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Brad, so is everyone who listens to their home stereos in a 9x9 room in for a world of hurt?

Michael, if you fill the room with bookcases, maybe a small couch, a few desks with computers, and basically try to leave no bare walls (ie: parallel surfaces) you should be able to work with that room. Moreover, after reading blue sky's webpage (http://www.abluesky.com), i'm starting to believe their argument that their monitoring systems with a subwoofer will really help tame the low end in a small room. Check out their site and see if you can find something helpful there.

Hopefully i've helped a little.
Bob

Originally posted by XHipHop:
Brad, so is everyone who listens to their home stereos in a 9x9 room in for a world of hurt?
Bob

You may be missing Brad's point. It's not that you can't listen to any music in any room. (After all, when listening you can always eq it to taste). It's more a matter of how mixes done in an awkward room are going to translate to the outside world. The unfortunate fact is, a small room with nearly cubical dimensions (9x9x8) is about as much of a worst case scenario as you could come up with, because of the severe nodes and nulls that are created. Regarding your suggestion, just how many couches and bookcases can you put in a 9x9 room and still leave room for anything else? And low bass frequencies will still be a big problem.

Is it impossible? No, of course not. But I think Brad was just pointing out that those kind of dimensions are definitely "last resort", and in such an environment, you're gonna have to work extra hard, really carefully experiment with monitor placement, have loads of reference CD's, and the best pair of headphones (and headphone amp) you can afford! Good luck!

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It is all true , I have spent the last 6 months fine tuning a 23.5' X 11' X 9.3' room, and with very good monitors. You would have to drop the ceiling to darn near door hight, and partition a wall to avoid the room mode problems. There is no "I will make it work somehow" way :( . At least not for your main reference. If you had a main reference, in another room, you could learn to translate enough to function in there. But, you are going to need that main reference.
been there ,
--Rick

I'm not disagreeing with you guys. But instead of saying "wow, that's impossible..." why don't we try "wow, that's really tough, but here's what you can try to make your results bearable." He's trying to build "a nice little project studio", not a million dollar mastering suite.

Now if i remember correctly, on http://www.tubetraps.com they have a setup called "the attack wall". Looking at this picture may give michael some ideas of how to approach a mixing project, don't you guys think? Primacoustics makes some sort of movable baffles (i can't remember what they are called) but maybe a combination of their wall treatment and a few of those baffles spread throughout the room can make a difference.

I'm no expert on this subject, by any means. But i've learned that nothing in the audio world is impossible. Can anyone tell us why my suggestions would or would not help out?

Erf. I'm not even close to a master of accoustics, but just figured I'd point out for the record that if you're filling a 9' square room with bookcases, fluffy chairs/couches, etc., you'd better be planning to do some lonely work in there, y'know?

It sounds like wall treatments (I dunno, mebbe turning one corner into an 'angle' and putting up some diffusers along some of the open space?) would be the best bet for touching up the room.

Me, I have a sort of square-shaped-"C" room with no treatments. 9-10 ft. ceilings, hollow wood floors (5' basement underneath). It sounds good, but I'm still trying to figure it out. And I don't own the place, so I'm not too excited at sinking hundreds/thousands of dollars into it. =/