Clean, warm signal on a small budget?

minimal me

New member
Looks like a great forum so far, thought it was time I jumped in.

For the time being, I am all about being as direct and clean as possible on a tiny budget and in a severely 'one-take' kind of way -- kinda like eschewing oils and pastels in favor of charcoals. Here's my present setup:

- My voice and my acoustic guitar (strapped high so the mic catches both)
- Marshall MXL 2003 mic (2 when my friend plays along)
- 25' XLR cable (from, I dunno, 1985?)
- Little 4-channel Behringer Eurorack mixer (and its phantom power)
- Direct onto a CD-R in my Tascam CD-RW4U.

I occasionally run the effects loop through my practice amp for a touch of reverb.

This all happens in my master bedroom, with me standing at about the 1/3 point of the diagonal between the corners of a 15' square room, pointed at a point a little off center from the far corner. The room is full of all sorts of stuff, some of which dampens and some of which reflects.

So my question is, given the next $200-250, what's the best thing I can do for my sound? Real preamp? Real mic cord? Real reverb box? Create a retractable 8' enclosure with quilts and pulleys?

Just to be clear, I do have some solid experience with 4-track cassettes, and I do intend to return to multitracking, digitally, in 8-12 months, perhaps as part of my next computer purchase. Thanks in advance for any opinions!
 
minimal me said:
This all happens in my master bedroom, with me standing at about the 1/3 point of the diagonal between the corners of a 15' square room, pointed at a point a little off center from the far corner. . . . So my question is, given the next $200-250, what's the best thing I can do for my sound?

My wild guess would be room treatment.
 
So I spent some time looking and reading and thinking, and... I decided I can double my budget.

Would the FMR RNP be overkill? Could I point my two mics strategically, run them into the RNP, and then run them straight into the left and right RCA jacks on the Tascam CD? That sure would be direct, right? Or is that just plain wrongheaded?

I dunno. I just don't want to leapfrog through a bunch of gear. From this point on I want to be able to keep what I buy as I move forward.
 
In as much as a preamp will improve the signal path, cheeserock is right, any room treatment is going to improve what goes into that mic in the first place.
 
I know this sounds Cheesy but even some well placed/hung sleeping bags and comforters on some or all of the walls will make a huge difference in how the room records. In your situation the difference could be massive. I would guess you are capturing alot of the sound of the room. I work in about the same enviroment. Luckly I have two rooms with a snake running through the wall, but any way.

When I got my first LD condensor mic I did a little experiment. I set my daw recording and moved the mic from room to room recording the same vocal lines. I was amazed at the difference even in rooms that were much the same.

So in your budget...... Lot's of thick comforters from goodwill or where ever, and maybe a vtb-1 or an rnp.

Good Luck

F.S.
 
I appreciate the comments so far. I think I'm going to hold back on that 'really nice preamp' and have it be my reward for accomplishing appropriate room treatment.

A while back I tried using a walk-in closet that was full of clothes on both sides. I was amazed that my results really didn't sound 'better' to my ear.

It has since occurred to me that although that closet was much more 'dead' acoustically, sound was still reflected by the ceiling, the back wall (shoe rack), and the door behind me - and in a smaller space. Would I do better in there with, like, 3 quilts covering those three remaining surfaces?

Or should I go all out and hang white hooks in my master bedroom ceiling and sew eyelets into some old quilts? And if the answer is yes here, should I use as much of the room as possible and not worry about the ceiling, or make a full enclosure (ceiling and all) that uses only part of the room?
 
I can't speak from experience on room treatments yet as my recrding at home room options are even more limited than what you describe but I have a plan after we get to trade up to a larger house with a "spare" bedroom for my music room.

I want to build around four of those tri-fold screens that stand from floor to almost ceiling high. You often see them in old movies with someone changing clothes behind one.

Anyway the reason I want to do this is to have one side treated for deadening or sound absorption. The other side would have a more reflective surface wich would give me variable options in room treatment as I will only have one room to work with.

The hanging heavy blanket treatment sounds much cheaper though.
 
I'm a little supprised at the suggestions to deaden the room in this particular case. Here we have a case of essentially purist, or minimalist recording, where an acoustical event, acoustic guitar and vocals, is being captured directly to CD, sans editing and processing. It seems to me that deadening the room in this case will suck the life right out of the recordings. I agree that room acoustics play a very large role here, but I don't agree with removing them, just taming them. I'm not qualified to really make detailed suggestions on the treatment, but I would be thinking about wood and diffusion, not absorption. There's no low frequency component worth considering here, so bass traps aren't much of a concern.
Otherwise, if you opt to deaden the room, then your going to have to put ambience back in by getting yourself a good reverb unit. In your case, I'd suggest the TC M-One.
In either case, I think you'd do well to get a compressor on the vocal mic, and eventually consider getting a stereo pair of small diaphram condensors for the guitar. The guitar would fill out immensely with the stereo pair, and the vocal will smooth out and be fuller with the compression.
That's my 2 cents, RD
 
Keep your eyes peeled for some office divider panels. You know those carpeted panels about two inches thick and often around 6' x 4' in size they use in typing pools etc. If you mount some 2 foot long 4" x 2"s on the bottom edge as feet you can free stand them and move them around the room to kill any horrible reflections. Don't buy them new from an office equipment supplies.... they'll be too expensive. Look for an auction or out the back alley of an office that's being redecorated and you'll surely find some. Half the time they are discarded for being the wrong color. When you don't need them you can flat stack them under the house or where ever.

Cheers
 
This is great: I'm actually making progress and refining my thoughts. Using panels rather than quilts, I'll figure out how to tame my room, rather than removing it and replacing it with reverb from another.

One question remains, though: let's say I've tamed my room and gotten an RNP - and even looped an RNC through it. Is there any elegant way I can I go direct into the CD from that point? If not, is there such a thing as a 'minimal mixer' with which to do my stereo placement? Since I'll use the pre to set my levels, I'd love to be able to avoid or at least bypass any further gain and eq circuitry. Although I know a lot of its noise would go away anyway, right now my tiny little Behringer just plain hisses at me.
 
If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest reviewing everything at the following site. By some of the questions you are asking, I think you may be able to better decide for yourself how to spend your money given your current situation after reading this. I would pay special attention to sections regarding acoustics.


http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html
 
chessrock said:
You must not mic accoustic guitar very often. :D

I do, and I agree with RD that standing bass waves from rear wall reflections from acoustic guitar are not usually a noticeable problem. Maybe if it was a REALLY tiny room... Or someone was strumming the hell out of a REALLY loud guitar?
 
chessrock said:
You must not mic accoustic guitar very often. :D

Well, I did preface by saying I'm not qualified to make detailed suggestions on acoustical treatment. :) I do record a lot of acoustical instruments though, in an all redwood and knotty pine room with no parrallel walls and a slanted high ceiling. Sounds good to me, makes Martins, mandolins, and violins sing, but I'm sure it has it's nodes. I just havent found that acoustic guitar creates enough energy to make traps necessary in a room with any volume and diffusion, cept maybe a Guild jumbo with bridge cable strings. Anyway, my comment wasn't meant to contradict. I meant it as that I'm supprised that several people who's opinions I value have a different approach to recording a pure direct acoustic event, sans processing. In my book, which doesn't count for much, that would call for natural ambiance, not deadness. Ideally, a variable R/T room, with live/dead reversable panels would let the recordist choose the sound for any given track.
Cheers, RD
 
I don't know if it is just me or what but my rooms seem to suck to high heaven with out something on the walls. I have two 15x15 rooms (or so) and perhaps its just the nature of drywall, but without hanging some absorbers on the walls I get the most god awfull mid range reverb. It is amazing what your ears don't hear over your own voice, The mic sure picks it up though.

I need to do yet more work:D

F. (my rooms suck) S.
 
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