big solution or small solution?

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dobro

dobro

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I've noticed that when I sing loud, there's a bit of an unpleasant reverb on it due to the room.

Plaster walls, tile floor, wood ceiling, with a 1.5 m2 window up on one wall. Loads of clothes and books all around, and a big carpet, but still that reverb. Okay, two things come to mind, either a vocal booth like sjoko mentioned in the Recording Forum, or loads of soundproofing of the room itself, starting with that window and the uncarpeted sections of the floor. Please don't say both. :D
 
Okay, I've come back to take a look at this thread and I see 9 views and no replies. So you're mostly all sad bastards, so I'll help things out. I laid various carpets down on the remaining tile floor, and the problem seems greatly improved. I'm going to Ikea tomorrow to buy a wooden curtain rod to put over the window and I'll put curtains up too. I like that - any sound that makes it through the curtains and hits the glass will be reflected to what? Curtains again!
 
Maybe you could try building some gobo's. Something modest and foldable, not to expensive with some cheap materials and then some basic treatment on the outside. Somewhat tunable for reflections.
 
Yes Dobro - I did see it last night but had had tooo much wine to get around to answering it.

The reason you have an unpleasant reverb - (you wouldn't have complained if it was a nice reverb?) is that the reverb has a bad response. As i've said so many times here the aim is to bring that reverb down at all frequencies, not just the highs which curtains do.

If you are going to Ikea why not get a couple of sets of tall book shelves? But instead of putting books in them (Which would help BTW) put insulation (rockwool) in them and cover them with cloth for looks. This lifts the insulation offf the wall which lowers the frequency of absorption and will take out the low-mid boom which you call the unpleasant reverb.

Your guitar and vocals will sound a lot better for it :)

cheers
John

PS glad you liked my reply to stuey baby :D
 
dobro,

A perfect thread has 1 reply for every ten views, so don't feel bad if you don't get a reply in the first 9 views.
But feel bad if you don't get a reply in 50 views. :)

Have you removed all metal from the room. things like metal fireplaces or thin metal chairs have a nice, lush reverb sound that migt be good or not so good depending on what you are doing. In this case, they are not so good, so I suggest removing them or covering them up with some absorbent material(a jacket or so)

peace
 
Hey John, can you imagine the phase cancelleation too in this situation?

My first thought now though is, what about the room the monitoring is taking place in? Is that "bad reverb sound" truely being recorded, or is it a result of the monitors exciting the room the monitors are in, giving the false impression of it being recorded?

I would suspect that a little of both is happening.

Part of my "half of it productive" stuff I have been doing lately is firming up my "mix position" at the club to make it ready for mixing stuff from recordings too. I have two compilation CD's totaling 37 songs picked from 100 songs that I tracked live to mix in the next 4 weeks, so I need the mix position to be good! Neither client wants to spend more then 1 hour per song in mixing, so I cannot be guessing at what will translate or not because of a bad monitoring environment.

I can assure all of you that you will be making very bad decision about what sounds good if you are getting hard reflections from the wall behind you while you are monitoring. I couldn't believe the stuff I was hearing after I treated the wall behind me in my monitors. Obviously, I was "too dumb" to have made the decision to remove the window and fill that cavity with two layers of 3" rockwool to that low freq's could pass through it to another room and not make it back to me. John tipped me off! What a pay off though.

Thank god I am not "shooting blanks" any more. Most of the mixes I did before doing this treatment are exactly that, "blanks".

CyanJaguar, you should pay attention a bit more. John provided a very economical, and PROPER treatment for this problem. Careful inspection to what is right there in front of you is a very useful skill in recording. Usually, you have to really pay attention to get things right. (this is a big hint about another thread.....I wonder if you will figure it out.....)

Anyway....half productive post is over....

Ed
 
dobro said:
I'm going to Ikea tomorrow
Click to expand...

Thats an acronym and should be spelled IKEA.
Oh, and the emphasis is on the E. Most of you foreign people seems to think its call IIIkea. It isn't. It's call Ikeeaa.

:)
 
Regebro, you're such a doober. :) So, what's it an acronym for, then? You're going to have to translate... Thank you very much for your collective response, all. I had no idea curtains would cut down only on highs and do nothing for the lows. After reading the posts here, I think the problem I've got is bigger than I suspected. Maybe I'll buy some mattresses and nail 'em to the wall. Or futons - futons have more mass. Damn. I'm starting to get slightly eccentric about this. You ever see Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the guy builds a mud model of the mountain in his living room? I'm starting to feel like that guy...
 
I've always called it Ikeeeeea, I just thought it was a south pacific island. :)

With regard to what ed said about the rear wall reflections. Try this experiment.

Set up your puter or your VS something etc so that you have two identical mono tracks panned left and right on your speakers. The stereo image should be a mono track coming from the center or phantom speaker. (BTW if you haven't got that your speakers are out of phase)

Now apply a delay to the right track and steadily increase the delay. You will find that at around 18ms suddenly the ear says there are two signals one from the left and one from the right. With sound travelling at approx 1 foot a millisec that's 18 feet. Soooo if the speaker sound passes you and hits a wall 9 feet behind you and then reflects back at you it will come to you 18ms later and the ear will say it's from behind you.

Now that's Ok in a big room like sjokos, or Amirels. But most of you are in small rooms so the ear can't distinguish the rear reflections from the front and lumps them all into one blurred sound.

So if you are in a small room, deaden the wall behind you.

Futons would be great Dobro, especially if you hang them about a foot off the wall.

cheers
john
 
sonusman,

I don't get it. What is he supposed to do about a fireplace. We are all allowed to give suggestions, no?

Anyhow, do you mind telling me the thread you were hinting about. Its been so long I am sure that I have even forgotten the thread.
 
IKEA is a lame acronym for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. Ingvar Kamprad is the founder of IKEA and he grew up on the farm 'Elmtaryd' in the village 'Agunnaryd'.

Only in Sweden...
 
BTW - It was first spelled Ikéa and then IKÉA before the present spelling took over, which was unfortunate. If he had kept the the original spelling, we would have to suffer with all these mispronunciations.

Ehm, tired, going to bed.

G'nite
 
So your real name is o a and you grew up in l ?? :D

cheers
John
 
sonusman,

:D I think I know the thread that you were referring to
 
Can't you see a simple logical pattern John? My intitials are L O and I grew up on the farm L in the village A.

Dammit
 
Village idiots. Sheesh.

OLA was born "Osgood Zederkopf" and was raised in Louisiana. Thus... Ola.

That's in the USA, Ola. Which means you're not Swedish. That's alright, though. You can join Dobro for beer-drankin' chaw-spittin' class; you'll fit in just fine in no time a'tall.

Except for the dress. Leave the dress in Sweland. Trust me on this one.

:D
 
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