Home Recording NIGHTMARE

G

Good Friend

New member
I was hoping someone could help me with this BS setup im running. Its driving me crazy because all i want to do is play but i spend all my time altely screwing with problems involving the equipment.

This is my setup: small bedroom, 8 foot ceiling, carpeted, ive got two mattresses against the walls and corners, a large couch, and thick blankets on the walls. I have a spinet style piano in there with an old reed based wurlitzer organ and a Clavioline. There is also a small drumset which i tuned high and muted. I have a 70s Fender Super Reverb Amplifier and a 70s Fender Mustang. For bass i am using a Mustang as well. A have an old Gibson acoustic guitar from the 70s, a small bell kit, and a crappy sitar.

For recording i have only three mics. I used to have a couple more but i sold my condensers because i didnt like how they sounded. So now i have just a few dynamics and a ribbon (shure 57, shure 545, and a Shiny Box ribbon).

I record using a few tube preamps from a roberts reel to reel (for drums), and one of the older UK made Joe Meek compressors. I use a Tascam M30 mixer and a Tascam 38 reel to reel. I use a Tapco double channel spring reverb from the 70s and a Roland Space Echo. And thats about it.

Now to my PROBLEMS:

1. Even though my room is somewhat deadened (amateurly I admit) nothing sounds like it should over the mics. Even with flat EQ everything has huge amounts of midrange and bass that even full cuts dont really fix. No matter how much low cut i use there is always a ton of bass in my signal. I move the mics and try everything but its just excessively bassy and midrangey no matter what i do. It IS NOT my ability to tune drums or set amplifier EQ that is causing it in any way. My hi hats sound totally smooth and crisp until i put the headphones on, then it sounds like im hitting a rusty car hood with a screwdriver.

2. I hear a ton of electrical noise and hiss. So much so that i have to fully cut treble on almost everything and STILL there is weird electrical noise. I can hear EVERY SINGLE CLICK from anything being turned on in my house and probably my neighbors house as well. If i touch my mic stand, even on a non powered mic i hear a large reduction in the noise level like some kind of grounding problem exists somewhere. All my cables are decent and all my equipment is in good shape and well taken care of. Even the Roberts has had a 3 prong cord installed and is SILENT if its used at work or at a friends house.

So i guess my questions are, 1, is the room causing everything to sound horrible? I know that the room factors in alot but it doesnt seem like that bad of a room. Instruments sound good in it to normal ears and i have some stuff up to keep the walls from being hard and parallel to each other. Im not sure how much more i could do seeing as it is just a home recording setup. Is MAJOR eqing just part of home recording and thats all there is to it? I dont want to, but it seems like the only way to get an at least useable sound.

And 2, im guessing that i have some electrical problems beyond the typical. So what should i do? I looked into power conditioners and i cant tell if its what i need. It seems like BS but then again i have to do something because i just want to record a normal sound and not have all this damage control and equipment tinkering going on. I am a musician more than a tinkerer and i dont feel like spending forever just to get an instrument that sounds fantastic in person to sound barely useable over the mic.

Are these normal problems? Should i just set my room on fire and go live in the mountains and beat on a log like an ape?

I swear that the instruments themselves are tuned and sound great just listening to them (before they are miced). I dont know why at my very best if i spend all day i can just barely get one useable sound that still has alot of tonal compromise going on just to make it sound passable. Ive been playing music for about 15 years, and im not a complete idiot. But i feel like trying to get a recording to sound decent is an impossibility for me. I dont need it to sound like some lame ass creed album or anything, where every instrument is miced from every angle and its all 4000 dollar preamps and mics, but i at least need the fucking snare to sound like a snare for christs sake.

Thanks for any help.
 
"Now to my PROBLEMS:

1. Even though my room is somewhat deadened (amateurly I admit) nothing sounds like it should over the mics. Even with flat EQ everything has huge amounts of midrange and bass that even full cuts dont really fix. No matter how much low cut i use there is always a ton of bass in my signal. I move the mics and try everything but its just excessively bassy and midrangey no matter what i do. It IS NOT my ability to tune drums or set amplifier EQ that is causing it in any way. My hi hats sound totally smooth and crisp until i put the headphones on, then it sounds like im hitting a rusty car hood with a screwdriver."
'

-What your doing is killing the higher frequency reflections, and not the low end/middle ones. Though the matresses should help, with such powerful instruments id go with bass traps. And remember...alittle reflection is usually good. Its just when recording vox that most people go dead.

Micing makes a big difference... I find my self getting lazy with trying different things, but ounce it sounds good (this is important) live, to your ears, then you need to deffidently expeariment w/ mic placement. do a google for that, or search here.

2. I hear a ton of electrical noise and hiss. So much so that i have to fully cut treble on almost everything and STILL there is weird electrical noise. I can hear EVERY SINGLE CLICK from anything being turned on in my house and probably my neighbors house as well. If i touch my mic stand, even on a non powered mic i hear a large reduction in the noise level like some kind of grounding problem exists somewhere. All my cables are decent and all my equipment is in good shape and well taken care of. Even the Roberts has had a 3 prong cord installed and is SILENT if its used at work or at a friends house.


-always use a shock mount!
-place a patch of carpet or two (avalible at lowes/home depot) under the stand.
-turn off air conditioners
-make sure your drivers are working well with your equiptment, i know that that can screw things up majorly



So i guess my questions are, 1, is the room causing everything to sound horrible? I know that the room factors in alot but it doesnt seem like that bad of a room. Instruments sound good in it to normal ears and i have some stuff up to keep the walls from being hard and parallel to each other. Im not sure how much more i could do seeing as it is just a home recording setup.

And 2, im guessing that i have some electrical problems beyond the typical. So what should i do? I looked into power conditioners and i cant tell if its what i need. It seems like BS but then again i have to do something because i just want to record a normal sound and not have all this damage control and equipment tinkering going on. I am a musician more than a tinkerer and i dont feel like spending forever just to get an instrument that sounds fantastic in person to sound barely useable over the mic.

Are these normal problems? Should i just set my room on fire and go live in the mountains and beat on a log like an ape?

I swear that the instruments themselves are tuned and sound great just listening to them (before they are miced). I dont know why at my very best if i spend all day i can just barely get one useable sound that still has alot of tonal compromise going on just to make it sound passable. Ive been playing music for about 15 years, and im not a complete idiot. But i feel like trying to get a recording to sound decent is an impossibility for me. I dont need it to sound like some lame ass creed album or anything, where every instrument is miced from every angle and its all 4000 dollar preamps and mics, but i at least need the fucking snare to sound like a snare for christs sake.

-dont stress, home recording takes some work, but it isnt all that bad at all. Make sure you like the way your room sounds. Check your drivers, turn lights and fans off too. Dont give up, and relax. Some of the best recordings ever made have that little humm in them, new or old.
 
Good Friend said:
So i guess my questions are, 1, is the room causing everything to sound horrible? I know that the room factors in alot but it doesnt seem like that bad of a room.
Click to expand...
From your description I'd say that, yeah, your room and your treatment of it have combined to vex you.

First, it sounds as though your room is TOO dead. In small rooms, high frequencies are nowhere near the problem that low frequencies are. All those mattresses and blankets, combined with the carpeted floor have killed your high end without having any real effect on the bass.

Some homemade bass traps in the corners where your flat surfaces meet combined with some diffusion and absorption on the flat surfaces only where first reflections from your monitors would bounce would probably take you a long way in evening up your room acoustics.

Also, you don't mention your monitor placemet, which is very important as well. Keep your mixing/playback monitors - and your recording desk too - out of the corners of the room and try to set up symmetrically within the room.


Good Friend said:
And 2, im guessing that i have some electrical problems beyond the typical. So what should i do? I looked into power conditioners and i cant tell if its what i need.
Click to expand...
Power conditioners sure couldn't hurt, good power conditioning is always a good idea for several reasons. But they will probably not alone solve your noise problem.

It sounds as if you do indeed have 3-pronged sockets in that room, but you might want to check and make sure that the circuit is truely grounded. Remove the plastic faceplates from your wall sockets and look at the socket package itself. One one of the sides of the socket assembly is a grounding screw. It's basically just a terminal screw on the side that has no apparent purpose :). If none of your sockets on that circuit have an actual copper ground wire connected from that screw to the metal junction box or some other ground, your 3rd ground prongs on your equipment are not actually doing much of anything useful for you (like grounding out noise, for example.)

Connect at least one of those ground screws per circuit to the junction box via a decent-gauge solid copper wire. Check your circuit box in the house to make sure that the entire room is on one circuit. If you have more than one circuit in that room, then connect one ground in one socket on each circuit.

Good Friend said:
Are these normal problems? Should i just set my room on fire and go live in the mountains and beat on a log like an ape?
Click to expand...
Hahaha, yeah, you're not the first one to have such problems and will not be the last. They are common problems to those starting out, but they are all quite solvable. Take care of them and save your trip to the mountains for a nice relaxing vacation instead.

HTH,

G.
 
As far as your non-electrical problems are concerned:
In order to absorb real low end you need material at least ten inches thick. The mattresses will almost do it but they will take too much high end with it. Get rid of them and blankets. Keep the couch.

What you really need are condenser mics. Dynamics are good for very loud sources up close and live applications. Condencers typically have a better high end and work better in a studio situation.

Good luck!
 
it sounds like

a) you have electrical problems, and

b) your tape machine might need to be biased.

you can check for (a) with one of those yellow things they sell at home depot. its like an outlet checker thingie. as far as the tape machine, do you have a test tape, manual, voltmeter, etc?
 
stuff

I dont have any calibration equipment for my mixer or my recorder. The sounds i am hearing that bother me are coming from just the mics and mixer before i record anything. Playback from my recorder sounds practically identical to what went in. Im not rejecting the idea of calibration, its just that playback doesnt sound any different to me. Smoother on drums and bass actually.

The reason why i sold my condensers was because they picked up every tiny detail of sounds. Including the ugly room. And ANY sound from outside. And my favorite recordings you really dont hear that much detail. Im not really into recordings where the instruments sound ultra detailed. I dig like "Face to Face" era Kinks and Joe Meek circa 1963 style production. I feel that the Kinks started getting alot more detail and high end sounding production around "Something Else" and "Village Green", but i prefer the sound of "Face to Face". Grittier, more loose, more midrangey sounding. The voice sounds like a transistor radio, with absolutely NO low end. I dig that sound but its hard for me to get with all this extra bass. Now i know that they used condensers on things on both Kinks and Joe Meeks production, but the sound you hear on the record isnt anything like what comes over the mic when you yourself are trying to record something. So I started to prefer the sound of the dynamics. I am thinking about buying one of those SP t3 tube mics when the new ones come out though, give condensers a try again.

What is a good method for reducing lows and mids in a room like mine (low ceiling, carpet)?
 
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