How should a studio sound?

D

Dan Merrill

New member
I visited a friends studio this week. the guy has spent bucks and has some nice equipment in his three room space which consists of tracking room (maybe 15'x15' with 9' ceilings) a smaller control room- 9 x 10 and a small live amp room/ hallway- 8x8. It is beautifully finished and has central heating/ AC and even humidity control. It's pretty well sound proofed too.

But.. he has some problems that were bugging me. Parallel walls that produced some flutter in his tracking room, and the place was over run with fancy auralex foam, which looks great but in my mind just killed the sound of the tracking room! The floor is carpeted, ceiling is all foamed out and some on the walls ( He added more foam to the walls of his tracking room to stop the futter echo)- which are rough cut 4"boards vertically over 2" foam insulation. It sounded like a big, dull vocal booth.

So this got me thinking of what I would like a tracking room to sound like, and my question is: what do you aim for when designing or treating your tracking rooms, in terms of liveness, room ambience etc? Does it depend on the styles of music being recorded?
 
Ditto!!

I've been sweating on John to come and pass comment. Hopefully soon, as it is one of the best questions I have seen posted for quite a while.

:cool:
 
I have thinking about this too and, I think I have come to this conclusion. Due to the micing techniques used with rock bands, I think you could achieve great results even in a sub-par room. When mic a guitar amp about 9 inches or a couple feet away, you are really getting no room sound. And when you mic the bass drum, snare, and all toms indiviedually you are also getting no room sound. Overheads are the only mics that even begin to capture a room sound. Bass goes direct in quite often and so does keyboard.

Vocals are where it gets tricky. I think for a rock band, you should just have a 4 x 4 dead vocal booth or something like that. That way they can get some kind of reverb afterwords. This may not be the perfect example for every band, but I think it stands for 80% of all rock bands.

If your studio is only going to be suited to match rock bands then I don't think a little bit of flutter will make a huge difference. On the other hand, if you ever plan to do any other type of music than rock, you might want to have a live room with more diffusion than actual absorbtion.

I personally want to try and have a small studio here where I live that can handle from everything from a soprano soloist to a harcore band. I plan on having a fairly live main room with lots of diffusion and a high cathedral ceiling. A drum room with 1 reflective wall, two side diffuser walls, and one absorbing wall. And a vocal booth that is 4 x 4 and will be decked out with Auralex and Knauf Fiberglass for maximum absorbtion.

Between all those I should be able to achieve a good sound for most groups I think. I think you would have a lot of options as well with that set up. Drums could go in the main room or the drum room depending on the sound you are after. Same with amps. For different vocalists you might prefer either the vocal booth or the main room.

I think my best bet is a room that diffuses sound, but still leaves some reverberation. I can always deaden a room, but I can't easily undeaden a room that was built too dead. Not to mention that a dead room sounds very unnatural to me, and many other musicians I know.

Beezoboy
 
OK - well I could have told you that the auralex lined room would sound bad. All absorption, no reflection. and only absorption in the highs, none in the lows.

So what do I aim at achieving in a room. - Flat Response!

Take a look at LEFT BANK

There are four recording spaces.

The two booths are dead (i.e. low reverb time) But the wall treatments are low-mid slots, rigid fibreglass, and glass doors. The ceilings have low frequency hangers and there is carpet on the floor. These rooms sound tight and bright. They are not dull to talk in and everything sounds clean and present.

The piano room is liver. It has more timber slots, even in the ceiling, and the wall units are panel absorbers for low end and they also diffuse the sound as do the low mid slots.
The timber floor also makes it brighter as do the glass doors and windows. I've got to say that this room is a gem. When you walk into it you know it's going to sound great.

The recreation room can also be used to record in which has standard plaster walls and a timber floor. The ceiling is lined with insulation and cloth.

As you can see all the rooms are different but the main point is that they are not dead in the highs only which is what most people refer to as a dead room. You can have a dead room that is still bright and clean if you use the full range of absorbers available.

cheers
John
 
Beezo and John, thanks for chiming in.. we spend so much time here talking about specific solutions that we forget to talk about the bigger picture of what end results we're hoping for.

Totally agree with the tight and bright theory. Personally, I want a tracking room that the drum overheads can capture some of that ambience in. One that I can get some real room sound on the elec guitars in... Beezo, I think you speak the truth about real world situations that many here deal with, and that room sound isn't always an issue/ option. For me, the room comes into play a lot on acoustic guitar and acoustic instruments, and basically there are just times when if the room sounded good, I'd use it more.

I may get involved in a rework of the studio I've mentioned, if so, I'll bring it to the "board" for suggestions.

John, Left Bank is a beauty- nice work!
 
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