Homestudio Equipment but what about acoustic?

trottel90

New member
Hey I'm planning to buy a Neuman TLM 102 and a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2nd Gen USD Audio Interface.
Any advices for that? I heard that the 160€ (in my country) interface is enough for this mic and you in fact don't hear big differences (or any) differences to many 400€ interfaces.
I have a good PC and a good software plus I will invest in 2 monitors in near future as well.

My main problem is the acoustic, I don't know anything about where to place the microphone and where to put absorbers (which ones)?
I have a small flat and here you see 2 photos of the place I plan to record my songs. I really wanna have a good qualty, dry and ready to work with. Don't want bathroom sound :P

20273759_1770829479875955_1599999458_o.jpg20399459_1770829533209283_304334124_o.jpg


Andy advice would be great :)

Greets from Germany
 
Hi there,
Welcome to HR, where your bank balance comes to die. ;)


There's a lot to it and I'm sure people can offer better and more detailed suggestions than me, but the first thing that jumps out at me is the position of your setup.
Having that wall directly behind you is going to cause a lot of problems, and having asymmetry (wall on your left, not on your right) isn't great either.

Would it be possible to put the desk directly opposite the pictured door, even if that means moving the couch up a bit?
It will help a lot.

Would it be possible to see pics of the rest of the apartment, or an overhead floor plan?
 
plus I will invest in 2 monitors in near future as well.
The things you should, by far, most absolutely without question concentrate on are your monitoring and your room treatment.

Better to have a SM58 (which is actually a quite decent mic in the right hands) and a $99 interface in a reasonable space with decent monitoring (because you know NOTHING unless you can actually hear it - accurately and consistently) than a $12,000 mic into a $7,599 preamp into a $3,750 interface in a poorly treated space. No question, no comparison.

Don't get me wrong - The 102 is a reasonably decent mic that will reasonably capture whatever is in front of it. And that will be your problem.
 
I'll add some more. An interesting thing about our ears and brain. They're real adapted to automatically helping us zero in on sounds we're listening to, and 'filtering out the noise part of it around us.

When you open up a mic, record it, play it back, that doesn't happen.

After a while, you can look at a room, or hear a room and through a lot of critical listening, begin to hear it like a mic might. :>)
You have a lot of hard -and close surfaces. Read 'splashy, chattery' (to a sharp clap' for instance), with some interesting' ringing resonances in the low vocal ranges. Try it- a vocal 'sweep low to mid pitch in a few spots in there.
My guess would be
Hold off on the big condenser, and shoot for a mic that can sound good -is designed to sound good- right up on it. (I.e, it will 'hear' more voice, less room.
And a few of something like these (or you can make your own) ;
Shop Acoustic Panels, Bass Traps, Diffusors
They can go around your mic during recording, move over to your 'desk for mixing. Even a few will help. And they'll always be helpful overall for the room.
 
Some good advice already. Home recording is about making compromises and having less-than-ideal recording/mixing spaces. Most of us have only one room to do everything in, so the common wisdom is to set the room for a good mixing environment. The recording function of the room won't be optimal, but as Massive points out, it can work well with the right microphone choice.

To directly answer your question, where to place a mic, I think you would be best served by putting the mic where you took the pictures. In that one corner, facing out into the large part of the room.

For acoustic treatment, we would need to see more of the room, floor plan, etc.

Welcome to the site.
 
Thanks for the advices so far.

Here you can see 3 other photos. There is just this 1 room and I just want a nice acoustic for the probably TLM102 and Focusrite Scarlett (I will buy)
And Im not sure where to place the mic and where to putr absorbers. Or maybe even work with a micscreen?

man1.pngman2.pngman3.png
 
That looks to be what would probably be a ridiculously lively space which would require ridiculous amounts of broadband absorption and possibly even spot treatments with foam (or ideally, more broadband absorption) to get it dry enough to avoid that "bathroom sound" you referred to.

What sort of budget are you looking at here...? Not on peripherals like the mic and the interface, but on the things that really matter like the monitoring and the room treatment? Knowing that might make it easier for people to make suggestions.

And what are you recording?
 
A few free-standing bass traps (4" thick rockwool) can be used as gobos to cut down reflections when recording, but for mixing you just don't have a good space, some good headphones would be best option (then check your mixes on other systems, of course).
 
Damn, you confused me....I just ordered a Neumann TLM102, Focusrite Scarlett USB Interface, T-Bone Micscreen, AKG Studio Headphones, Popfilter and a mic stand. Thats around 1000€ (thats maybe $1100 to 1150 at the moment)
Will try it out....hope I find a place to place my mic and micscreen to bring distrubing sounds and halls to the minimum....

If not, Ill send everything back to the store :( (they have 30d money back)

Yea generally I'd spend a few hundreds more to get the best acoustic treatment I can get for this room...but it is what it is.

any advices?
 
Damn, you confused me....I just ordered a Neumann TLM102, Focusrite Scarlett USB Interface, T-Bone Micscreen, AKG Studio Headphones, Popfilter and a mic stand. Thats around 1000€ (thats maybe $1100 to 1150 at the moment)
Will try it out....hope I find a place to place my mic and micscreen to bring distrubing sounds and halls to the minimum....

If not, Ill send everything back to the store :( (they have 30d money back)

Yea generally I'd spend a few hundreds more to get the best acoustic treatment I can get for this room...but it is what it is.

any advices?

There is nothing wrong with that equipment, people would have killed for that quality 40 years ago.

For RECORDING you could go down the 'duvets and wastepipe frame' route and make a decent job of it. (the mic screen will help, but not a lot) .

You have headphones but maybe 90%+ of the top guys here think you will ultimately need monitor speakers and THAT is when that room will cause you most trouble.

I was not joking when I asked about the bedroom! It is quite possible to record in the 'live' room but setup monitors in a bedroom where you mix and swear.

Dave.
 
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