Best Basic Studio Upgrade

  • Thread starter Thread starter ECS
  • Start date Start date
E

ECS

New member
im looking to create a very basic room downstairs with my computer. I need to have a few changes done. What is the best thing generally to achieve a crisp sound?
 
Calculate your room modes and treat the problem frequencies with absorbtion and/or resonators. Add diffusion to taste. ;)

If your room is rectangular set up your monitor speakers on the short wall and don't place them at positions where the woofers are at points where the height and width are divisable by 2, 3 or 4. It's also a good idea to keep them away from the front wall as far as practical. You should sit directly between the speakers at the same distance the speakers are from each other: an equilateral triangle. have an assistant take a mirror and move it along the walls & ceiling. Anyplace where you can see your speakers from the mix position needs to have some type of absorbtion or diffusion to eliminate early reflections that will cause comb-filtering and smearing of the stereo image.

Welcome to the wonderful world of room tweaking!:D
 
M.Brane said:
and don't place them at positions where the woofers are at points where the height and width are divisable by 2, 3 or 4.

Maybe it's too early in the morning for me, but could you please elaborate?

thanx
 
Those are the positions where cancellation or reinforcement are most likely to be strongest. Of course the usual saying apllies: it depends :D on what is in your room and what it's made of. Just a rule-of-thumb. All final tweaking should be done with measurments and the final judge: your ears.;)
 
Well, maybe I should elaborate on what needs elaboration...


What units of measurement are you speaking of? Feet? Inches? Meters?


What height are we measuring? Distance from the floor? Distance from the top of the console?


What width are we measuring? Distance from one monitor to the other?


Perhaps that will make your post more understandable. :D
 
what i really meant was, what is the best thing to add to make my guitar sound great
 
Doug Quance said:
What units of measurement are you speaking of? Feet? Inches? Meters?

Whatever is the best for you. I use inches myself. Your going to come up with the same locations regardless of your unit of measure.;)


What height are we measuring? Distance from the floor? Distance from the top of the console?

Floor to ceiling.


What width are we measuring? Distance from one monitor to the other?

Side wall to side wall.

Example:

My ceiling is 106" so 52" would be half, 35.3 would be thirds, 26.5 quarters.

My room width is 138" so 69 is half, 46 thirds & 34.5 quarters.

Hope that clears it up.:)

Posted by ECS
what i really meant was, what is the best thing to add to make my guitar sound great

That's a pretty general question. What kind of sound are you going for?
 
well i am basically wanting to achieve a crunch sound (combination of Metallica and Ozzy) but only for guitar, its for ideas and demos of guitar riffs.
 
The classic metal crunch tone is usually done with a Shure 57 up close on a 412 cab. I like to mic right at the edge of the cone with the mic almost touching the cloth. The more you move the mic toward the center of the speaker the brighter your tone will get. You can also run a second mic farther back (usually a condensor) to capture more of the room & cab sound. I've also been experimenting with some small diaphram omni condensors (Behringer ECM8000's) and like the tones I'm getting for solos.

You'll have to experiment with mic placement and amp tones. A tone that sounds good live may not work in the context of a recording. If you use lots of distortion on your guitar sound try backing the gain down and doing multiple tracks instead of trying to get a huge tone on a single track. Also watch out for too much low-end clashing with the bass. If your tones end up muddy in the mix try using a high-pass filter to remove frequencies below 100-150HZ.
 
i have very basic equipment guys, nothing special, i just wanna record into my computer, directly from the guitar. However the sound is still not as clear as it could be

im getting a faint buzzing when i play directly from my guitar into my computer. I wanna just get a tone that is studio quality without using amps or mics
 
im getting a faint buzzing when i play directly from my guitar into my computer.

Try turning off your computer monitor while your recording.

I wanna just get a tone that is studio quality without using amps or mics

Perhaps you should try some of those amp simulators like the Pod, etc. Some people really like those for recording direct.
 
thanks for the suggestions, oh yea, one more thing, are there any good $50-$150 pedals that provide amazing sounding distortion for Metal/Hard Rock and that can quickly go into a clean setting?
 
Maybe you should look into Line6's Guitar Port for $169. it was designed for computer recording.
The buzz you were talking about can be resulted from the built-in preamp in your soundcard. Look in the back of your soundcard, and see if you have an option of "line in" opposed to "mic in" If you got line in, that's where you wanna plug your guitar directly into. Then just add effects in your software.

Big ups to M. Brane for th epatience and helpful information :)

AL
 
Back
Top