Not sure if this is the right place for this but I figure mods can move it around if need be.
I have a lot of ideas, some of them good, most of them probably bad, and I'm not entirely sure where this idea of mine lies. I was happy with the results so I thought I'd share.
I'm a musician/mix engineer/whatever you call it these days and thusly I spend quite a bit of time sitting in the near field in front of some monitors. One thing that always bugged me about these setups is that you can spend as much as you want on treatment and dial in the best corrective EQ you can, place the speakers perfectly, etc... Then you often end up putting a big ole hard surface desk in between you and the speakers and IMO it almost entirely negates everything else one does in the space to optimize acoustics. For me subjectively I lose the phantom center entirely, the top end is pretty much all comb filtering, and don't me started on the ~150hz peak you typically run into. The whole illusion gets ruined for me and I never feel particularly confident in what I'm doing mix wise when the desk is there.
Ok, so why not just get rid of the desk you ask? Well here's the thing, I really like sitting at a desk with some weight and resistance. Sometimes you just want something to lean on, or a move obvious use, place things on like a mouse or keyboard. I tried smaller desks but that created a new problem. I have cats and they love to lay down on the desk while I'm working. They don't care how small the desk is, they're laying down, and if it's too small I lose my work surface. I went down as small as a TV dinner tray, but I noticed I didn't really care for the open area in front of me and no longer had space to place some of my production tools where I wanted them. There was a period of about 3 days where I even tried to use an acoustic treatment as the desk, that didn't last long. One spill and it's over, plus I think the cats were eyeballing it as a new litter box.
Alright I'll stop wasting your time, my solution ended up being to just removed a large portion of the center of the desk and replace it with a porous material. Spent a good bit of time brainstorming on what that center could be made of, but my first attempt ended up being simple. I just went with some pegboard that I drilled some additional holes into.
Here is the desks original top. This is just a basic Ikea desk that made for a good test bed, it's just veneer'd 3/4" MDF slab on a metal frame. I have worked on this desk for probably 12 years now, my mouse has eroded the veneers coloring.
Here's the new desk top that I came up with.
And just for good measure, some additional absorption provided by the cats blanket.
Here are some measurements.
Stock Desk Left (Blue) vs. New perforated Desk Left (Yellow) 12db smoothing. Static mic position and room has a good bit of treatment (it is a small room though). Speakers are Mechano23. Not sure why REW didn't show the labels here. Lots of improvements to be seen here. ~150hz is reduced, peaks ~400,500hz gone, the mess that is the mid range appears to be better though a new peak does show up. I'll take that over how nasty the blue chart looks above 1khz.
Right speaker, Old desk in Orange, New desk in Green. Similar improvements, not as dramatic in some areas. This side has a wall while the Left is open so it looks more ragged. Still have some work to do on this side of the room.
Also worth noting that the desk reflections can be seen in the Impulse response.
Stock Desk Top. Desk issues are seen as disturbences here.
New Desk Top, much cleaner.
Thought I'd close with some subjective impressions. I have to say I'm thrilled with the sound, I do not find the different subtle. I find lower mids are much cleaner and enveloping and the stereo imaging is much more stable with the speakers sounding much more neutral overall. I'd argue the stock desk had basically no phantom center but it's very clearly defined with the new perforated desk top. The speaker overall sounds far more neutral, was surprised to see my Left yellow graph looks like it trends really well with EIR for the Mechano23.
Thanks for reading!
I have a lot of ideas, some of them good, most of them probably bad, and I'm not entirely sure where this idea of mine lies. I was happy with the results so I thought I'd share.
I'm a musician/mix engineer/whatever you call it these days and thusly I spend quite a bit of time sitting in the near field in front of some monitors. One thing that always bugged me about these setups is that you can spend as much as you want on treatment and dial in the best corrective EQ you can, place the speakers perfectly, etc... Then you often end up putting a big ole hard surface desk in between you and the speakers and IMO it almost entirely negates everything else one does in the space to optimize acoustics. For me subjectively I lose the phantom center entirely, the top end is pretty much all comb filtering, and don't me started on the ~150hz peak you typically run into. The whole illusion gets ruined for me and I never feel particularly confident in what I'm doing mix wise when the desk is there.
Ok, so why not just get rid of the desk you ask? Well here's the thing, I really like sitting at a desk with some weight and resistance. Sometimes you just want something to lean on, or a move obvious use, place things on like a mouse or keyboard. I tried smaller desks but that created a new problem. I have cats and they love to lay down on the desk while I'm working. They don't care how small the desk is, they're laying down, and if it's too small I lose my work surface. I went down as small as a TV dinner tray, but I noticed I didn't really care for the open area in front of me and no longer had space to place some of my production tools where I wanted them. There was a period of about 3 days where I even tried to use an acoustic treatment as the desk, that didn't last long. One spill and it's over, plus I think the cats were eyeballing it as a new litter box.
Alright I'll stop wasting your time, my solution ended up being to just removed a large portion of the center of the desk and replace it with a porous material. Spent a good bit of time brainstorming on what that center could be made of, but my first attempt ended up being simple. I just went with some pegboard that I drilled some additional holes into.
Here is the desks original top. This is just a basic Ikea desk that made for a good test bed, it's just veneer'd 3/4" MDF slab on a metal frame. I have worked on this desk for probably 12 years now, my mouse has eroded the veneers coloring.
Here's the new desk top that I came up with.
And just for good measure, some additional absorption provided by the cats blanket.
Here are some measurements.
Stock Desk Left (Blue) vs. New perforated Desk Left (Yellow) 12db smoothing. Static mic position and room has a good bit of treatment (it is a small room though). Speakers are Mechano23. Not sure why REW didn't show the labels here. Lots of improvements to be seen here. ~150hz is reduced, peaks ~400,500hz gone, the mess that is the mid range appears to be better though a new peak does show up. I'll take that over how nasty the blue chart looks above 1khz.
Right speaker, Old desk in Orange, New desk in Green. Similar improvements, not as dramatic in some areas. This side has a wall while the Left is open so it looks more ragged. Still have some work to do on this side of the room.
Also worth noting that the desk reflections can be seen in the Impulse response.
Stock Desk Top. Desk issues are seen as disturbences here.
New Desk Top, much cleaner.
Thought I'd close with some subjective impressions. I have to say I'm thrilled with the sound, I do not find the different subtle. I find lower mids are much cleaner and enveloping and the stereo imaging is much more stable with the speakers sounding much more neutral overall. I'd argue the stock desk had basically no phantom center but it's very clearly defined with the new perforated desk top. The speaker overall sounds far more neutral, was surprised to see my Left yellow graph looks like it trends really well with EIR for the Mechano23.
Thanks for reading!
