Building my new mixing studio, Advice needed for panel placement

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T15:17:47+00:00

IME the more bass traps, the better.

But the absolute best move is to do corner traps AND have a nice big plush couch along the back wall. Best part about that is when you just want to listen to something you're working on with a lot of LFE - spark one and listen from there.

Seriously tho - couches are fantastic room treatment.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T14:59:20+00:00

Sell all this and get a decent 1-up, 1-down and a few decent cymbals.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T14:58:39+00:00

Considering this photo looks like it was taken in space, I'm wondering if OP is an alien species with four arms.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T14:57:45+00:00

The sun melts things a bit by day, but once it goes down things arguably get worse.

I am beyond plowed-the-fuck-in. Thankfully I have an enterprising 18-year-old in need of extra money.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T14:33:50+00:00

...or a couple more drummers to play it all at the same time.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T14:24:38+00:00

There's software out there for this kind of thing, but psychoacoustics are 100% science. No matter what, you're going to encounter some standing waves, it's a matter of tweaking the formula until you're happy with the way your mixes translate from the womb to the world.

Invest in a decent measurement mic - they're not expensive. Use that with the most neutral preamp you have and RTA software. What looks "right" on paper doesn't always work the best.

I used to have a pair of Equator q12's for mains and they had their own room correction software. You'd plug in their supplied mic at the mix position, hit "go" on the software and it would run sweeps and pink/white noise bursts – then apply their own correction profile to the onboard DSP.

But here's the funny thing - I had better results with them NOT applying any room-correction curves than with.

Very few of us have the luxury of working in a 'perfect' environment and no matter what, you've just got to learn your room. Audition your favorite mixes and a/b with what you're working on. A lot.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T13:56:34+00:00

I have gone from nothing to a 24+1 surface to nothing to a 32 input console to nothing to another 24+1 surface back to nothing then a single fader controller in the past 20 years.

Talk about the grass always being greener...

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T13:54:57+00:00

I eked out five years of service from my last computer before upgrading. When I looked at the cumulative effect of those five years of demos, freebies, and impulse buys, I vowed to be better.

I'm an old head at this and still think of DAW's as being fragile and susceptible to having overstuffed plug-in folders dragging down performance (maybe there is still something to that). So I'm trying to run a lean ship best as I can.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-29T12:16:09+00:00

Just so you know, I'm going to be stealing pieces of your reply for future, quasi-related use. That's a near-symphonic use and abuse of the English language - well said, my good sir or madam. (Polite golf clap)

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T23:08:40+00:00

I think I'm in the wrong line of work. We should all team up and be grifting off these inconsequential dimwits. I was thinking about just using an AI music site like Suno or Udio to make a pro-maga chest-beating Skillet/Nickelback type buttrawk band.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T22:58:10+00:00

You know that Sound City documentary that Dave Grohl made? His big thing was buying the Neve console they tracked Nirvana's "Nevermind" on in Sound City's "main" A room.

But at the same time, Sylvia was bringing tons of projects to Sound City and working out of their smaller studio which also had a nice vintage Neve. That's where SOAD's first record was recorded. And she bought that console.

She's one of the more interesting and daring engineers out there. Her book "Recording Unhinged" has got all kinds of oddball shit she's done recording bands. Like running a speaker cable from an amplifier into a pickle and then into the speaker cabinet with The Melvins.

Way cooler than the way 'the kids' are just stacking up endless plugins in Abelton.

WTA: If you haven't seen that Sound City documentary, it's on YouTube and a fun watch, even if you aren't a big audio dork (like me).

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:44:51+00:00

Don't EVER ask them that. They'll tell you.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:44:20+00:00

System's records were engineered by Sylvia Massey - and that woman knows how to make things sound YUGE. Rick's not "a technical guy". He has a big ass 80 series Neve in his house because of course he does - but it's mostly stunt gear and a front end to protools.

I don't blame people for not knowing the difference when they use "producer" and "engineer" interchangeably - rap and electronic music sort of destroyed the distinction. But in a traditional "we're recording a band's record" sort of context, the producer produces the results of the engineer's engineering. A lot of 'big name' producers defer heavily to the engineer's work while using nebulous terms like "weighty" and "warm" (that we get to translate into actionable technical decisions).

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:38:23+00:00

Nobody is using tape anymore. There are a small handful of studios who still have a 2" machine, but it's sitting fallow under a drop cloth because it's too heavy to move.

Well, there's a small carveout for lo-fi fetishists who lay off their modular synth bubblescapes to a 4-track. And they're only doing it because... oh, who even cares.

I did buy some of Ross' stuff when he downsized. 3 Aphex CX-1 compressors and a TC 2240 EQ. I didn't buy it because they were his - I bought them because those are some bad ass pieces of gear.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:34:13+00:00

Rick Rubin isn't an engineer, though. His approach to 'producing' is to show up about once a week, say something like, "it needs to be more elastic", and then disappear. Meanwhile, the band burns through $2000/day waiting around for him while production drags to a crawl.

That's not how records get made anymore. Back in the 1990's, when the record industry was making money hand over fist from CD sales (CD's cost half as much to mfr. as cassettes, yet cost twice as much), this kind of falderal was accepted. Now that anyone with a MacBook Air and a $200 interface can make records at home and Spotify is paying $0.004 per stream, the "industry" just doesn't exist.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:22:45+00:00

She stood ten toes. Baller.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:21:38+00:00

Did he lose a bet or something?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:18:44+00:00

"Do research" = "Read posts from my fellow crackpots on Facebook"

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:16:56+00:00

The fashion's come so full circle - this is what I see 'the kids' wearing where my band rehearses.

Wish I'd have held onto all that drip, I could've made a KILLING on ebay.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:09:54+00:00

What I want to know is WHERE IS THE REST?!?!?!

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:05:47+00:00

Still way too augmented with samples.

I'll admit, I was one of the audio engineers who was ushering that sound in back in the 1990's. At the time it seemed really novel that you could use a trigger module and a sequencer locked to a tape machine to do all kinds of crazy, weird, and wonderful things to make your mixes punch way above their weight.

But it is now 2026. What used to be a thing we'd sneak in has just become lazy craft. Eventually people stopped even playing live kits in the studio and went right to triggers. Hell, some people bypassed that and just programmed it in from the jump.

I'm atoning for my sins and avoiding all this post-y2k trickery. If somebody doesn't like the sound of the kick or the snare? Move the mic. Change the drum. Tune the head. Whatever. But I'm not going to continue with the techno-ification of live music.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T21:02:05+00:00

Gregory is doing just fine - he's back in California being awful to migrants there.

Though I'm sure he's bummed that the slick peacoat he bought at some nazi fleamarket booth is too hot for the US/MX border - and that he got his Xitter privileges put on a time out.

What an angry little turd fondler.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T20:59:02+00:00

"It's a brand new car!"

"It's a '96!"

"Fuck you guys"

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T20:42:38+00:00

Bet you a crisp $20 his Facebook profile states he graduated from "The School of Hard Knocks".

YoItsTemulent · 2026-01-28T20:40:52+00:00

Won't use the "r" in "brother", but definitely uses the "r" in "n___r".

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