I had a fascinating conversation with a client last week who'd just dropped $3,000 on new monitors.

His old speakers? Perfectly fine. He'd swapped them out because of a "low-mid buildup" that was making his mixes sound like they were recorded in a cardboard box. Muddy bass, no clarity, EQ wasn't helping.

The new speakers had the exact same problem.

Here's what nobody told him: It wasn't his speakers. It wasn't even his room. It was how he'd positioned his speakers IN the room.

Think about that for a second. Three grand spent on solving the wrong problem.

The 38% Rule Is Failing You

This client did everything "right" according to the rules of thumb. He faced the short end of his rectangular room. Placed his listening position at roughly 38% of the room length. Set up everything symmetrically left to right.

But he still got a frequency response that looked like a mountain range.

You know what's funny? The worst rooms I've seen (literal cube-shaped rooms) can still give you a balanced response if you set up correctly. But people in "perfect" rectangular rooms are getting responses so crooked their speakers sound broken.

The rules of thumb everyone quotes? They're based on theoretical rooms that don't exist in the real world.

The Measurement That Reveals Everything

Here's a tool most people don't know about: the psychoacoustic smoothing function in Room EQ Wizard.

When you click on “Actions” in the REW “All SPL” window, there's a smoothing option called "Psychoacoustic”. This gives you a smoothed version of the response that mimics how we actually hear. It roughly represents what the frequency content from your speaker sounds like at the listening position.

My client's measurements showed it clearly: a massive low-mid buildup around 100Hz, then a steep drop-off afterwards. From a perception point of view, basically no low end.

On a system like this, it's basically impossible to mix. You're jumping through serious hoops using referencing and other monitoring like headphones to get any idea of what's actually going on.

When an L-Shaped Room Beats a Rectangle

Here's where it gets interesting.

I had another client working in a very asymmetrical L-shaped room. He set up at the toe end of the L (think of it as a boot). There was a bay window there, so he was facing windows. The room extended towards the back left of him.

Not a perfect room at all.

But he used the room to his advantage. Found the low-end sweet spot in the room to set up his listening position, then placed his speakers accordingly with local symmetry around him.

When we applied that psychoacoustic smoothing filter to his measurements, the response came close to the natural response of the speaker. A maximum of maybe five, six decibels of swing above and below across the entire measurement.

That's what I call a balanced response. Not flat. But balanced across the entire spectrum. And this was in an untreated room.

Finding Your Room's Sweet Spot

You could measure 5 to 10 positions with REW, but I guarantee you'll have no idea which one to pick. You'll be turning in circles because it needs a deep understanding of the measurement software, of acoustics, of psychoacoustics to not get lost.

A much quicker and more effective way? Use your ears, but test the room systematically.

You can't rely on rules of thumb to find the ideal listening position and speaker setup in your room. You need to work with the actual response in your room.

The process is a structured listening test. First, find the low-end sweet spot that allows this part of the spectrum to balance out. It's basically putting the speaker in the corner to isolate the room mode issue from everything else. This creates a worst-case scenario where it's as easy as possible to find that low-end sweet spot where everything balances out.

That's where you sit.

Then set up your speakers with local symmetry in the room, making sure the rest of the response is also balanced.

The Bottom Line

If you're hearing low-mid buildup, lack of bass, exaggerated highs, whatever it is, I guarantee: if you haven't put the effort into placing your listening position and speakers properly, that's the reason.

The way to solve it? Use your ears, find the low-end sweet spot, set up your speakers properly, then confirm the results with Room EQ Wizard and the psychoacoustic smoothing function to make sure you've got a roughly balanced frequency response.

Until you find those spots, nothing else matters. No treatment, no EQ, no new speakers. It's all about how you use your speakers in your room.

If you want personalized guidance to find your room's acoustic sweet spot and solve your specific monitoring issues, consider booking a consultation with me. We'll analyze your exact room, measurements, and setup to create a custom solution that transforms your muddy, unreliable sound into professional mix translation. Apply here.