Muddy T-Bone
New member
Empty the closet....then hang the blankets in there.
The moving blankets bend my clothes hangers.
Vocal Nirvana...Using Gobo's...Wow is all I Can Say!
- Thread starter Muddy T-Bone
- Start date
The moving blankets bend my clothes hangers.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Hammer and nails... 
Do you just record vocals in that room....?
If you prefer the "gobo" approach, rather than say....covering your entire room with treatment...
...since you are a DIY kind of guy, why not build some more serious gobos, with some wheels, using fiberglass or rock-wool, and multi-layer material, with a hard outer side...then you'll be able to utilize them for more than just taking the room slap-echo off of vocals.
You could create a small cubicle with the gobos and stick a guitar amp in there...or if you were to track some real drums, the broadband gobos would provide trapping even for low frequencies, and also some amount of sound control etc.
I mean...you would get much more serious mileage out of proper gobos than you're getting out of the blanklets...and you don't have screw with the rest of the room....but like others have said, the more you treat the room, the more you can use the whole room with good results.
Do you just record vocals in that room....?
If you prefer the "gobo" approach, rather than say....covering your entire room with treatment...
...since you are a DIY kind of guy, why not build some more serious gobos, with some wheels, using fiberglass or rock-wool, and multi-layer material, with a hard outer side...then you'll be able to utilize them for more than just taking the room slap-echo off of vocals.
You could create a small cubicle with the gobos and stick a guitar amp in there...or if you were to track some real drums, the broadband gobos would provide trapping even for low frequencies, and also some amount of sound control etc.
I mean...you would get much more serious mileage out of proper gobos than you're getting out of the blanklets...and you don't have screw with the rest of the room....but like others have said, the more you treat the room, the more you can use the whole room with good results.
Muddy T-Bone
New member
Hammer and nails...
Do you just record vocals in that room....?
If you prefer the "gobo" approach, rather than say....covering your entire room with treatment...
...since you are a DIY kind of guy, why not build some more serious gobos, with some wheels, using fiberglass or rock-wool, and multi-layer material, with a hard outer side...then you'll be able to utilize them for more than just taking the room slap-echo off of vocals.
You could create a small cubicle with the gobos and stick a guitar amp in there...or if you were to track some real drums, the broadband gobos would provide trapping even for low frequencies, and also some amount of sound control etc.
I mean...you would get much more serious mileage out of proper gobos than you're getting out of the blanklets...and you don't have screw with the rest of the room....but like others have said, the more you treat the room, the more you can use the whole room with good results.
The portable gobo's are only a week old, so I've only recorded vocals and a few different percussion instruments.
My studio is in a temporary location, which is now my office. The only thing I can do in the current room is mix, and lay down some scratch tracks. The room is much too small to get anything decent out of. That is why I track in different rooms of the house, depending on what sound I'm looking for.
Once I move the studio into it's permanant location, which is just about workable at 15X15, I will treat that room.
I've tracked a bunch in the room that is in the picture, as I used to think it was a fairly neutral sounding environment, and free of slap back and long verbs/delays. It wasn't until I heard playback of the stuff I recorded last weekend with the movers blanket stands that I had that "aha" moment and realized there is another world out there.
BTW, 2 of those blankets are commmercial movers blankets they are thick and heavy at 8 LBS each. The one I bought from Loews is thin and weighs probably 3LBS, like a bed blanket does. That I why I use the cheap one behind me for reflected sound.
jimmys69
MOODerator
I heard you c7. I was hoping that the OP's original post, would open up discussion towards the real way to treat a room. The fact that he heard a great improvement, started the conversation, of how to do it better. The 'reflection filter' comment, pretty much threw it into a sad place, as that is not what I had hoped this thread to move to. I tried..
There is no argument, over what is better. The thread was moving to a way to actually treat a room right.
No stick for this one. now.
Business as usual after post #18. Sigh... ruined...
jimmys69
MOODerator
I congratulate you for listening. Most do not realize the importance of room treatment, first off. Again, there is the real way to do it, and the half 'assed' way.
Muddy T-Bone, made a great realization, that room treatment (even if a small degree of what it can do), made a huge difference. Taking it to the next level, and doing it with some degree of doing it right, takes not so much money anyway. I can't stress enough, how important, treating a room is, in making a recording work.
Using the correct/best use of money to achieve the results, does not include using a 'reflection filter'. Nor does it involve more 'blankets'.
witzendoz
Senior Member
Gobos are the most useful thing in the studio for tailoring the acoustic for different recording situations, make the room live, dead, neutral, and for a bit of separation when recording more then one thing at a time. However a real gobo is a little more than a blanket, some of mine are over 4" thick. However we are talking home recording and a bit of blanket technology can be a bad thing
Alan.
Alan.
c7sus
Disenfranchised Member
I'll buy that.
I wouldn't say ruined. The reflector thing might work for some people. Sound is a pretty subjective thing.
Hey, I tried the blanket gobo thing. It really didn't take me where I wanted to go at the time.
I wound up doing months of research and building 14-lineal-feet of gobos 7'6" tall based on John Sayer's designs. Even built a slot resonator into one just to see if it really worked. It does! They line my diningroom/listening space. My listening space is pretty tight now, but those damned gobos are buried behind a desk as big as an aircraft carrier and a ton of gear. They serve double duty hiding all the boxes the gear came in.
The ceiling is vaulted to 11' and the back wall is 18' from the front edge of the desk. I never bothered to treat the rest of the room. It's supposed to be the living room anyways.
The depth-of-field in the pic isn't so good. The front edge of the desk is 6-feet from the face of the blinds.
And FTR you don't need to build a PVC frame. Boom mic stands will work too.
I call it Beggar's Tomb.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Not sure what was "sad" about it...
....only point was to say that hanging blankets wasn't really as exciting as it was being made out to be...and that all they were doing was acting as a larger reflection filter, nothing more.I was seeing that the thread was almost possibly going to promote blanket hanging as a good way to go...and like C7sus said...it's something, it does have an effect...but it's not really the way to go.
Just wouldn't want a bunch of newbs to view blankets like so many do foam.
Anyway....I think the thread actually DID move toward a discussion about better options following that.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
DM60
Well-known member
So, I will be doing more research, but I must admit to all of the those additional comments. I was thinking about looking into "blanket technology" as maybe a solution. Can't say I would have ended up there, but I did go and look up the price of blankets (just sayin'). Now that I have come to a faster understanding (I hope I would have researched it and not made the mistake, but can't say with 100% I would not have), I will take a more serious approach. But, the thread title did at least get me thinking about it more than I have over the last couple of years. So, that is a good thing.
Thanks to all who monitor this forum site and keep some of us from making silly mistakes.
Thanks to all who monitor this forum site and keep some of us from making silly mistakes.
c7sus
Disenfranchised Member
Now those are some serious gobos in your picture!
Spent about 4 months building those in the living room. The original idea was to use them kinda like a vocal booth. The backs are 1/4" oak-faced ply ripped down the middle with a router at a 6-1/2-degree angle. Not a single nail in the entire setup. The backs are glued onto angled pinewood frames wrapped with 3/4" oak ply. Stuffed with 3-1/2 inches of Knauf Soundboard. About $350 worth IIRC! The one with the slot resonator is 5 inches deep. The resonator is tuned to 250Hz as the center band, and an octave each side of that. Everything covered with hemp cloth, of course!
I built the rack on the LHS of the pic too. It's 24" deep and 48" high. 14-space rails over a 12" deep drawer. Built with Kreg joinery techniques. Wish I had built two. The rack was quick, only took a week to put together in the living room. Damn I miss having a garage!
The desk started out as a corner unit. I built a top for it out of about 3/4 of a sheet of birch ply. It's 6'6" wide and 42" deep.
Here's a tip: NEVER run a router in the house!
Muddy T-Bone
New member
Very nice work C7. Yours are the real deal.
I'm fortunate enough to have a great woodshop and skill set to build bass traps, absorbtion and diffusion panels when I move my studio to it's permanent location. I also own a 1/3 octave real time analyser to measure whats going on. The room still wont be optimal because its 1800 CuFt. But hopefully, if I do it properly, I won't have to drag evrything around the house to track in various rooms.
Muddy T-Bone
New member
When I get the time I will post a 10 second clip of the vocals I recorded before and after this treatment. My guess is that you will be very pleasantly surprised at the difference.
Relative to the price of blankets, the fellow that posted his PVC pipe stand plan on this forum said that he bought a pack of 5 or 8 from Harbor Freight (or Tools maybe?) for maybe 20 bucks.
At the end of the day, once you hear the before and after vocals, you likely will conclude that this could be the best under $100 improvement to your studio. If you put this in another perspective, say you were looking at getting a better microphone, and your budget was $500. Then decided to up the mic budget to $600. That 100 bucks more on a mic is doubtful to give you the same improvement as this fugazi gobo.
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Have you tried any of the acoustic measurement software that's out there?
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Yeah....I would like to hear the before & after.
One thing....from the looks of your room in the pictures, while it appears to be a very nice looking room AFA home rooms go....it also looks pretty normal for a home room....lots of bare sheetrock and bare ceilings with sheetrock.
So in your case, I'm sure the blankets make a noticeable difference....for vocals.
That said, understand that the use of carpet, packing blankets, towels, etc..etc...etc...is nothing new, and has been tried many times over the years, but for the *majority* of recording situations...the stuff just doesn't really work well.
In a pinch...yeah, it sure is going to be better than bare walls...no disputing that, and I've hung blankets across bare walls a couple of times in the past, for lack of any other option at the time.
Anyway....if you want portable, the gobos that C7sus has are certainly a major step up from blankets, towels...etc... albeit, not as easy to move/setup as the latter.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
Don't knock it. It has it's moments.
Muddy T-Bone
New member
I have not yet. But when I move my gear into it's permanent location, I will do that. Based on this uber cheap experience, I'm now a believer in extensive room treatment.
Muddy T-Bone
New member
OK, here is the B-4 and after the moving blanket gobo's.
When I listened to these pieces on my PC speakers, I could hear a small difference between blanket gobo vocals and untreated room. On an audio system is where you can really hear whats going on. So for those interested it may be worth listening on real speakers.
This track section has vocal recorded in the movers blanket gobo. 2 behind the mic at a 30 deg angle, and 1 behind me about 2 feet at a non perpendicular angle.
This track section of vocal recorded in my usual untreated room.
I think these two are more telling- The one below is the vocal solo'd and dry in the portable gobo.
The one below is dry vocal solo'd in the untreated room.
When I listened to these pieces on my PC speakers, I could hear a small difference between blanket gobo vocals and untreated room. On an audio system is where you can really hear whats going on. So for those interested it may be worth listening on real speakers.
This track section has vocal recorded in the movers blanket gobo. 2 behind the mic at a 30 deg angle, and 1 behind me about 2 feet at a non perpendicular angle.
This track section of vocal recorded in my usual untreated room.
I think these two are more telling- The one below is the vocal solo'd and dry in the portable gobo.
The one below is dry vocal solo'd in the untreated room.