Studio monitor speaker setup

The smaller the room, the denser the reflections will be. To mix a song, you are going to need to make sure that you are hearing it properly. While consumer-grade hi-fi speakers usually create an exciting listening experience, studio monitors are made to offer a flat frequency response so that you can make sure your mix will sound great on any system.

Studio monitors like the Yamaha HS-8 monitors in the picture above are perfect for producing a neutral sound so that you can hear your mix in the most honest way possible. Monitor placement can make a huge difference in the sound that you end up getting. For those of you that are working with near-field studio monitors, you want to place them around feet from your listening position.

However, if you decide to use far-field monitors, then you should place them anywhere from feet from your listening position. The primary difference between these two types of monitors is the rate at which the sound decays before it reaches the listening position. Small woofer and wide domes are characteristics of near-field monitors, giving them a high-intensity sound.

You can either place these on your desktop or monitor stands. Far-field monitors are different in that they are much larger and come with higher wattages. For far-field monitors, we recommend having a pair of studio monitor stands.

If you are set up at a home studio, you will likely have a small space to work with and an even smaller budget. With that said, there are genres of music that will require certain monitor specs. Remember, the goal of placing your monitors correctly is creating a natural balance of sounds that is uncolored by the acoustics of a room. One of the biggest downfalls that many engineers have in their home studio setup is: Room Modes.

Essentially, the sound can get trapped between opposite walls, creating a standing wave. This can greatly affect the volume and the decay rate of the frequency in question, which will distort the overall room acoustics.

Understanding how the dimensions of your room can affect your speaker placement and mixes is very important. The first thing you should do is make sure that you understand the inputs and outputs on your studio monitors. There are three primary types of input and output connections for studio speakers:. Different studio monitor manufacturers use different input and output sockets, so be sure to check. On the other hand, if you are using passive studio monitors, you need to connect the master with the slave.

You can read more about active vs. Most engineers agree that using your monitors to create an equilateral triangle is the best way to form a compromise between a studio monitor setup that is too wide and one that is too narrow. If your studio monitors are placed too wide, they can leave you with a hole in the middle that may lead to you placing too many elements down the center.

On the other hand, if your studio monitors are placed too close together, you might end up making panning choices that are too wide, creating a weird fake stereo mono mix like we hear from the s. For those of you who are using near-field monitors, we recommend keeping your speakers about three feet from each other and three feet from your listening position.

If I may, I have a question: Situation — My room is not ideal in many ways, although it is a great room 8. And on the left part of the facing wall, there is a patio door from half the left front wall portion, all the way to the left sidewall. This is a though one also. Assuming that a symmetrical front wall is the most important thing, and back-wall reflections is second. Conclusion: Is this a better thing? Wow, hope this makes some sense for the visual folks out there!

I found these pictures to help a little… 1-front right with angled corner 2-front left with patio door 3-left back wall corner door 4-Room walls. Another option is to put your listening position in the other end of the room, by your stairs. I suggest you first run tests to compare the response of the left and right speakers in each case. Play the same excitation signal through each speaker, one at a time, and capture the response using Room EQ Wizard free acoustic measurement software.

Focus mainly on low frequencies e. That will help you choose the best setup. Other things to consider are workflow, lighting, etc. I wish I could give a simple answer but that would just be speculating. Best let the measurements tell you how to proceed. Thanks Tim I meanwhile have decided to face the patio door direction bassed on multiple needs and a few sound checks with tones. The back wall was really gathering energy in the corners as one would expect.

It is created in a way to make the symmetry as perfect as possible. So far so good…. Bruno, congrats on achieving a balanced sound! Hi Tim. Any information will be greatly appreciated. There is an art and science to designing recording and rehearsal rooms, as each room has unique requirements.

Some are meant to have neutral acoustics, some are meant to have characteristic acoustics e. Thank you. Been struggling for a while to deal with a problem of video monitor and their interference in the sound path. I need a setup with 3 video monitors, or 2 with another big one some distance away in the front of the room. This presents many problems such as interference from the audio monitors in the 3 video monitors version where the video monitors find themselves in the audio path most of the time.

In the other version, with a huge video monitor in the front, I wonder what problems would be encountered from the fact that sound absorption in the front of the room would be impossible where the big screen is.

How would would one deal with such a situation? Sorry for the delay. You should treat your front corners if you can, but mid-high frequency absorption is not necessary on your front wall provided your back wall is well treated. It does not yet contain images but it explains more of the details.

Bass traps would also be useful behind your screen if you have space there. If not, you can just focus on front corner bass trapping. Hi Tim, great article. We are trialing a lot of your advise in one of our demo rooms, with some very good success I might add. We are however finding that what is good for studio is not necessarily the best for a surround situation.

In a surround situation if you are listening by yourself it may be good to have the main speakers pointing directly at you or just behind your head however this can result in a very small sweet spot.

We have found toeing in slightly to a focus point a couple of meters behind your head in the center position gives a wider sweet spot, although not as perfect as the previous option it does result in a better imaging and overall theater experience for more listeners in the room. This however is very speaker dependent and trial and error is essential. Thank you so very much for the excellent and practical write-up. Is this to be taken along the length or width of the room or both?

I have a room that is lxwxh 10x13x10 ft , which I am trying to change to The other room I have of course is much smaller in width 15x7x Which out of the two would you suggest for a home studio? I look forward to hearing back from you. Width-wise, you want to be sitting half way between the left and right sidewalls. I,m reading articles on this topic and 90 percent go with 30 degree angle from sitting position. Your 60 degree is even more than 45 degree equal lateral triangle.

Now I,m confused. They mean the same thing. Hope you are still around to talk. Is there any way to treat these areas without the sound being uneven? Hi Doug. Looks like I missed this comment earlier. I recommend you treat both identically. Focus on what you can easily control — in this case, mid-high frequency reflections. You could in theory balance out the sidewall reflections at low frequencies, but you would have to be scientific about it and it would involve much trial and error guided by measurements.

Hi Tim! Thanks so much for your series of articles. Super informative and useful! You say to avoid having the tweeters in the vertical center of the room. This leads me to a couple questions:. Unfortunately for me, the ideal positioning for me for my ear levels seems to be right at the vertical center, so I want to make sure I move off center properly.

Thanks again for your articles — you clarified a huge number of topics for me! Hi Sami. Glad the articles helped you. Much better to put your tweeters at ear level, and avoid centering your low frequency drivers. Any ideas? When in doubt, use the manufacturer recommendations as a starting point and the guidelines on page 2 of this guide to further inform your decision.

Would you mind taking a look at my attached image with the 2 layouts? Which layout would you recommend. Those articles helped me alot! Thx Tim.

Hey, thanks so much for this article. This is very helpful, especially for people like me who are kind of new to mixing and studio speakers in general. I recently decided to take mixing seriously and purchased a set of KRK Rokit 5 monitoring speakers.

I was reading other guides and they were very helpful as well this site helped me decide which studio speakers to get but this article was what solved my problem. Glad it helped you, Kyle. There will always be bass issues in domestic sized rooms, even with optimally placed speakers.

My studio has to house my collections of analogue synthesisers, drum machines, tape delays, organs, etc. The next item I recommend is a pair of isolation pads for your monitors. In addition to acoustically isolating your them from the desk…. They also offer a way to easily adjust tilt. For monitor placement , this has 2 advantages:.

Next , for those with a decent-sized room, I recommend adding a pair of monitor stands. Compared to desk-shelves, these stands offer maximum flexibility with positioning, making your job a lot easier. But just to verify it sounds good in-reality …. Some people use a test known as a bass sweep to pin-point possible problems in the low-end frequency response of a room.

What you hear in this recording is a series of descending bass tones , played at a constant level. To test your room, play this recording or any equivalent through your monitors and listen for significant changes in volume from one note to the next.

And unfortunately, the only way to fix it is to start over from the beginning, try again , and retest. Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar It sounds silly to spend thousands on studio monitors … Only to waste their potential by not taking the time to position them right. Yet many folks do exactly that. Poorly -positioned…they can create HUGE peaks and valleys in the frequency response of your room… Destroying any chance you had of crafting a well-balanced mix.

Your head should form an equilateral triangle with your monitors The following diagram shows how it should look: The logic here is : Without a standard in place, stereo image widths may vary drastically from one studio to another.

To solve this problem… The equilateral triangle method was likely devised as an easy-to-remember rule that offers a good compromise between too-wide and too-narrow. The next rule is… 2. Just like with Rule 1 … Rule 2 was likely developed as a way to maintain a consistent listening perspective from one studio to another. Up next… Frequency vs. Wavelength In a typical-sized home studio, you only see problems with standing waves below frequencies of Hz.

To employ this strategy, all you need to do is follow these steps when setting up your monitors: 1. Position monitors against the longest wall.

Up next… 2. Vary those distances.