How to Set Up a Great Mixing Space Without Spending a Fortune

Nobody starts with the perfect listening environment.

Everybody has to start somewhere, and it’s OK if your room isn’t the best sounding out there.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make great music in it. Music doesn’t ask you whether the room you’re playing it in sounds good.

Music doesn’t discriminate between good and bad sounding rooms.

Music is just music. Great, inspiring music.

Music doesn’t get snobby because you don’t have a professionally treated listening room. Music is like your best friend that doesn’t care about any of your faults and loves you just the way you are.

In fact, you don’t even need any acoustic

Even without spending a single cent on treatment you can make your studio better.

I see a a 3 part process.

1. Placement Making your room sound as good as it can be without buying any treatment.

2. Budget Treatment– Using MoPads and household items such as blankets to get rid of some of the reflective surfaces.

3. Heavy Investment – Spending money on full room kits from acoustic companies, or building the treatment yourself.

That’s how my home studio has evolved. I went a long time without any acoustic treatment. But I did make sure I set everything up correctly and made the most out of the NO treatment I had.

Then I started buying small amounts of treatment. The Auralex MoPads, using thick blankets and memory foam that I had lying around.

Then I started spending money of the Roominator kits, and that completely transformed the sound of my studio.

But that’s not all. The final evolutionary step for my home studio(or at least the most recent one) was when I built 6 massive bass traps, complete with Owens Corning 703 mineral fiber and power tools.

I’m not a big handyman. I’m actually terrible at building stuff. But I was really proud of myself for getting that project done.

And every time I added more treatment to the studio, my room sounded better.

Piece by piece.

That’s what I recommend doing. Just start small and let your studio evolve.

Image by: Derek K. Miller

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