[Mike Rivers]

On Mar 13, 9:41 pm, "Bill Ruys"
wrote:
I think you're making an assumption that you don't have enough information
to make.

Of course I'm making an assumption. I haven't been in his room. But
his description points strongly toward room problems or at least
monitor positioning. Unless he's just being picky (and that's
certainly his right) there should be no reason why he can't work on
Mackie monitors if they sound like they were designed to sound. But in
his room, they apparently don't.

He needs to get some other speakers in there (other than NS10s) and
compare them. If I'm right, though he'll hear a different sound, he'll
hear the same kind of deficiencies as he hears on the Mackies. And if
I'm wrong, well, it's free advice. If he wants to pay me for a
consultation he might get better information.

If the O/P has "treated" his room, but admits he has size related
issues, I would suggest that those issues are low frequency issues. It's
fairly easy to treat a small room for flutter echos and early reflections,
but low frequency will always be a problem due to standing waves, modes,
etc.

But there are a lot of people who get workable sound in a small room.
He may have to accept less than he wants, continue mixing on speakers
or NS10s that he seems to like, or knock out a wall. But he can
probably (yet another assumption, I know) do a better treatment job
than he has now. Putting money into acoustic treatment or construction
will almost certainly help his situation. Putting money into new
speakers is less likely to improve things.

So we need to hear from the O/P if his problems are low frequency, time
domain issues. You suggest he hires a different professional, but the truth
is, you can only do so much to solve small room syndrome. There is only so
much you can do, and anything more is flogging a dead horse.

So what's your suggestion for him? But another speaker and put it in
the same problem room? Give up?

I have learned how my
room sounds from the mix position by listening to hundreds of hours of
commercial recordings and so have learned to compensate somewhat.

You do what you have to do. It's all about tricks if you can't afford
the ideal monitoring environment. But you and I know that no speaker
will compensate for a room that makes the speaker sound worse than it
does in a free field. .

Having
said that, the low frequency build-up in different parts of the room make
things sound very different if I move too far away from the mix position.

And that's another trick - you can't possibly learn all of the "modes"
so you learn where to sit when you mix. In my room (which I'm sure
could be helped considerably by bass trapping) I know how things sound
in the mix position, and I move back about six feet if I want to get
more "bass detail" because it's louder back there. But if I mixed from
back there, my mixes would be shy on bass.

What I'm saying here is that it's possible there is nothing further the O/P
can do to improve his room. But, it is still possible that his monitors are
sub-par and that there is room for improvement.

Neither of us knows that until it's properly measured and studied by
someone who understands these things, and I don't just mean someone
who's visited Ethan Winer, John Sayers, or the Acoustics First web
sites. There's room for improvement with the monitors, sure, but
other than his prejudice (he thinks they're inaccurate because he
doesn't have good results and bought them based on reputation rather
than listening), there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Mackies.
He just doesn't know what they sound like because he's only heard them
in his room (or maybe worse).