advice for my closet

[mescalito]

hi guys... any advice/recommendation you guys could give me would be great.

i just moved into a new apartment, it's got a fairly big closet (well, narrow but deep, maybe 4'x6') i was hoping to record vocals and guitars in. i know, i know... recording in a closet is a terrible idea... but it's the only room where i won't have to contend with street noise/neighbors yelling at each other in portuguese/etc.

any suggestions as to how i can treat it to get the best sound out of this tiny space? please bear in mind, i'm not a professional engineer or musician. i just want to make the most of what i have at my disposal so my home noodlings sound as good as possible.

thanks!

 

[GIK Acoustics]

The biggest problem with recording in a small room is that you tend to have multiples of dimensions (just like yours, 4' x 6', and probably 8' tall - this is very bad modal spacing) and on top of that, due to the small dimensions, the modes end up causing huge problems at the low end of vocal recordings, around 100-300 Hz. So, the real problem is that you need immense amounts of treatment to get a relatively good sound, which you could easily do with much less treatment in a larger room. So if you needed to do it in a room like that, just be prepared to treat tons of wall space with very thick panels. I would suggest using panels with a minimum thickness of 4 to 6", and cover as much area as you can afford to. (Corners are helpful as well, of course).

 

[mjbphotos]

And record at 3AM so you don't get the neighbors' arguments in your recordings!