Setting up a room MIC?

D

DrJones

New member
OK? Not as good room accustics as I wanted when I built my project studio at my new house. Small live room (10.5x12.5)ft. Carpeted, wood floor is being tossed around, but I am liking how the drums sound. A teeter-totter on that issue. The floor is carpeted wood floating over Basement concreate(floating floor).
Mixes are coming out real nice but I hear things. Guitars are dry ( kind of like a Line 6 pod).
Has anyone recorded a Room Mic in a small room? If you positioned it to focus guitars would it give that "roomy" effect? Does that MUD the mix? Any suggestions ? or is having a room mic just a waste of time? Just want to see some responses before I try. Thanks!! :D
 
we usually use a room mic to add ambience to a track in combination with a close mic. Distances effect the sound, as well as phase, and the room is the key to ambience miking. If your room sounds like shit, so will your track. If you put the mic in the corner of the room you could end up with mud.
 
brendandwyer said:
we usually use a room mic to add ambience to a track in combination with a close mic. Distances effect the sound, as well as phase, and the room is the key to ambience miking. If your room sounds like shit, so will your track. If you put the mic in the corner of the room you could end up with mud.
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Kind of what I figured, I have a hard time getting musicans to retrack on good takes. Everything is close mic. Retracked guitars in a different room would be optimal but most of the time musicians are on a budget and say "That sounds good enough". They like the idea of the "live Room"

I've tried isolated guitars, with headphones and 95% of the time they cant hear themselves and get fustrated. I know this is not true because I can do it. If they dont have the amp in front of them they flake out.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks
 
or another idea might be to use the reverb on the amp. Try a room mic, though.
 
well in the same way that gear can be of better qualitity, and the engineer is limited by his experience, a guitarist has to learn how to record. It's a different ballgame than playing live or practicing. And you may wish to educate guitarists that a pretty standard way to beef up rythm guitar tracks is to manually play them again, overdubbing over the original take. So they should try as hard as they can, and practice often, with listening to a cue mix and playing over it.
 
FALKEN said:
or another idea might be to use the reverb on the amp. Try a room mic, though.
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Thanks Falken. Your an analog guy. In your experience, as far as reverb, outboard processor. What do you use? When I mix In The Box (witch I am currently changing to mix analog) I dont like PTLE reverbs. In the past I have used Waves and other reverbs and dont care foy them either. Budget for gear approx. $600. Is that really enough? I talk to other engineers (professional- Really!) and their gear cost about $1500-$3000 just for reverb. I know you get what you pay for but I dont have that amount of volume of bands to purchase Top-of-the-line High end gear. Is there somthing nice out there for a budget or do I really need to bite the bullet. I think I answered my own question, but I'de like to hear what you have to say. Anyone else feel free to reply with there experence too.

Thanks!
 
We don't use outboard digital reverb because we can't afford it. We keep our studio to all hardware solutions. Mackie 8 buss, tascam 1/2" tape, mackie sdr.

We built a spring reverb unit, and for all other reverb, we either use room ambience miking, reamping, or doubling. Every time i think, you know maybe i'll throw the Alesis wedge on here, i end up wanting to throw it out the window. Then again, we do demos in our studio and go to pro studios to actually track finished products. But anyway. If i had the money, it'd probably be that kurzweil 8 channel unit. but we gotta pay for studio time still.... :)
 
I really don't know that much about outboard reverbs. I use a crappy spring reverb. why haven't you tried a room mic yet? ...if you are short on tracks you can always submix it before it goes to tape.
 
FALKEN said:
I really don't know that much about outboard reverbs. I use a crappy spring reverb. why haven't you tried a room mic yet? ...if you are short on tracks you can always submix it before it goes to tape.
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I'm going to try it on my next project. I have plenty of tracks(31: 15 analog 1 STMPE 16 PTLE on a 32 channel Tascam 2600mkII). As far as the room mic is concerned This room is still new to me and was supposed to be designed for a contolled live room. Personally I am haveing issues with guitars. Tring to avoid putting the amp in the laundry room(which has a better sound) but as stated before most of the musicians I have worked with Flake out over the whole idea of not having their amp in front of them or can't hear themselves.

Thank you for your help and Thank you Brendandwyer for the info! :cool:
 
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