one room studio question

T

thecugga

New member
Hi guys,
Im going to attempt my first big recording in a couple weeks; the first demo for my band. I have two rooms in which i could record in and im not sure which would be better; I was hoping some of you guys could help me out.
Its a fairly basic question i think.
Ive heard all about square rooms being horrible for recording, although i dont know the physics behind it.

So...which room would be better suited for recording?
1) Big square room with high ceilings and wood floors...square...fack....
or
2) Smaller non-square room, carpeted, with a slanted back wall. Its probably atleast 1/3 smaller than room 1.

Anyone have any ideas? Are square rooms really that bad?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
 
Actually I have another question somewhat related to my first question. Its about CHEAP acoustic treatment of a room.
I have an unlimited supply of those big square egg cartons (I work in a breakfast diner), obviously have sleeping bags, pillows, a big thick futon, a bunch of stuff that could be used for makeshift acoustical treatments.

I dont have nearly enough cash to buy any real acoustical foam at this time. I seem to remember seeing people say that if you cant buy the real stuff then dont do it at all, but these types of people strike me as the same type of person that will tell me my recordings will sound like crap until I am using thousand dollar mics and such.
Should I really stay away from trying to improve the sound in the room or is it feasible to semi-acoustically treat a room without professional acoustical foam?
Ive read the basics of absobtion, diffusion, bass traps in coners, etc.

Oh ya ... also our band is another numetal style band. I will be recording live drums, electric guitars, bass guitar in this room. We have a separate room we record vocals in.

If anyone has any advice they could give me at all about this stuff before I go in and produce a horrible sounding demo for ourselves please help me out!! Im trying to cram as much recording knowledge into my head as I can before I record and any help would be huge!
Thanks again
 
My acoustic knowledge isn't great, but I would record in the room with the slanted wall. It will reflect sound in such a way that yu won't get standing waves or wave cancellation, which results in an undesirable sound.

If you can get a couch or any other upholstry into this room, it may help it's sonic qualities.

There's lots of info to be had all over the net about studio design, though.
Good luck
 
Hey Puffin thanks alot for the quick reply. I agree with you, it might be smarter just to completely avoid that problem and go with the smaller room.

The thing im most worried about though, especially with recording in the smaller room, is the drum sound. Everything I see is that big rooms are better for drums. Also, wood floors are good for acoustic instruments. And this large room has like 15 ft. high ceilings, which alos has gotta be good for drums.
Basically it comes down to the question of "is a square room so bad that I should sacrifice a larger room with high ceilings and wood floors for a room with better, but smaller, dimensions"???
I have no idea.
It might come down to me having to record a drum track and then move everything to the other room and record another and compare, but still any advice would be helpful.

And you guys can scratch that acoustical treatment question as I have realized I am officially now one of those jackasses that post a question that has been asked and answered 89203489238 times already on this site :rolleyes: I can figure that one out on my own...

Anyways any more help on choosing the room would be great.
Thanks again
 
What are the dimensions of each room?

Square isn't ideal but if it's big enough and you can treat or isolate the drums a bit you could get some pretty good results.

Look around for some used/free office cubicle stuff and use it for gobos in the big square room. For ghetto bass traps go buy some rolls of insulation and stack them in the corners. You can make traps out of sonotube and insulation too.

Knock down enough reflections and you've got yourself a woody room with a 15 ceiling.

Craigslist is your friend. :)
 
C7sus,

Good reply. Personally, I would concentrate less on getting the large room to sound good. Sometims it can be a loosing battle. I guess if you are going for a more 'live' sound for the drums this is the way to go.

I would probably use a more dead room becase I prefer that sound and also if you are not recording the rest of the instrument in that room, there may be problems getting the drums to sit in the mix. You have less flexibility with them, anyway.

That's just how I would prefer to do it, though. I like the dead 'thud'.

Good Luck :)
 
Thanks again for the advice,
I think what im gonna do is figure out some basic treatment plans for each room working with what ive got. And ive got a couple extra days that i'll be up there before we record so I think i'll try to semi-treat and then record a drum track in each room and compare the two. Whichever room helps create the sound closer to what im going for i'll use that room as my recording room.
Im leaning to the smaller room though since it seems like it'll be easier to work with; which will probably help me out alot considering I have no skills.
If ur interested in how it turns out i'll post a little update in about two weeks to let you know. Also I'll probably be posting a few of the tunes in the mp3 mixing clinic in a couple weeks to get alittle help before theyre finished...
anyways thanks again
take it easy
 
thecugga said:
I seem to remember seeing people say that if you cant buy the real stuff then dont do it at all, but these types of people strike me as the same type of person that will tell me my recordings will sound like crap until I am using thousand dollar mics and such.
Click to expand...

Before you jump to such unfounded conclusions, you should consider why any of us spend our time pushing the concept of "doing it right or not at all".

It's not to force you into spending more money than you have to, whether treatments or gear. It's to save you money, time and effort.

Egg cartons do absolutely nothing other than create a fire hazard. While in college, being poor, I covered my walls and ceilings with egg cartons thinking they be a cheap (free!) solution to the standing waves I was experiencing in the square 10x10' bedroom. Turns out I wasted about 10 hours stapling the egg cartons up, plus the time removing them (and the staples) without damaging the walls/ceilings too much.

Carpeting, if thick enough, can absorb higher frequences. Same for acoustical foam. Some of the foam "bass traps" they sell really don't absorb as much bass as they'd like you to think... but do well with mid frequences and high frequences.

If you want to turn your "studio" into a room that sounds like you stuck your head in a subwoofer cabinet, carpet and foam are great ways of doing this. Leave the bass and kill the mids/highs.

Most problems people have are low frequencies because the rooms we use are generally typical in a house - small. There's a lot of power behind the generation of low frequencies that when they reflect off the walls, ceilings and flooring they tend not to die for many rounds going back and forth. i.e. the standing wave problem.

This is why we often recommend rigid fiberglass, packed in a simple pine frame made of 1x3's (with a 2'x4' outer dimension of said frame), covered in cloth of your choosing. While not free like egg cartons, they aren't terribly expensive, and if you're clever you can mount them like picture frames, and move them around until your room sounds the very best it can with what you have. If you build these, you can make some for the corners too. Simply lean them against the corners of the wall to trap a fair amount of bass.

Rigid fiberglass, unlike many other materials, absorb frequencies across the audio spectrum - high, mid and low.

By "doing it right" the first time, you won't be wasting your time and money setting up treatments that don't work, but even more important - you won't be wasting the countless hours of recording your demo in a room that is acoustically unkind, thus detracting from your recording. In this case a $1000 mic wouldn't help you one bit :D

But you're welcomed to do what you like, of course.
 
thanks for the input frederic
i do completely agree with you that if i were going to attempt to do a real budget treatment of my recording room that doing it right the first time would clearly save time, energy, and sure avoid some headaches, and be the only way to go about it.
and just for the record i dont know why i listed egg cartons (maybe because i saved huge piles of them up in the summer, although after learning abuot recording on this website for the last half year or so ive realized that they do nothing and wasnt even planning on using them).
but the time has come for my band to record its first demo, and so now the time to save up a few extra bucks to come up with a decent treatment is gone and i gotta work with what i have. and im not really treating the room, more so just planning on moving a few big thick couch chairs into the corners and MAYYYBE experimenting with some thick blankents, futon matress, etc... but i might not even go that far and avoid actually decreasing the sound quality of the room (i have read quite abit that improper budget treatments really do nothing for low frequencies and can muddy up the room quite a bit).
i was just trying to make the point that, i agree doing it right could improve the sound in the room from say a 3 to a 7 ... but if i can change it from a 3 to a 4 then im happy.
i know it wont be ideal by any means, but if i can make a slight improvement then im happy.
ive looked into this a bit lately and i do like the idea of rigid fibreglass mounted with a pine frame and fabric. i have literally no money. first i gotta get me a decent pair of montiors :eek: ... but next on the list i plan on making a decent amount of these fibreglass treatments. i love the idea and think you could make a room look pretty killer with these things mounted on your walls.
thanks for the advice tho frederic, i do agree with you, and i really dont plan on attempting any major treatment whatsoever until i can do it properly.
 
thecugga said:
thanks for the input frederic
Click to expand...

you're welcome.

thecugga said:
and just for the record i dont know why i listed egg cartons (maybe because i saved huge piles of them up in the summer, although after learning abuot recording on this website for the last half year or so ive realized that they do nothing and wasnt even planning on using them).
Click to expand...

I figured the reasons were that you had access to the egg cartons, and thought maybe they'd be at least minimally useful. That's why you ask questions, right? You know the old cliche... the only stupid question is one that is unasked.

thecugga said:
i was just trying to make the point that, i agree doing it right could improve the sound in the room from say a 3 to a 7 ... but if i can change it from a 3 to a 4 then im happy.
Click to expand...

I wasn't suggesting going after ideal. If I was, I would have suggested by far more than some rigid fiberglass in wooden frames stapled together. I would have instead suggested specialized construction techniques and harped on you about how mass in your structure is how to make a good recording space. You said you were on a budget, so I attempted to balance that with making an "okay" recording space. Rigid fiberglass, as an example, would help you achieve that.

thecugga said:
mounted with a pine frame and fabric. i have literally no money. first i gotta get me a decent pair of montiors :eek: ... but next on the list i plan on making a decent amount of these fibreglass treatments. i love the idea and think you could make a room look pretty killer with these things mounted on your walls.
Click to expand...

I have a suggestion, and it might be a bit far out for you.

Instead of purchasing monitors, and acoustical treatments, why not buy some inexpensive direct boxes, and rent monitors?

Even in a crappy room (acoustically) often you can mic drums close enough with a noise gate that you can clip off enough of the room to get by. Record the bass, synths and so forth using the direct boxes (if you have multi-track capabilities, you only need one direct box BTW, but I don't know what gear you have, if any), and for the guitar, you can typically rent a POD or other amp/cabinet/speaker simulation device and plug that directly into your mixer as well, and record that. MIght take some fiddling to get the EQ and levels correct - the settings would be different than with microphones regardless of price range, but you've stated you're broke and fiddling time is free, right?

Before I facilitated my gear-slut-ness I did a TON of multitracking with headphones, homemade direct boxes, and other such flimsy crap. And it worked out well enough for me.

Direct, eliminates the room for the most part.

Wait, I suggested mixing with headphones, and industry no-no. Well, it's difficult, but you mix with the head-cans down to stereo to tape, then pop that tape in your parent's stereo in the living room, a boom box, a car stereo (factory and aftermarket), and so on. While you listen on each playback device you keep track of where the mix needs help, and then you try to adjust it a bit in the mix, back down to stereo, and repeat until you get it. Might take 2 tries, might take 5. Maybe even 20. But that's free :D

thecugga said:
thanks for the advice tho frederic, i do agree with you, and i really dont plan on attempting any major treatment whatsoever until i can do it properly.
Click to expand...

I just didn't want you to spend money, only to be disappointed.
 
thanks again for the help frederic ... i appreciate it.

we have the capacity to record 7 tracks at once ... and some ok budget mics to do it (2 b1s, d6, 609, 2 i5s, 57). so i plan on close miking each drum (5pc) and then the room should only have a huge affect on the overheads.
we have a marshall and peavey guitar amp, and a peavey bass amp. i am debating wether or not to even use a far mic on the amps considering my room probabyl wont sound too good, in which case i'll probably only have 2 close mics on the gits and 1 close mic on the bass. i'll be doing it all track by track as well to make things easier.
will a room affect close mics on a gtr amp too much? im sure it will haev an effect, but how much should i be worried about room sound if im just close micing a gtr amp? would this still be better than recording direct? ive seen many people bash gits recorded direct, although ive never tried it.
i was thinking the two overhead mics on the drums (and possibly vox) would be the hardest to control in terms of needing to control the room sound as well ... is my thought process close?
 
oh ya ... i have ok computer speakers ( i know i know computer speakers suck , but its all i have right now) ... but the ponit i was making is i have mixed quite a few bare bones song demos on these things and have somewhat of an idea of how i have to mix on them for it to translate into a good sounding mix elsewhere.
im just waiting for some moulah b/c im sure some decent monitors will make it alot easier
 
thecugga said:
will a room affect close mics on a gtr amp too much? im sure it will haev an effect, but how much should i be worried about room sound if im just close micing a gtr amp? would this still be better than recording direct? ive seen many people bash gits recorded direct, although ive never tried it.
Click to expand...

Yes, the room will affect the close mics, just not to the same degree as far mics. It's a try, and see scenario. You might get lucky.

Also try placing the amps in different areas of the room, then mic them. Sometimes "not so kind rooms" sound better if the amp is near one wall or the other, sometimes lying the amp on it's back on a fuzzy bathmat works.

Another option if you don't live in a valley (and hate your neighbors) is to put the amp outside, close mic it, and run the wires through the patio door. I've done that with decent success.

thecugga said:
i was thinking the two overhead mics on the drums (and possibly vox) would be the hardest to control in terms of needing to control the room sound as well ... is my thought process close?
Click to expand...

Absolutely the most difficult thing (I think) to record in an unkind room. Cymbals are hard to record anyway with cheap mics because often the mics amplify the ringing rather than the tone. EQ can help this, noise gates can sometimes help, and lot of this might be technique of the dummer.

One particular drummer I recorded more than a decade ago, I skipped the overhead mics. Why? The guy beat the cymbals so hard that the snare mic would ring on it's mount. So I shoved some neoprene into the snare mic mount and used that for the overheads.

And this might sound weird, but try all the mics you have to record the cymbals, not just the normal overheads.

There is nothing wrong with replacing your drummer's cymbols with cut out cardboard, recording the kit, then going back on track 2, and recording just the cymbols with a snare mic, if you have a shortage of mikes you really like.

Then you can "bounce" tracks 1 and 2 together onto track 7, leaving 1-6 for recording bass, guitars, vocals, sax, whatever.

While stereo is nice, it's not a requirement for making a demo. *clean* is more important, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Nothing wrong with bouncing tracks, especially if it's digital.

Heck, most of us "in the old days" bounced tracks between cassette tapes!
 
thecugga said:
oh ya ... i have ok computer speakers ( i know i know computer speakers suck , but its all i have right now) ... but the ponit i was making is i have mixed quite a few bare bones song demos on these things and have somewhat of an idea of how i have to mix on them for it to translate into a good sounding mix elsewhere.
im just waiting for some moulah b/c im sure some decent monitors will make it alot easier
Click to expand...

Decent monitors make a huge difference.

However, you can live without them if you can tolerate mixing, testing, remixing, testing. It's been done for years, by all of us.

My first "studio monitors" were a pair of metal Radio Shack minimus-7. Not awful, not great, but cheap!

When are you going to be recording this? next week, a month, several months from now? And if I may ask, what7-track are you recording on?
 
about the recording cymbals after ... yeah i read an interview with the Thrice drummer and he talked about actually doing this on their newest album, recording just drums and then going back and recording cymbals after. i was thinking about doing this but never contemplated it too seriously ... maybe i'll give her the good ol college try atleast once to see what it turns out like.

i am going back to my house on the 3rd of january. me and my band are gonna hammer out some last minute kinks in our tunes and then we will probably be recording as early as the 5th or 6th.

ive been doing alot of recording for about the last four or five months ... but theres just such an insane amount to learn that im still a complete beginner and have realized that alot of this im just going to have to pick up as i go. and yeah ... for a demo my only goal is to put together some decent sounding mixes, just try to make it sound ok so the recording quality doesnt take too much away from the songs and the performances themselves. i will be more than pleased with something sounding "ok".

oh ya ... im recording on my computer. sonar 4 pe and wavelab 4.0.
4 tracks just thru a little mackie 1202 into a delta44
2 tracks into the onboard pres of the omni breakout box into a delta66
1 thru a pre and into the delta66
im pretty sure the pres on the omni will be better than my mackie pres, so im gonna try to use them for vox, gits, bass, and overheads.

thanks again for the help frederic
 
Sounding "ok" in a demo is fine.

And that's exactly what you want - whoever is listening to the demo NOT to be distracted by weird EQ settings, bad stereo imaging recorded noise, unwarranted sounds, and the room. You're on track.

Not sure about the other piece of software, but I believe SonarPE can export each track to a .wav file?

If so, when you're done recording, email me.
 
For drums i think the bigger room would be better. Wouldn't a matress across the corner of the room work ok as a basstrap? What about a matress covered in a few blankets? If so you could put them across 2 of the corners(not opposite). And yeh go with frederic, rent monitors and go with a pod. If the guitarists have their own effects pedals you could probably plug these straight in, not sure though, but you could give it a go. :D If the matress idea is an ok basstrap, you could move them into the smaller room for mixing.
 
Also, if the mattress idea does work, you could open the door of the room, lay the matress against the open door, and the room behind it will make it an even better bass trap. I asked this question before about putting rigid fiberglass where the door should be, and was told if the other room is 12' long, the absorbtion would peak at 23Hz, so even if the mattress has half the absorbtion of rigid fiberglass, it should still work well as a basstrap. :D
 
yes sonar can export to wav. i generally use sonar to record, export to wav, and then reopen in wavelab and master.
and i will definitely be emailing you frederic. thanks again for all the help!

thats a good idea too pandamonk. i have a big futon mattress that rolls up and is super thick and heavy (it weighs a ton) which i think might work ok in one coner. then i have this old sectional couch thats made of just wood and material that i could stack in another.
with the open door idea, am i laying the mattress against the open door kinda up against the wall, or am i opening the door and placing the matterss inside the door frame where the door would normally be if it were closed?
 
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