CHAPTER 1
1. Four Questions
2. You’re working on a budget , after all
3. Controlling the Acoustics
4. Room Arrangement
5. Early Reflection Points
6. 50 Percent Rule
7. Bass Traps

Early reflection points
Sound bouncing off the walls and floors and surfaces in your room needs to be addressed as the reflections will cause problems. One fix is to address the reflected sound waves in your environment by adding sound absorbing wall treatments.
A controlled, deliberate approach, using
professional sound absorption and diffusion
products, will yield the best results.
Chances are the room you’re considering has
90-degree angled corners. The walls are parallel, as are the floor and ceiling — not the ideal acoustic environment. To improve the acoustics, start with the early reflection points.
Once the direct sound from the monitors has
passed by you, you want something behind you
to either soak it up or shatter it all over the place, in either case, you don’t want a direct
early reflection to hit your ears too soon. If it
does, it will completely smear what you are hearing and it will give you problems. It’s those early reflective points you want to knock out.
“One trick is to use a pocket mirror. If you have
a pair of speakers on a desk in the middle of
a wall and the speakers are sitting on that desk,
you can look around the room and see what reflective points you’re going to have. Points on
the walls, and also the ceiling and the floor —
those initial reflection points are my first go-to
spots for sound absorption. When we’re treating
a room, I’ll sit in the engineer’s seat and have someone move a pocket mirror along the wall until I can see the speaker reflected in the mirror. That’s where you want to put up some
sort of an acoustical absorption product.
“It’s the early reflection points on the ceiling,
floor, or desk that most people overlook,” warns
Raison. “Even applying just a thin absorptive
membrane on the ceiling can help knock down
those highs and mids that can cause the early reflection smearage. You’re not trying to keep low frequencies from bouncing off that ceiling, you probably don’t have the time or space to do
that, so to speak. Just don’t overlook the ceiling.
People typically don’t do things to ceilings in the
regular world, but in a recording environment
it makes a substantial amount of difference.”

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