Narrowboat!

Nick Lowe

New member
I live on a Narrow boat. For those not familiar, this is a 70ft x 7ft boat and I use my back bedroom as a studio. It is wood panelled ceiling with half wood panels walls, the bottom half being carpet covered. Carpet floor and a large bed which absorbs a lot of sound. I am having trouble with getting a good mix and have been using a combination of Headphones and Stereo speaker ( which are far too big for the size of room anyway. I have read the previous thread re mixing with headphones so have learnt that lesson but I wanted to know if a VERY SMALL sset of monitors will do the job given the space available. I like many people on here don't have a hugh amount to spend and really dont have much room at all. The actual studio space is 12 ft long and 7ft wide so I know I'm always going to up against problems but any advice would be helpful. Tracking seems OK, I have a good live sound when playing and can alter the room to get fairly good vocals but the speakers overpower the room. Is there a minimum size/output that anyone would recommend.
 
Do you have a picture of your boat? I'd be interested to see it, as I'm curious about how people live on boats.

Roland and Edirol make small bookshelf speakers that might be right for you.

Take a look at the Roland DM-2100 speaker system, as well as the DM-20. Edirol makes the MA-7A or the MA-15D. All these setups would be pretty affordable.

For my small monitors I use KRK V4's, which would work in small spaces.

In general, I would think any good monitor that has a woofer of 4-6 inches would probably be compact enough and still be able to give you a more realistic picture of your mix than headphones. Of course, headphone checks are always a great thing to do when mixing, but using them exclusively is not the best.
 
A 2" speaker can create VERY low frequencies, just not very loud. Really, the speaker size generally will only dictate how efficient and how loud the speaker can create low frequency vibrations.

I guess what I am trying to say is that using smaller speakers will not make any difference in how the sound saturates and reverberates in your room except in what I described above. I suppose you could argue that the physical size of the enclosure will effect acoustics, but, I doubt that is going to be much of a concern.

The physical size of your room will cause all sorts of interesting acoustic things to happen. I will not pretend to be an "expert" in this field, because FEW are! Anyway, most likely, you could gain better control of your low end in the room with some type of bass traps. Small rooms suffer the most in the low end. Having a big ol' bed in there only amplifies the poor balance between low and high frequencies in the room.

So, look to improve your room acoustics first. Smaller speakers are NOT going to solve the problems you are having.
 
I guess I should back up. Different enclosure designs can effect how flat frequency response of the speaker system is. So, I might have been a bit rash is saying that a smaller box won't make a difference. A bigger speaker box may not actually sound "balanced" at very low volumes, where as a smaller speaker box can sound balanced at a much lower volume than the bigger box can.

You claim that the speakers are "over powering" your room. How did you come to that conclusion? I mean, can't you just turn down the speakers?
 
I can mail you pictures of the boat with pleasure but your profile will not allow me to at the moment, drop me a mail and I'll send you some, as for living on it, it's the greatest thing we ever did. I only wish I'd done it years ago.

Because the room is small I tend to get an overpowering low frequency, a booming bass. This is also the case with any CD that I try. Turning it down just seems to loose high end definition. I have just purchased some 30w 4" sub speakers to try so I'll let you know how I get on with them. I'm new to all of this so excuse me if the terminology is wrong !!!

Wait till I start asking about EQ !!!
 
Boats are typically problematic areas for recording.

Submarines are whole a different story. What you might want to do is consider trading in your boat for a submarine. You'll be able to get lots of sub bass on those, and you'll never need a sub woofer. People will always tell you your mixes have a lot of depth.

I kill myself.

.
 
Nick, I just fixed my profile, you can send me email now.

Is it possible for you to treat the room with some bass traps? Is your boat wood, metal or fiberglass? I would think each of these would have different acoustic properties.
 
Once while anchored in Half Moon Bay, I forgot to tie my main haulyard off to prevent it slapping the mast. The next day, this scraggily bearded, knotted hair, semi toothed vagrant looking fellow crawled out of the derelict boat anchored nearby and yelled at me "Tie off your haulyards God dammit, I've got a recording studio in here". No power, no genset, so I think a certain amount of imagination had to be employed in the complaint.....but I apologized sincearly, sending the kermudgeon talking to himself as he descended below decks. I guess you had to be there, but it was funny as hell.

Chess - you've descended to sub-humor.

-RD
 
Robert D said:
Once while anchored in Half Moon Bay, I forgot to tie my main haulyard off to prevent it slapping the mast. The next day, this scraggily bearded, knotted hair, semi toothed vagrant looking fellow crawled out of the derelict boat anchored nearby and yelled at me "Tie off your haulyards God dammit, I've got a recording studio in here". No power, no genset, so I think a certain amount of imagination had to be employed in the complaint.....but I apologized sincearly, sending the kermudgeon talking to himself as he descended below decks.

That will probably be me in about 25 years.

.
 
Hi Nick,

I realise this post is very old but I am on a liveaboard narrowboat (ccer so no electric hook-up).

I'd like to move my studio on board but am obviously unsure about power consumption (& damp damage to mics etc too).

Do you have electric hook up and if not how do you ensure enough power for your set-up?

Many thanks,

Louise
 
Hi Nick,

I realise this post is very old but I am on a liveaboard narrowboat (ccer so no electric hook-up).

I'd like to move my studio on board but am obviously unsure about power consumption (& damp damage to mics etc too).

Do you have electric hook up and if not how do you ensure enough power for your set-up?

Many thanks,

Louise

If you notice his post count, the guy hasn't been back here since this post was started. You definitely need some power for recording, although you could use a laptop with a USB-powered interface and headphones for monitoring.
 
I'd love to live on a narrow boat...when I lived in the UK renting narrowboats was probably my favourite holiday. Between 1980 and 2007 I probably rented for about 40 weeks.

Anyhow, a basic USB powered interface will allow you to record and listen via headphones. You'll still have to find a way to charge your lap top of course! However, as I type this I'm in the midst of mixing sound some sound (for a video in this case) on a Lenovo laptop and M Audio M Track not plugged into the mains--just because I'm lazy and doing it on the couch. When I bought the Lenovo I paid extra for the high capacity battery option and get around 8 hours per charge.
 
Do you have electric hook up and if not how do you ensure enough power for your set-up?

Louise

He has a team of trained hamsters and lots of tiny treadmills in a sound proof enclosure..

Don't they do decent storage batteries these days that could power basic mixing, but not necessarily recording, equipment?
 
It depends on the boat. Almost all have a bank of storage batteries that charge while the engine is running--but some stick to 12 volt appliances (like you'd find in a trailer/caravan) while others put in inverters so you can plug in 240 volt stuff. Either way you could do some basic stuff with a laptop, USB bus powered interface and a set of headphones. For much more, you'd have to have the 240 volt option (and some inverters aren't frequency stable enough for serious electronics).

Can you tell I seriously considered retiring to a boat instead of Australia?
 
Can you tell I seriously considered retiring to a boat instead of Australia?

Toowoomba is a funny place to end up for a guy who likes boats and water, being inland and on a mountain range and all.... :D

Wait.... you're not knocking up an ark in the backyard, are you? Inside information...?? :eek:

;)
 
I'll be retiring to a boat. It won't be narrow. In fact, it will be a luxury apartment on two hulls permanently tied to a dock. No sense ruining a good set of sails with wind and water and everything.

By that time, I won't need a studio because no one will be listening to music anymore.
 
On other, tangential, matters.... who knew that Nick Lowe was once a member? We're in high company indeed!:laughings:
 
Toowoomba is a funny place to end up for a guy who likes boats and water, being inland and on a mountain range and all.... :D

Wait.... you're not knocking up an ark in the backyard, are you? Inside information...?? :eek:

;)

Global warming is real and I'm buying up beach front property at the top of the range! Only a century or so until Picnic Point becomes a world class surfing resort!

Seriously, my retirement goal was always to be some form of "grey nomad" (well, bald nomad in my case), be it with an RV or a narrowboat. Alas, fate intervened and at age 52 I became a father again and need to be in one place at least through the school years!
 
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