Foam & super pro studios

[junkyardearl]

I've noticed that "real" professional studios usually have very little in the way of sound deadening foam on the walls, while every studio that has been in the budget of my band's ($30 an hour) have always been 100% covered in foam. What's the deal?

Personally I think that all that foam makes everything sound terrible. I can see why a person wouldn't want to record their vocals in say, an empty wearhouse, but I don't see why people would want all that foam. Can any of you guys tell me what you think of the whole thing? What do you studio running people do with your own place? I'd really like to know.

[John Sayers]

junkyardearl - they do have absorption on the walls but not foam - usually high density insulation. It's behind the cloth you see on the walls and it can be up to 4 feet of absorption space behind there. But you are correct in that some guys use too much foam and carpet and matresses etc.

The idea is to take the reverb time of the whole frequency range down evenly - foam just does the high end from around 500Hz up if its proper acoustic foam.

Go and read my site - it explains it all

Cheers
John

[junkyardearl]

where's your site? I'm new I'd love to hear all about this. All the guys that did our recordings were pretty bad. Well, the last two guys weren't so bad. The first guy that tried to make me feel dumb because I was so young (maybe 15) was terrible. He didn't even make sure the drums were tuned. I hated that guy. He had a bunch of friggin' green bed mattress foam all over the place, which was a small wearhouse actually. I heard that a metal band recorded with him and almost beat him up when he insisted that they pay him for the recording he did. But yeah, where's the site?
~james

[John Sayers]

along the botton of my post are the options - The little red riding hood house links to my homepage.
cheers
John

[crosstudio]

my personal opinion is that the foam works well for doing vocals, but once you start trying to record drums and bass in there, or even a chunky guitar, you are in trouble. i've been to some other studio where the room is left bare and the vocal booth (big closet) has foam all over the place.

i use a sansamp for my bass, and a whirlwind director connected to the amp out of my fender hotrod twin. fortunately, my drummer plays V-drums, so we don't have anything other than vocals that needs the room.

i only rent out my studio when i'm trying to make money for new gear, and i don't want to spend my regular job money. I'm looking into trying one of those auralex max wall doo-hickies soon. i don't do live bands. just pop/r&b/hip-hop vocalist. a couple of bass traps in the corners and a little foam should do the trick.

izzy