Studio Monitor Placement: Ideal Room Size For 6.5 Inch Speakers

When it comes to studio monitors, size does matter. The larger the studio monitor, the more low-end frequencies it can reproduce. However, the size of your room is crucial for good sound quality. If you have a small room, a large studio monitor can easily activate room modes, causing issues like phase cancellation and frequency shifts. Therefore, it is recommended to use studio monitors below 5 inches for small untreated rooms. On the other hand, if you have a well-treated room, a 6.5-8 inch studio monitor can produce ample low end. Additionally, bigger studio monitors can be placed further away from the listener and tend to have a wider sweet spot range. Ultimately, the ideal studio monitor size depends on factors such as room size, treatment, and low-end frequency reproduction needs.

Room size and treatment

The size of your room is crucial for good sound quality. If your room is small, you should opt for smaller studio monitors. A room that is 18 x 16 x 9 feet or smaller is ideal for 5" monitors. If your room is larger, you can consider 6.5" or 8" monitors. For example, a room that is 12-15 feet long and over 12 feet wide can accommodate 6.5" monitors.

However, room size is not the only factor to consider. The larger the monitor, the larger the room should be; otherwise, they will not operate properly. If your room is untreated or not properly treated, larger monitors can easily activate room modes, resulting in issues like reflections, sound build-up, phase cancellation, and frequency shifts.

Therefore, it is essential to consider both room size and treatment when deciding on the size of studio monitors to purchase. If you have a small untreated room, it is best to start with monitors below 5 inches. On the other hand, if you have a well-treated room, you can opt for larger monitors and even add a subwoofer to enhance your monitoring system.

Low-end frequency reproduction

When it comes to low-end frequency reproduction, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind. Firstly, the size and shape of the room play a significant role. Smaller rooms typically exhibit a noticeable bump below 100 Hz, which is directly related to the width, height, and length of the space. This can result in low-end boom that spreads throughout the room at various frequencies. To mitigate this issue, it is essential to select a room with the right dimensions to minimise this bump and improve sound quality.

Another factor to consider is the use of pressure-activated devices specifically designed for low-frequency absorption. Foam, building insulation, and shallow bass traps are ineffective in addressing the low-end bump. Instead, opt for diaphragmatic absorption, which is the most powerful low-frequency absorption technology. It is a pressure-activated technology that responds to large pressure peaks below 100 Hz and provides the most coverage per square foot.

Additionally, the placement of subwoofers can impact low-end frequency reproduction. Earl Geddes, an expert in the field, recommends using multiple subwoofers in small rooms to smooth out modal behaviour. He suggests placing one subwoofer in a corner and the other away from the corner but not in another corner. This approach helps to combat mode issues at low frequencies and improve overall sound quality.

It is also worth noting that adding a subwoofer to your setup can affect the perception of high frequencies. While the actual high-frequency response may remain unchanged, the increased bass can create an illusion that the highs are reduced. This is a subjective effect and may vary depending on the listener's height and position in the room.

Lastly, the size of the studio monitors themselves can influence low-end frequency reproduction. While larger monitors can provide more powerful bass, they may not be suitable for smaller spaces. It is crucial to consider the room size and select monitors that offer an accurate mix of low and high frequencies without overwhelming the space.

Listening distance

The ideal listening position for studio monitors is to form an equilateral triangle, where the distance between the two speakers is the same as the distance from the listener's head to each speaker. The recommended distance for nearfield monitors is 2-3 feet, though some people suggest that even closer distances can work.

For a small room, a common recommendation is to place the monitors close to the wall to yield the best response. However, this can boost low frequencies, so it is important to be able to adjust the distance from the wall to get the best sound.

The size of the room and the monitors is less important than the listening distance and the treatment of the room. Smaller monitors in a small room can still produce powerful oscillations at the lowest frequencies, which can be harder to produce an accurate mix with. However, larger monitors in a small room can cause issues with low-frequency build-up and phase cancellation.

The ideal room size and monitor size depend on the specific needs and preferences of the user. A larger room provides more space for instruments and allows for a dead front/live back studio design. Ultimately, the listening distance and room treatment are the most critical factors in achieving the desired sound.

Headphones as an alternative

Studio monitors are designed to provide the most authentic and natural-sounding representation of your tracks. However, they require a dedicated space, and the name loudspeakers hints at their impracticality in certain settings. If you're working in a small space, with thin walls and sensitive neighbours, a good pair of studio headphones may be a more viable option.

Headphones are a reliable alternative to studio monitors, particularly in untreated rooms, as they cut out distracting room reflections and ambient noise. They are also great for spotting and homing in on details such as unwanted distortion, clipping, and clicks. With headphones, you'll often hear details in tracks that you may have missed with normal monitors.

However, the perception of the stereo image is very different when listening with headphones. Panned instruments may seem more widely spaced, and effects like reverb and delay may appear deeper and wider. Plus, with headphones, you lose the influence of room acoustics on the overall sound.

When it comes to panning, reverb, and delay effects, these will be far more pronounced on headphones than when using monitors. As such, you'll probably need to increase the wet levels of your plugins or widen the panning so that your effects translate more effectively over speakers.

Another difference is that mono sounds appear to originate from inside your head rather than externally. And with frequency response curves varying from model to model, headphones can often suffer from unnatural bass boosts that can lead to mixes that are seriously lacking in low end.

In a 'normal' studio environment, each ear hears a bit of the opposite speaker's information, referred to as 'crosstalk'. However, when listening with headphones, the left and right channels are pumped directly into the corresponding ears without any crosstalk. This makes panning choices more challenging, as moderate panning barely shifts sounds from the centre, while hard panning can give the impression that a sound is right at the opening of your ear canal.

Despite these challenges, many producers prefer using headphones as their primary tool for making creative and mix decisions.

Choosing the Right Headphones

When choosing headphones, you should opt for a pair with a relatively flat response that can reproduce your projects with an accurate sonic picture of every aspect of the frequency range. Comfort and durability are also important factors to consider, as well as whether you want a pair that can double up for day-to-day music listening.

Some recommended options for studio headphones include:

• Focal Listen Professional
• Sennheiser HD-206
• Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X
• Røde NTH-100
• Beyerdynamic DT 700 PRO X
• Sennheiser HD 400 Pro
• Sony MDR-7506
• Audio-Technica ATH-M50x
• Superlux HD 681

The best monitoring solution for you depends on your personal circumstances and preferences. In an ideal scenario, a quality pair of studio headphones should supplement a set of monitor speakers rather than replace them. Adopting a 'best-of-both-worlds' approach will help you compensate for any quirks and foibles that your chosen model may have in terms of frequency response and stereo image reproduction.

Bass traps

There are two common categories of bass traps: porous bass traps and resonant bass traps.

Porous Bass Traps

Porous bass traps are the first line of defence when tackling general problems with room acoustics. They can be made from acoustic foam, fibreglass, rockwool, or any number of materials with sufficient density. This density makes them extremely effective at taming the most common small-room problems. However, the biggest flaw with porous bass traps is that they still can't absorb the very lowest bass frequencies unless they are built super-thick or spaced far off the wall.

Resonant Bass Traps

Resonant absorbers (aka tuned traps, narrowband absorbers, pressure absorbers) do the opposite of porous bass traps. They specialise in zeroing in on specific problem frequencies within a particular room while ignoring everything in the mid/upper range. Unlike porous traps, resonant traps work best up against the wall where sound waves collide and pressure is highest.

The two types of resonant bass traps are Helmholtz resonators, which absorb bass frequencies through a small port in an airtight cavity, and diaphragmatic absorbers, which neutralise bass frequencies with a vibrating panel or membrane.

Porous vs Resonant Bass Traps

In most pro studios, porous and diaphragmatic absorbers work as a team since each one is strong where the other is weak. A drier "studio sound" can be achieved with lots of porous absorption, while an ambient "live sound" can be achieved with less porous absorption and more diaphragmatic.

For most home studios, it's far wiser to skip the resonant absorption and stick to porous bass traps. This is because effective use of resonant absorption typically requires a custom-designer to evaluate the room's acoustics and dimensions, diagnose the biggest problems, and build a custom trap specifically for that room. A poorly built trap may be totally ineffective or even cause more problems by resonating at the wrong frequency. Porous absorption, on the other hand, is a one-size-fits-all solution and is far cheaper to buy and easier to install.

Triangular vs Flat Panel Porous Traps

Porous bass traps come in two common designs: triangular corner traps and flat panel bass traps. Corner bass traps have the advantage of more mass, which helps tame the lowest frequencies. Panel bass traps, on the other hand, use the air-gap method, which means you can cover way more surface area using far less material. Ultimately, each one has its advantages, and either one works fine.

Even in the smallest 10x10 bedroom studios, you'll get a progressive benefit from as many as 1-2 dozen bass traps. However, since few people can afford that many, it's recommended to start with either 4 or 8 and then possibly add more later.

How to Properly Mount Bass Traps

The standard starting points to mount your traps are the trihedral corners of the room. The reason they are known as trihedral corners is that they simultaneously cover all three dimensions of the room. So a trap placed at this location will cover not only one surface of the room but three, making it three times more effective. In reality, it's even more than three times, because the corners are also the most common spots in the room where bass frequencies accumulate and resonate for longer than they naturally should.

If you're starting with eight traps, put one in each corner. If you're starting with four, put them in the upper four corners to save yourself floor space. For most rooms, that should be enough. However, if you still have more, the next step is to stack them in columns along the vertical dihedral corners. And finally, if you still have more to work with, mount them on the upper dihedral corners of the room.

Where to Place Bass Traps

Start by placing bass traps in the corners of your room to damp low-frequency resonant room modes and reduce nulls caused by bass waves bouncing off the wall behind you. Start by treating the four power corners if you can. Then, consider other places for bass trap placement, like the wall-ceiling/wall-floor intersections, and your first reflection points.

In most domestic-sized rooms, arranging broadband bass traps in the corners will noticeably reduce the overall liveliness or ambience in the space. This is because most broadband bass traps are surfaced with a porous material (like acoustic foam, rockwool or fibreglass). These devices absorb over a wide bandwidth, so we can classify them as broadband or wideband absorbers. Broadband absorbers reduce the decay times at all frequencies in the audible spectrum, so if you want to preserve liveliness, there are bass traps that absorb low frequencies but reflect or scatter mid and high frequencies.

Putting it All Together

The images below show example room treatment layouts that incorporate low-frequency absorption. To avoid clutter, the following examples show minimal broadband absorption on the walls and ceiling. In practice, additional broadband absorbing panels would be applied as needed to achieve the desired level of liveliness.

Frequently asked questions