inch monitor and add a subwoofer later when I have either treated the room more completely (or upgraded to a more controlled workspace)?
So - did I just post this in the wrong section or something?
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Random unrelated gripe - since I seem to be talking to myself anyway😄: I ordered a new mic and a bunch of cables for a project that just popped up and should start in about a week. Three hours after I got the order/payment confirmation, the company sent another email saying there was a problem with the payment, my money will be refunded and the order cancelled. How the hell can you refund money if there was a problem getting it in the first place?. I knew I should have ordered from the Germans. Every single time I order something from a French company, something goes sideways. Every. Single. Time.
I thought I had seen replies to your original post! Apparently not. Regardless, given the shape and size of your room, I’d be considering room treatment before monitor size. It’d be good to get someone’s input like @Ethan_Winer.
I’ve added a little bit of room treatments since the original post. Unfortunately, I am near the limit of what I can do before my wife visits violence upon me in my sleep🤣
It’s all important, but small room treatment is harder to fix because you get so much stuff going on in the low end. Also, first reflections will be more pronounced when the walls are closer.
Boz, its not clear how his mezzanine area is built into his room. He might not be in that bad of shape. A partial closed in 6x12 space that opens into a 22 x 13 room isn’t a terrible starting point in my opinion, depending on if the 6 foot vs 12 foot stretch is the part with the open wall.
If it was a CLOSED 6x12, the monitors size is irrelevant, and any kind of meaningful trapping has to go on the ceiling, but he didn’t state his ceiling clearance.
@Calebz, by the way, I had 308’s in a room that wasn’t much bigger…
In my old studio, this was basically a storage closet and occasional iso room for amps. That’s why I never treated the walls properly (if you were wondering about the picture) lol. The actual control room is on the other side of that glass.
As you can see, for a small space it’s pretty open.
The largest, half-assedly treated wall is directly behind me when I’m at my desk.
From the front of the monitors to that rear wall its about 175cm. From the back of the monitors to the far wall its about 275cm.
The mezzanine is 225 cm up from the main floor. The ceiling is sloped such that the rear wall is also 225 tall (mezzanine floor to ceiling). A laser level shot across the open space shows the top of the desk to be about 25 cm below where the ceiling and far wall meet. A couple off the cuff calculations using the 308s as a reference inform me that on stands at proper listening height, the base of the monitors will be about level with where the far wall and ceiling meet.
EDIT: I just noticed that there are no monitors in the pictures. I took them down last night to work at another location and haven’t put them back up yet. Totally spaced and didn’t notice when I was taking the pictures. The stands are still there for reference though. Current monitors are a set of AV40s I’ve used for mobile stuff for years - nothing bigger would fit in my suitcase last time I went to the US and brought stuff back with me.
EDIT EDIT: Forgive the mess. I disassembled about half my crap last night so I could use it somewhere else. And before anyone asks - that oooold ass m-audio single channel fast track is not my primary interface🤣. I do still use it once or twice a year when I want to sit out on the back porch and fiddle around.
