Room placement and set up.
The KRK design team has painstakingly modeled and analyzed hundreds of monitor placement and
room acoustic situations to ensure that KRK delivers the most useful EQ tools with minimal
adjustments. Room acoustics are the biggest issue in today’s studios because we are not in the
perfectly built rooms now. Many great studios are just in a revamped house. We are giving you
control to correct some of the anomalies you get from these types of situations.
With the LOW EQ and HIGH EQ, we have given you 25 different combinations of EQ voicings to
help you correct for your studio’s acoustics to deliver more accurate monitoring. Start with LOW
EQ and HIGH EQ set to 3: FLAT, which is truly flat, no cut or boost and the VOLUME set to 0.0dB.
Set them up in your room per the information and diagrams below. Listen to some of your favorite
songs and mixes. Try different positions in your room and different placements before making EQ
adjustments and then adjust the EQ to give you your best listening and monitoring experience.
SYSTEM SETUP Overall system setup is crucial to avoid unnecessary room acoustic interaction. A
room’s natural acoustics may alter the sound level at various frequencies due to abnormal damping
or reflections. Follow the checklist below for more details.
1 The system setup (studio monitors and work table) should be placed within the front 1/3 of the
room. Doing so will reduce reflection buildup of peak frequencies.
2 The left and right sides of the system setup should be centered an equal distance from the left
and right walls. This will produce even mid and low frequency response and preserve stereo
imaging.
3 Avoid a listening position (your ears) that is closer than 3 feet (1 meter) from any wall. Also avoid
large objects (such as lamps or decorations) near the studio monitor and listening position.
4 Diffusers and absorption material in the corners and back of a room will help remove room
interaction by preventing reflections.
5 Carpeting will help prevent reflections from hard floor surfaces.
6 Studio monitor isolators (foam or rubber pads) will help remove low frequency coupling between
the stands and desk. Low frequency coupling will cause the stand or desk to vibrate causing
unwanted sounds.
7 A low noise floor in your room (no outside interference from refrigerators or fans) is important to
prevent the masking of low frequency detail. Rattles due to studio monitor playback should be
fixed as well.
Within the system setup, the studio monitors and listening placement should be positioned in a
near field configuration as follows: The left and right studio monitors should be approximately 3 to
5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) apart and directed at a 60 degree angle towards the listening location.
Measure the distance between the left and right studio monitors and sit in the listening position
that is equal distance to both sides. This will form an equilateral triangle. It is important that both
left and right studio monitors are level matched (same volume).
