Sounds of my studio with treatment

[larrye]

I have treated my room (kinda) where I do all of my recording and mixing. I would appreciate it if you fellows would listen to this MP3 sound clip. It includes acoustic guitar, harmonica, and a vocal. It is totally dry, except for compression.

I recorded it with a single C-1 mic from about 2.5 feet in two tracks.
1. vocal and acoustic guitar-compressed soft knee at 2:1 ratio
2. harmonica-compressed at 4:1
Mixed down and coverted to MP3 with n-track.

I am just wondering if my room is any good?
Go to http://pages.prodigy.net/ltucker45 and click on the link Preacher Man

your help would be greatly appreciated.

larrye

[Track Rat]

My friend, you suffer from the same affliction I do. Small Room Syndrome. The ambience is too small sounding. I've had to learn to try and stay within the limitations of my room, that is to try to minimize the room getting back into the mics by mic'ing closer and trying to make the room as dead as possible.

[Dan Merrill]

Can I get an AMEN?!! :-)

Track's right. you've got a small room sound going there. Sounds more like front room blues than front porch blues. It sounds like it's not big enough to be generally useful as an "acoustic" space so, close mic use artifical reverbs. If the room sound still shows up in your mixes deaden the room a bit. You might get some interesting electric guitar sounds in that room.

BTW, I woke up this mornin' too...

[larrye]

Thanks for the replies guys,
The room is small so you have good ears. Does is sound pretty dead? I tried to make treat it so all frequecies were reflected evenly. And I tried to make it dead. So how dead and balanced does it sound to you? With reverb I can increase its size, right?

Thanks,
Larrye

[Dan Merrill]

does it sound dead? Nope. dead is dead=no reflections, no room sound -think dry. Even? well that's a bit hard to say but I'm guessing you did a reasonable job because the overall tones are not out of whack. BTW- don't take our small room comments to mean the room sounds bad! The thing is: you've purposefully tried to balance it and it's not totally dead, so you have therefore maintained a "room" sound. I can hear the early reflections of the high end off the walls which indicates to me the apparent room size. That begs the question of whether the natural "room" sound you have is appropriate for the type of recordings you do. if you were mixing a completely dry blues recording what are the chances you'd put a .8 millisecond room reverb on everything in the mix? slim to none i'd guess...

Again, try close micing- an acoustic guitar recorded 6" off the 12 fret ( the C1 sounds great there) or a voice recorded at 4" instead of 2.5 feet will reveal a whole lot less of the room. And when you try it, post another clip!