Deaden/Liven

[Mike3354]

Ok, so the general opinion most people have about treating rooms is that deader is better, and that things like vocals should be recorded in an isolation booth to get the dryest sound possible, then add verb later. Now i'm confused as to why people record stuff like vocals in bathrooms, though. I mean, i understand why they do it - to get the room ambience, but which is it: dry or not?

[gummblefish]

It's whatever you prefer in my opinion. I like to record in open rooms with natural reverbs. Depends really what you are aiming for in your recording.

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Mike: {car 33, where are you?}

When it comes to "tweaking," if you don't "tweak" and test and listen, then you can't accumulate a sense of "I like this or I don't like that."

In other words, as Gummbleman said, it kind of depends what your ears want to hear in a given vocal or music arrangement. Some tracks I've done I've used a large delay in the reverb just for the hell of it; it seemed that the words of the tune sounded better with the delay. But, as with most of us, the choice usually is what "we" like OR what the paying client wants to hear.

One thing I hear often on vocals put out by "stars" is that the vocal clips in one or two spots and the digital clip isn't what one is usually after.

Another instance, a very talented bass player friend of mine gave me DAT produced cassette of a three-piece band backing a fine singer ON A STAGE.

When I listened to the cassette the first time, it was very, very flat. The engineer did not put any reverb into her songs. I worked on that tape a bit and added YAM stage reverb and there was an big difference that was enjoyed by my bass friend and the gal vocalist whom I've never met.

When someone plays on a given stage, there is ambience and brilliance and, in MHO, a splash of the right reverb really helps the tracks sound cool.

Green Hornet

[Mike3354]

great, thanks guys. i kind of figured it was a personal preference thing, but i was just confused a little since the two ideas are pretty much opposites. thanks again.

[Ethan Winer]

Mike,

which is it: dry or not?

Dry. Bathroom ambience is totally lame. Really. Good reverb has a neutral quality that lingers at all frequencies uniformly. All small untreated rooms have a resonant boxy sound that emphasize only one or two frequencies in a very unnatural way. That might be okay as an occasional effect, but it's not a good way to record vocals generally.

--Ethan

[mixsit]

To key off Ethan's, my experience here with home size rooms, with treatment (and gobos for flexibility) you can knock down and even out the primary room vs the direct source. This allows some control over how much of your room to let in, and what gets let in is a bit more well behaved.

The gotcha' with small rooms I believe, even ignoring the box resonance factor for a moment, is that most of the reflections are within the Hass time window- short enough to be heard as part of the original source. In other words, the effect of a smear, and a rather limited useful ambiance.
Think; Small Room/short delay = spread, Med Rooms to Hall'/longer delay ( > 40-50ms) = ambiance/depth separate from source.