For producers, acoustics often remain the missing link in achieving professional mixes. While many invest heavily in monitors, headphones, and plugins, the room itself is frequently overlooked. Untreated spaces exaggerate or cancel frequencies, especially in the low end, making it nearly impossible to trust what you’re hearing.
To unpack why acoustics are still a blind spot and how producers can make meaningful improvements even in small or multipurpose rooms, we spoke with David Shevyn, Head of GIK Acoustics Europe and Chief Product Officer (pictured above). With over two decades of experience designing treatment solutions and advising studios worldwide, Shevyn explains the misconceptions, practical steps, and long-term benefits of getting your room right.
Interview with GIK Acoustics
GIK Acoustics has been in this space for over two decades — why do you think room acoustics are still such a blind spot for producers today?
We often ask ourselves the same question. When we started out, we set ourselves the mission to try and change this, and I think to a large extent we have, but there are always new producers entering the market, and we want to continue spreading this message about the importance of acoustics.
I think the reason it can be such a blind spot is that bad acoustics themselves are not a barrier for someone starting out in their bedroom on their studio journey. It’s something that, when those same people are moving up the levels of their skills and experience, they come to realise is an issue and does affect their mixes. This is when the discovery phase comes in, and hopefully, we’re there to help out.
For producers working in a bedroom or small apartment, what are the first three steps you’d recommend to improve their room acoustics?
Before you even start on acoustics, the first step has to be the room and monitor set-up. In an ideal scenario, you want to be facing the short wall so that the length of the room is behind you.
The further the wall behind you is from the speaker source, the easier it is to deal with the low end. Ideally, we are looking for symmetry in the desk position, so in an ideal world – no windows, doors, alcoves, synth racks – to the left or right of your speaker. The best place you can have your window is facing it. If you visit the educational pages on our website, we have lots of videos, articles and resources explaining how to best set up your room.
The next step I would take is to set up the speaker correctly. It is well worth spending a lot of time just moving those speakers to try and avoid as many standing waves as you can. This may mean moving the speakers right up against the wall. You may see information that is contrary to this, but that advice is for very large rooms and auditoriums.
This concept of the boundaries affecting the way you hear the sound in the room is known as SBIR or Speaker Boundary Interference Response. The basics of this concept are that the boundaries make a difference to these standing waves. By moving the speakers within the room, we are removing the distance that each frequency travels before it meets a boundary. The frequency that coincides with its reflection meeting the speaker is where constructive and deconstructive interference occurs. By moving distance, we are changing which frequency this occurs with. If we can move it up the frequency range, we can avoid low-end nulls and peaks and deal with it more easily.
Then, I would treat my room with acoustics because now we know that we have the best starting position to start from.
From your experience, what mistakes do producers make when trying DIY solutions compared to working with GIK panels or traps?
I think what’s most important is understanding the topic of acoustics in the first instance. Despite acoustics just applying the physics of sound to the small room environment, there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet, so the first mistake many people make is in their research. If you really want to have a deeper delve into he world of acoustics, there are great acoustic test books out there, such as The Master Handbook of Acoustics by Everest and Pohlmann, but for the majority of producers, using the resources that many companies have produced can be a very useful starting point. At GIK Acoustics, since our inception in 2004, demystifying acoustics has always been our number one priority because, as we have previously discussed, not only is there a lot of misinformation, but it is also a concept we have worked to great lengths to introduce to people.
At GIK Acoustics, not only do we have these resources, but we also have a free consulting service where you can get put in touch with an acoustic designer who can work with you on your individual room and needs. This can be either our simple to complete online form. Or via our room building software.
The designers can talk you through how to avoid these mistakes, explain concepts such as gas flow resistivity and how this applies to the materials you use and by using our large portfolio of products, where we have products that can be customised specifically for your room, we can ensure that you achieve the balanced room you deserve.
How does GIK balance performance and practicality in designing products that suit both home producers and large studios?
At the heart of it, the problems that a large studio has and the problems you may encounter at home stem from the same source: how sound interacts with the environment around it. The smaller the room, the more enhanced these issues are. We often hear of terms such as constructive and deconstructive interference or peaks and nulls, and often, these occur because of the length of time that a sound wave stays in the room (referred to as the ‘decay time’). The more times it meets itself, the more problems you have.
At GIK Acoustics, every customer is offered the same free consulting service by an experienced acoustic designer, as all rooms are equally important to us and all rooms need that special attention this service offers. All GIK Acoustics products are designed for and by producers, so we understand the environment you are trying to work in.
Whether it’s a mastering room, live room, control room, or just sitting a home with a two-channel system or struggling to make a conference call, we have experts who can help and products that have been designed not just to solve your acoustic issues but help create an environment that you feel inspired to be in. In addition to this, many of our products can be customised, so we can make something that fits your room, however large or small.
Many producers work in multipurpose rooms. How does GIK help them balance treatment with making the space livable?
Firstly, by listening to what our customers’ needs are. This is a key part of our consulting service. We know we can’t make every room “perfect” – people often use their room for dual purposes, they might be limited to which room they can use and may also have restrictions about where they can put the panels. We aim to make your room sound better within the restrictions that you have.
Not only will our consulting take into account where we can and cannot place items, what obstacles you may have in the room (large glass doors to the side, for example), but our design team will also look at movable solutions or solution which do not need to be mounted on the wall – but which give the best results for the real estate you do have. Magnetic Magazine recently reviewed our popular Stackpacks and described them as a ‘game-changer’, and we are thrilled to know that we are producing the solutions that our customers need and want.
If you could share one piece of advice drawn from GIK’s years of working with electronic producers, what would it be?
We touched on it earlier in the interview, but speaker placement is essential, as is subwoofer placement. On our website, we have blogs and articles breaking this down. Make sure to avoid issues from SBIR when placing your speakers and subwoofers, while simultaneously ensuring ideal phase alignment, to get the best out of your monitoring system in a well-treated space. Especially with bass-heavy genres with a lot of transients, this is fundamental for precise monitoring. That and bass trapping, lots and lots of bass trapping!
The post GIK Acoustics’ David Shevyn on Fixing the Problems That Hold Back Your Mix appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.