How dead to be

antispatula

antispatula

Active member
When I hear people talking about recording most things, I hear the best thing to do is to make the room as dead as possible. In the Home Recording for Dummies book, Jeff says that too dead is bad and that it's a good idea to liven things up a little bit. Soooooo yeah, you can proabibly see my confusion.

Does it change for each diff instrument? I'm really interested in vocals, guitar, piano, and drums.
 
Vocals you want dead, and guitar you want dead, like an isolation booth. or if your short on cash you an build an iso booth from ductboard and wrap it in a frabric of some type.

Unless its an acoustic Guitar. then you want to live mic in a room. Size can change for what your looking for. anywhere from the living room, to a bathroom. Mic placement plays a decent sized roll in all of this.

You can make a reall small room sound medium with distance micing.

Drums. you want alittle room sound, its mostly to ear. like ... LedZep for instance used a hall on When the Leeve Breaks.

And Piano if its digital Piano I would say Direct In, if its a grand piano... a large room with multiple mics would be nice.
 
It's all kind of up to personal taste. Some people prefer natural reverb, and some prefer to record as dead as possible and add reverb digitally later. For the beginner, I'd try to make it dead. But you may need to do a little room tuning to make sure the frequency response of your room is pretty even. Just clapping your hands isn't enough to know if the room is truely dead because the low freq's could still bounce around even if the high frequencies don't.

Or just ignore me... :)
 
d(-_-)b-Phones said:
Vocals you want dead, and guitar you want dead, like an isolation booth.
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:confused: Why? Not all iso booths are designed with being "dead" sounding in mind. I believe Elvis recorded the vocal to "Heartbreak Hotel" while standing in the hallway of Sun Studio to get that natural verb sound.

The point is, too dead = not adviseable and not always necessary unless that's the sound you're going for. :)

Experiment and have fun with it.
 
Led Zeppelin recorded the drums for "When the levee breaks" in a stairwell to get as much natural reverb as possible.

You're not always going for a dead sound.
 
For me I like dead, dead. The amount of really great reverbs out there one can simulate most any environment. Vocals & voiceovers gotta bone dry & dead. Like others said, guitars too. Drums on the other hand might be nice for some reflection. In any case you IMO you can't really go wrong with too dead but you can screw up a recording in a bad room. I built these gobos originally for voice-overs & vocals but have found a wonderful place for them in bass & guitar recording cabs. Might give some ideas anyway..... http://www.riffster.com/gobos/gobo.htm
 
The 'rule' is really very simple. If you have a room with a nice sounding reverb then by all means use it. If you have a room without a nice sounding reverb then go dead dead dead and add a nice room reverb digitally.

Considering that the average recording booth is about the size of a bathroom with parallel walls then allowing the rooms natural reverb will sound like you are recording in a bathroom.

Another thing to point out is that you can't turn small room reverb into big room reverb. You just get mush.
 
> If you have a room with a nice sounding reverb then by all means use it. If you have a room without a nice sounding reverb then go dead dead dead and add a nice room reverb digitally. <

You nailed it. Small room ambience is almost always bad ambience. When recording professionals talk about the value of a good room sound, they're not referring to a bedroom studio! :D

--Ethan
 
Innovations said:
The 'rule' is really very simple. If you have a room with a nice sounding reverb then by all means use it. If you have a room without a nice sounding reverb then go dead dead dead and add a nice room reverb digitally.

Considering that the average recording booth is about the size of a bathroom with parallel walls then allowing the rooms natural reverb will sound like you are recording in a bathroom.

Another thing to point out is that you can't turn small room reverb into big room reverb. You just get mush.
Click to expand...

my problem is I don't use anything digital.....Are there analog reverb units that sound good too? I haven't gone through so much trouble to get a good reel to reel working well just to use digital! :D
 
Of course. There are rack mountable reverb boxes you can run through. What do you think they used before the digital age? If you get something really fancy you might even get hall AND spring reverb in the same box. :) ohhhhhhhhhh
 
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