Small rooms can be especially difficult to acoustically treat, and we at GIK Acoustics break down from where exactly the issues originate in small rooms and give tips on how to treat them.
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"How do I get better acoustics in a small room?
Getting the best sound out of a small room can be a tricky endeavor. Acoustically treating a small room requires the same testing and attention to detail that a larger studio does, but with a small room we’re limited in how much treatment we can fit into the room, and by how much time sound waves have to develop.
AS we’ve covered in other videos: Just like in a large studio you’ll want to focus treatment in all the familiar areas: First reflections, corners, and the back and front wall.
Why do small rooms suffer from bad acoustics?
We almost always refer to sound waves by their frequency, or the number of full cycles per second the wave completes, but that frequency is always going to correlate to a wavelength which is just the measurement of the physical length of a complete cycle.
If we play a sound within a room that has the same dimensions as the wavelength then that sound will reflect and overlap itself causing phase interference.
The wavelengths that correspond to your room’s dimensions are called the room modes. We have a whole video on the subject if you’d like to learn more but the important thing to take away is that the smaller the room the shorter the wavelength is for the room modes. In a large enough room the room modes are below the audible range, but as we shrink the room those room modes are pushed into the audible range and start becoming a problem.
To make matters worse, sound waves that are too large to complete a full cycle within the room start to create areas of low and high pressure that will throw off your bass response.
In order to treat these Bass issues we need thick absorbers to soak up the reflections causing the model issues. In a small room we’re already pressed for space, so actually fitting enough thick bass traps in the room becomes a challenge.
Where do you put acoustics in a small room?
In a smaller room, it’s even more imperative that you find the best listening position and speaker placement for your room. The frequency response can change drastically based on small changes to where you place your speakers and workstation, so make sure you experiment and test a variety of layouts.
In a small room you’ll probably get the best results with your speakers close to the front wall, and your listening position at roughly one third of the way from the front wall. We want to make sure our listening position isn’t at the null in the center of the room, and that our speakers aren’t in a location that creates a lot of SBIR issues. You can learn more about SBIR if you check out our video on the subject.
You always want to treat your first reflections, but in a small room the delay time between the direct sound and reflected sound is shorter, so the reflected sound is arriving at the listening position with more energy and close enough to the original sound to cause more phase interference and comb filtering.
With a lack of space for treatment you’ll want to utilize ceiling space, especially by treating the first reflections on your ceiling. Treating the horizontal corners of the room that outline the floor and ceiling can also help mitigate bass issues.
Because small rooms need almost all of the available space to correct the bass issues, using dedicated diffusers or high frequency absorption ends up being a waste of space. Always focus bass trapping in a small room and only add diffusion if it’s part of a combination absorber/diffuser like our alpha and impression series, or after you’ve gotten the bass response to where you want it.
Keep in mind diffusers need a certain amount of space to work effectively so depending on the type of diffuser it might not be practical to use in a small room.
How do I get good acoustics in my room?
Treating a small room so that it’s balanced for professional audio production is never easy. You’ll need to measure, test and experiment to determine where in the room you should focus your treatment, but you’ll start to see improvements as soon as you place your first few bass traps.
If you’d like a detailed breakdown for how to treat your room, fill out our free acoustic advice form and one of our designers will fill you in with tailored advice specific to your room. "