For those w/out a control room.

  • Thread starter Thread starter JesusFreak
  • Start date Start date
My studio setup nightmare....

Lol, if yo saw my setup, you would run screaming like a school girl... But this doesnt stop me from making tracks. Do they compare to a control room? Hell no, but my money tree was set on fire, I grabbed as much as I could and did well. Some day Ill set my studio up right, in the mean time I have to deal with what I have and I do well with it. heh, If I just sent you mp3s of my some of my vocal tracks, you can hear my kids screaming in the background about some PS2 game! Who knows, maybe this adds charactor hahaha. I dont kid myself into thinking its "pro" but I try my best to mix and master as if it is. If you can try to have a corner in your room with maybe some foam as a little damper or blankets and have the singer face that way. I have to rearrrange my room soon as I have acquired new equipment and need to try to get things set up as realistic a possible. The music im doing doesnt call for alot of vocals or pukestick tracks ATM, so Im not to worried about it. Its not like Im working on someone elses stuff.
 
My vocal booth is the side porch. The singer hates it out there because it's freakin' freezing! :) He can't wait until I get a snake and he can record his scratch vocals in the basement instead. But for now I have to put him somewhere that won't pick up on the drum mics, yet is only 30 feet away from the kit, so porch it is....

As far as monitoring for mic positions,, record 30 seconds and play back. Hasn't failed me yet.
 
The horror...

When I first started recording I had the whole band in a small room I built in my basement with the ‘control’ room on the other side of wall. I couldn’t separate the live sound from the monitors. I’m sure I messed up my ears during those years. I was really flying by the seat of my pants and trusted my ears as signal was going to tape. Sometimes it worked and other times it didn’t. Now after years of isolation between the performers and myself I’d feel confidant going back to open space. It was a great way to learn what was happening in the room and what was going on tape. I’ve used headphones to try and hear a mix while the main tracks are being thrown down but I felt more in the room than I did hearing from tape and found myself saying, “what happened to all the punch?”

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that bass doesn’t have to be turned up extremely loud with sub lows engulfing the whole room. That sort of low end isn’t going to tape it’s just saturating the room. Even now with isolation I’ll tell the performers to set their levels at a minimum level but with the tone they want. If they need it loud so be it but I’ve found the tone/aggression of a loudly recorded source can sound the same at a quieter level. Drums are the big exception. The heavier the hits the better the tone is.

It’s really a balancing act when you don’t have a control room. I found I needed know my gear inside and out while ignoring resonance bombarding my body.
 
Studio

Hi all, sounds like alot of are in the same boat. I have two rooms in my basement, one I use for a control room\instrument room the other room is for my drum room.
 
Well, J.C. Freak, we're all in the same boat. Check the studio pics off my web page, www.bardwire.com. I'm fortunate to have a room that sounds pretty good, even if it is ugly. We built the vocal booth using sleeping bags and Auralex foam, packed the ceiling with fiberglass insulation, and covered it in foam. This is enough to attenuate the transformer hum from the pres, and I went with a Roland console to eliminate computer fan noise.
Isoraxx , though pricey, is very helpful, and I'll get one eventually. This is basically a soundproofed rack for pres, power conditioners, and other noisy rack stuff. Everything is being tracked one at a time, so I don't have to try to isolate a singer from a drummer, etc. Where possible, I'm tracking direct. The biggest surprise has been how good my Taylor with the Fishman Prefix Plus sounds when jacked into a Joemeek twinQ. It has stereo output for independant signal processing, so I send the onboard mic to one channel, and the pickup to the other. Using mostly the mic with a little pickup added, I'll be damned if it doesn't sound pretty much like a mic'd guitar, with almost no bleed.-Richie
 
Home basement Project/Recording Studios

VERY nice pics of your Studio Richie! Looks very cool! I'm still in getting my rooms ready for the hardware but once i have my equipment in place I'll take some pictures too. I think it helps all of us to see other peoples ideas and how he or she has set things up in.

Dave
 
Thanks for your kind words, 007. We're now set up more for working, so the two racks are now stacked on my right to make more table space, and shorten the patch cables. Doing a lot of work DI simplifies my life, with less concerns about bleed, ambient noise, etc. It really is amazing when I've spent 6 or 8 hours in the studio and I walk outside to discover driving rain with near gale-force winds, and I had no idea. The only issue, really is my wife walking on the untreated section of the ceiling, but she's quite cooperative when I'm tracking with condensers.
It's absolutly wonderful to be able to sit in the control station with the Taylor in my lap, with all the knobs and level indicators in front of me to do minor tweaking. Unfortunately, the hum from my pres and power conditioners don't make this possible with vocals.
Well, in the end Jesus Freak, the answers to your problems are obvious, so I'm sorry if I'm insulting your intelligence, but here it is:
1. Just learn to be quiet, even the smallest things you never thought about, such as- lose the watch and the pocket change.

2. Learn what makes noise, and turn it off, move it away, get rid of it, or pack it in fiberglass insulation anfd high density foam.

3. Have no flat hard surfaces of any consequence.

4. Build an extra insulated space to use condensers, and make it big enough to fit a set of drums.-Richie
 
Wow sounds like you've done an excellent job sound proofing your room! I purchased 2 inch pyramid auralex foam and put it up in my control room walls. For the ceiling I put in fiber glass insulation, then poly, then 1/2 inch PDF board, then finishing tile. So my ceiling is fairly decent and the walls have the auralex so all in in all it's not so bad. I bought a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood, glued a same size sheet of albrite onto it, attached fold out legs, and glued foam rests alaong the edge to wrist rests. VERY simple I know, but $$ isn't always there. As for noise, I plan on maiking a check list to follow before any recording of acoustic, voice or drums are done. ie turn off air conditioner, or furnace, and computer etc. I'm still concerned with recording vocals, I was originally planning on recording vocals in the control room but from what I have been reading I'm begining to lean towards lining one of my closets with auralex foam, what do think?
 
Well basically, 007, I think you're on the right track, but I'm a hack, with no real understanding of acoustics, and to make matters worse, I'm moderately hearing impaired, so I have to depend on people with better ears than mine to double check my work.
One thing I've learned, though. You need to have a place to work that's as dead as possible, no reflections. But you also need a place that's not dead, that is, instead, a good sounding room. You need to use that good sounding room when you can, and the dead space when you can't.
I was lucky to have a good room to begin with, as they go. Unfortunately, it's not a big airy space with high ceilings, but I'm not tracking AC/DC, either. To some extent, I chose the sound to fit the room., because I didn't have the luxury of choosing the room to fit the sound. I looked at the room and said," Garage band with a clue", and conditioned the room to use its sound, rather than to kill it. The vocal booth I built to kill it. Just don't ask me where I'm going to put the Wurlitzer console. I haven't figured that out, yet.-Richie
 
Studio

Well sounds like we both have the same basic setup, or will have. My control room has about 60% wall coverage, and I made sure all the wall corners that meet the ceiling have foam, so there's no deflections off the corners. I'll take some pictures of what I have so far and put a link to them tomorrow for you and others to see. All I ask is don't laugh!! I'm NEW at this and I'm doing the best I can.
When I went to you web site I read you have been waiting two decades to get your project/recording studio going and your looking at 2003-2004 to cut your CD. I am in EXACTLY the same boat, been waiting ALONG time for this in my life. I guess guys like us are lucky our wives allow us to spend the money we do!!! But recording my first CD has always been one of my goals in life and I don't want to look back when I'm 70 years old wishing I had done it. Anyway, off topic, but it's good to know there are other people out there sharing and living the dream of his or her own recording studio.

Dave
007
 
Richie, 007 et all,

I had totally forgotten about this thread. I'm glad this is still being talked about because I finally finished my studio and at in the middle of trying to figure everything out.

So much more work than I had origionally figured on. Keep the advice rolling in guys. It really is helping.

Happy recording and God Bless!
 
Just one thing about a dead control room. Nobody listens to music in a totally dead environment with no reflections, so mixing in such an environment doesn't make much sense (to me at least) if you are trying to make mixes that translate well. If you work in a totally dead environment, you'll have a tendency to add too much reverb and delay to compensate. What you DO want to do in your mix room is kill any early reflections which can dramatically shift the stereo field and create comb filtering effects. The easiest way to do this is to sit at your mix position and have a friend move around the walls and ceiling with a mirror. Any place you can see your monitors in the mirror, thats a spot where an early reflection will come from. Put a nice chunk of 2" foam in all those spots. If the back wall is very close (less than 15 feet or so) try using some broadband absorbers and/or diffusors back there to minimize those reflections. If you can, try moving your speakers out from the front wall as much as possible to avoid bass build up problems (or soffit mount them - although there is some controversy around this). At least put some foam in the corners behind the speakers.
 
ebeam,

Thanks for the reply. So far, I don't really have enough money to finish treating the room. Which, in my circumstance, isn't that big of a deal because we are still just in the practice real hard phase before serious recording starts. Hopefully, when we get to that point, I will have the money to take your suggestions. Thanks again.

God Bless!
 
It might just be my browser, but I can't get to that link either.

God Bless!
 
Link

Hmm works for me, I've cleared my cache, maybe try that and then try again. I' use netscape 7.0, I'll try with with an older version of netscape.


007
 
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