Recording In A Completely Dead Room

Recording... in a completely Dead room.

I will say that Recording Acoustic instruments in a completely dead (highly absorbent) room does not sound very good on a lot of instruments particularly Percussion and Percussive instruments without a lot of sustain.

When I first built my studio a went kind of nuts on the absorbing panels (LOL)
I was trying to record sound effects for a song and some percussion and the whip-crack wooden slap thing sounded like I was flicking the end of a guitar pick.
The bongos and congas were small and puny sounding as well...

I had to take about a quarter of the absorbing out of the booth just to make things sound remotely natural instead of feeling like I was recording in a vacuum.

My experience may be a one off... I don't know... But I ended up building 3 rooms, each being slightly larger than each other and made the absorbing adjustable so that I could make it vary with the amount of reflective surface.

Over time The 3 rooms have remained pretty much fixed as to what ever it is right now... I have no idea... it just works.
 
I will say that Recording Acoustic instruments in a completely dead (highly absorbent) room does not sound very good on a lot of instruments particularly Percussion and Percussive instruments without a lot of .


The sound of an instrument comes from the instrument itself and the space in which it is played. It's not just the instrument itself, and to play in a dead room means you only get to hear half of what the instrument can do. So yes . .. a tracking room needs to be a bit lively.
 
... and made the absorbing adjustable so that I could make it vary with the amount of reflective surface.

Unlike you with 3 rooms...I went with one large room for my new studio space...so I'm considering how to do some adjustable treatment, since with the one room I need to have it for multiple uses and situations.

I was hoping not to have to build all the traps myself, since I need around 30 2'x4' traps, but I don't see too much ready-made stuff that can be adjusted for absorption/reflectivity...so I may have to just DIY at least some of the traps.

My idea was to have traps that are similar to how some gobos are made...with one side absorptive, and the other reflective...and then I could hang the traps on the wall, and just flip them around to either side as needed...or the other option was to make hard, reflective panels that can be place over the front of an absorptive trap or removed.
I would think a 1/4" wood panel would be sufficient, without adding a lot of weight...and maybe that approach might work for ready-made traps, but they would need to have a hard frame so I could add some hooks/clips for the reflective panels. I have to think it out some more and look at which options would be the easiest to do...but I definitely want to have more control over the liveliness of my room, rather than just treat it one way and that's it.
 
I agree

yeah ,
I had well over 80 panels I made for my place.
Most were 2 ft by 7 foot with 2 inch thick to 4 inch thick compressed rockwool.
Hung a boatload from the ceiling, and made numerous corner bass traps from floor to ceiling that were about 14 inches deep at the greatest depth.
I hung the wall panels on 3/4 electrical conduit I ran the length of each wall and put hooks at the top of each panel where it held the top about 4 inches away from the wall and the bottoms touched the wall creating a varied air gap.

I can simply lift them off the conduit or squeeze them close.

I was initially going to make about 6 of them with paneled backs so I could build some light floor frames I could hang them on to use them as gobo's.
I never quite made the time for that...LOL that was over 15 years ago...LOL

I think your ideas are close to what I also had in mind.
 

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This is an interesting discussion and something that has been very close to my heart for more than 57yrs (yep I am a VERY old fart !!!!!!) when I designed and built my first studio --- only small but did some great recordings --- especially one that became very famous world wide.

Having worked in many studios of greatly differing sizes and quality over the years, one thing that has been proven to me is that it is not easy to build a studio that will cater "PERFECTLY" for every type of musical genre. A classical studio requires a reasonable reverb time whereas a rock studio requires a much tighter reverb time, and so on.

NOW, so that some will not pick me up on what I am about to say, let me emphasize that the three studios that I have owned/built have ALL been "professional" studios and NOT "home " studios where the best is not always possible and compromises often have to be made, but the principles are still valid.

After my first studio, I decided that I really needed a bigger studio and closer to the client base I was looking for (at that time the advertising industry and larger orchestras) so I built the studio with mid range RT-60 --- from memory I think that it was about 1.5sec, with acoustic absorbing baffle units that I could place around instruments if I wanted/needed a tighter reverb time.

But rather than an RT-60 time, I was more interested in having the minimum number of standing waves. After quite some researching I discovered that the best investigation into this situation had been undertaken by the BBC in London some years earlier and that their findings were generally accepted as being fairly accurate. What they discovered was that the best room size dimensions were 1:1.78:2.33 and for the room to then be acoustically treated to give the RT-60 required for the room's usage. This I did and had a great sounding and popular studio for the intended purpose.

A few years later my direction had changed (had opened a record label and was releasing mainly "rock" type music) and the current studio was simply not giving me the results that I wanted ---too alive even with baffling.

I started to think that the best recording space for a "rock" recording would be in the middle of a 1000 acre cow paddock (ignoring the crows, cows mooing, etc), because there would be no standing waves and no reverb/echo to contend with and any effects required could be post added and added exactly as required.

So, I thought that if I could build a studio that effectively had no walls I would achieve the ultimate "rock" studio, BUT how to go about this !!!!!

Firstly I had to find the correct building (I didn't particularly want to have to purchase property and build from scratch), thankfully I found a building in the center of the CBD that had been constructed more than 100yrs previously and was constructed of 2ft thick solid sandstone walls, a 1.5ft concrete floor and a solid concrete ceiling (not sure how thick) and no windows. In other words the room was soundproofed and amazingly very close to the required dimension ratio. With the building of a solid double brick wall at one end, I was able to get the required 1:1.78:2.33 ratio, with the room measuring (in round figures) 15x28x36ft.

Thankfully at the time I had a relative that worked as the PA to the biggest insulation manufacturing company in the country and through her I was able to get the company to design me a very dense standard type 3" fiberglass system that came in a roll 15ft long by 4ft wide with a chicken wire type mesh internally embedded/woven into it length wise through the middle (to hold it all together) and then covered on both sides with a glued on fabric (to stop fiberglass particles escaping).

To achieve the required "no wall" effect I was after, firstly I had glued to all of the walls and the ceiling a product that is now unfortunately no longer available --- 4" Type-B Building Bat (it was so dense that if you stood on a bat you would not compress it), Its sound absorption properties (not sound proofing but reverb killing) were amazing (can't recall the actual figures).

I then had bolted to the ceiling and about 1ft out from each of the walls, a 4"x3" timber batten, and then had each roll of the especially manufactured fiberglass, nailed to this batten so that the individual rolls hung so that the bottom of the roll was about 2" above the floor (which was carpeted in a fairly dense carpet with a double thickness underlay), with each drop being tied to the one next to it so as not to have any gap between the drops. I then had another 4"x3" batten secured to the ceiling about 6" in front of the hanging fiberglass and from this I hung theatre type heavy duty curtains that just touched the carpet flooring.

The only gap in all of this soundproofing was for a 5ft air gaped door entrance that had two center opening doors with these doors being fully sound insulated and sound absorbing type panels on the walls between the inner and outer doors and a 5ft x 2ft triple glass window into the Control Room --- each sheet of glass being a different thickness with the two outer sheets being at a slight angle and each sheet being mounted in a u-channel rubber section to minimize vibration leak through. The gap between the door frames and the windows frame and the solid wall that they were secured to, being packed with "filla foam" to reduce leak through.

When finished, the principle of operation was that (say) a bass guitar when played (with the speakers being about 2ft from the curtain and facing into the wall) would have the sound from the speakers hit the hanging wall (and if we consider that the sound was actually hundreds of single point sounds) each point source because of its sound pressure, would effectively cause the hanging wall to swing backwards (thus reducing its intensity) but also being broken up in to many smaller point sources as it passed through the 3" hanging fiberglass, so that as each sub point source came out of the back of the hanging fiberglass, it would have very low intensity.

This point source would then travel across the 1ft air space and enter the very dense Type-B Bat that was glued to the wall, where it would again be greatly reduced in intensity and also broken up into much smaller sub points, before hitting the solid stone wall and being reflected back towards the room, where all of the just detailed sound reductions would again occur as it traveled back towards the studio.

The end result being that there was measurably zero sound bounced back into the room and therefor virtually zero signal returning to the room and therefore zero reverberation time or standing waves.

After 8yrs of owning the studio I could not enter the studio and close the doors unless I had some form of noise going (possibly the almost silent air con system) because otherwise I could virtually hear the blood flowing through my body --- a really strange and off putting feeling/experience !!!

BUT, as a rock studio, it very soon achieved the reputation of being one of the best rock studios ever constructed and even today, about twenty years after the building was sold and demolished to build a multi storied office block, it still has the reputation as being one of the best if not the best rock studios by those who recorded their music there. Even many of the orchestral type session musicians that recorded there (we placed highly reflective baffles for them) say it was a great studio.

So, even in a home studio situation, if you can possibly build your studio with the correct dimension ratio and then decide exactly what type of music you want to record and acoustically treat it for that type of music, it is possible to have a studio that can obtain excellent results, provided of course that you also have very good recording equipment (whatever type that might be) and you have the correct ear for the type of music you are recording and the musicians who can play the music (!!!!!).

I hope all of the above gives you (singular and plural !!!) something to think about and work towards to get excellent results and most importantly many years of enjoyment and satisfaction within this great industry.

David
 
I had well over 80 panels I made for my place.

Damn, that's a lot of panels! :D

Hey, what's the clock on your wall at your mix station?
I have one with a similar type od readout, but it's smaller, and from a distance not as easy to read.
I would love to get one like you have. Where did you buy it?
 
So, even in a home studio situation, if you can possibly build your studio with the correct dimension ratio and then decide exactly what type of music you want to record and acoustically treat it for that type of music,

Interesting details of your studio builds.
In many ways, what you discovered with your "Rock" studio build with no reverberation, is pretty much what I've been suggesting to home studio guys asking what/how to deal with acoustic treatment.

Perfect dimensions aside, since most home studios are in preexisting spare bedrooms/basements, and often don't have an easy way to create perfect dimensions...so the best thing to do for many is to forget all the room "tuning" and measurements, because in the end they find out that moving traps around and trying out combinations...and just stuff the crap out of the room with traps to the point where it's pretty dead.

Also to not waste time taking a smallish basement or garage space, and trying to create both a control room and a "live" room, because you often end up with small crappy rooms, instead one that's got some potential, and also more comfort. There rarely anything nice about a 12'x 10' "live" room, and it will have to be made dead anyway.
 
All the room node calculators are great with square rooms - but so many studios have non-parallel walls by design - and when you're in them they do seem 'nicer' sounding somehow. Is there a calculator that can produce results from rooms with other than 90 degree wall corner angles?
 
Miroslav, I fully agree with your comments, I was basically stating that if the correct measurements "could" be used then a lot of the acoustic problems that many forum members talk/ask about could be solved and as an anecdote how I solved the "dead studio" situation for the type of recording that I was doing at the time.

The studio would definitely not have been the best/most ideal, if I was still recording large orchestras or bands/groups/whatever that really needed some varying degree of liveliness to both make the recording sound good and/or make the musicians feel comfortable. I basically stopped doing these large orchestra type recordings when I decided to move from my second studio.

In the studio that I described, at one end I had a grand piano and at the other there was a slightly raised drum platform. Because of the deadness of the room, if I was doing a recording with piano and drums only, the two players had to use headphones to hear each other correctly ---- definitely not the way you would record an orchestra !!!!!

David
 
My life changed when I went from dead rooms to live acoustically controlled rooms. If the room is right you touch the EQ a lot less when mixing.

Alan
 
How is your control room/mix room set up...dead or with some life?

My control room is a very neutral room, its not live or dead. There i a load of bass trapping tom tighten the low end, the floor is a hard surface and the ceiling has acoustic paneling. The side walls have acoustic paneling and the rear wall has a diffuser.It is important for the control room to translate the mix correctly or you are wasting your time and money on everything else.

I posted a couple of newer pics on the Show me your studio thread yesterday, does not show everything but you get the idea. let me see your studio!

Alan
 
I posted a couple of newer pics on the Show me your studio thread yesterday, does not show everything but you get the idea.

I saw the pics...looking real good, but I couldn't really tell how you had it treated.

My old/current studio was much smaller than the new one I'm finishing up...and I had it pretty neutral too, it had that "warm" sound, leaning more toward dead, but just enough life so that it didn't feel like the room was sucking up the sound before you could hear it.

The new space will be an interesting experiment in treatment...trying to keep it a bit more live for tracking, but I also need to mix there, so I have to come up with some kind of adjustable setup...probably just extra panels that I can easily/quickly add to the exposed hard surfaces the room have, to take out some of the life...
...but right now I don't know what the final treatment will be. I'm going to start off with some panels just based on what I think should get me in the right direction...and then fine-tune it from there. Oh...and I'm going to include diffusion as part of the equation, since it's a bigger room and I may be able to get away with less trapping if I get the diffusion right.

Tonight I brought in a bunch of space rugs, which I got for the room...to place at the different tracking locations (amps, drums, keys, etc)...and simply putting them down in the room, the sound was already changing in a nice way...so I think I have some options...at least I'm hoping the larger space will be easier to experiment with, instead of just jamming it full of trapping, like you might do with a small room.
 
My old studio where I mix was smallish and a bit live, but I knew it well, but the new space is bigger and deader at the mix position, and really nice by comparison. Not dead, but 'tamed'.
 
I saw the pics...looking real good, but I couldn't really tell how you had it treated.

The control room:
Has a completely dead wall around the window, 2” very dense polyester sound deadener. The corners each side on the window are bass traps, 3 x layers of the same polyester (6” worth, stood out from the corners and behind there is a tight roll of the same stuff pushed into the corner.

Side walls have the same polyester, 2”, not showing is the rear wall which has a homemade diffuser (same one used in my last 3 studios). The ceiling has 3 hanging panels (clouds) with a 1” layer of polyester in each. Dropped from the ceiling so it can absorb highs both top and bottom of panel. The floor is hard tiles, no rug.

The recording room has a standard hard fitting bass trap floor to ceiling in the corner control room end, 4” Polyester plus a roll in the corner behind. The same type of ceiling panels as the control room, 3 off. One side wall has a broad band absorber 6” of polyester, and 2 half round diffusers. The opposite wall is a hanging theatre black, doubled layer. This was going to be a temporary set up when I built the studio but works so well I left it. Behind the black is polyester 2” panels scattered on the wall. The wall is brick.

At the drum corner (where the double bass is sitting in the photos) the wall is a very low frequency bass trap, sealed layer of wall sheet a layer of sound deadener, a cavity and a back wall of 2” sound deadener. The cavity is also fill with soft lightweight polyester deadener filler. This really does control the real lows in the room. The foam panels high up on the walls is just to control the cymbal splash a little.

The floor is hard wood that has various rugs that get moved around.
Cheers
Alan
 
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