My crazy ass mic technique (room problems)

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Slackmaster2K

Slackmaster2K

Gone
So for the longest time I thought the V67 had a weird sort of crappy sound to it that was hard to describe. I use it primarily for vocals, and I typically sing facing out of a corner in a room with a slight cathedral ceiling. The room is a bedroom and has all the normal bedroom stuff, but the walls are the cheap thin sheetrock that they use anymore to throw up subdivisions. Anyways, I like to sing right into the mic (or from 6" away) so I didn't think that the room was making a huge impact.

Well last week I was going nuts trying to add some reverb to a vocal track. No matter what I did it just sounded worse when I put the verb on. It suddenly occured to me that there was a lot of crap in the vocal track that I didn't want there.

So just for shit's & giggles, I decided to try something a little peculiar. In our bathroom, we have this little "pantry" type area that's basically a bunch of shelves built into a nook in the corner. The shelves are pretty big, and mostly loaded up with towels and bedding. I was walking around the house yelling and listening for reflections and what not, and for some reason I decided to stick my head in one of the shelves that was about half filled with tightly packed towels. TOTALLY bone dry in there, almost creepy. So I grabbed the V67 and set it up so that it was set back about 4" into this shelf (which is about 2" deep) and did a few vocal tracks. Needless to say it was kind of awkward, singing into a shelf.

At any rate. The resulting tracks were soooooo much better. Bone dry & tight. I'm very excited. I was even able to add some reverb and it WORKED.

Now I know it's not ideal to work in an overly dry environment, but from my perspective it seems pretty necessary. I'm pretty sure that I don't know enough to effectively treat a room to make it sound good, and I'm definately not going to deaden an entire room.

So that's sort of my problem.... I don't feel like singing into a shelf, and there are no open closets available.

I kind of thought about maybe making "the shelf" idea mobile...like building some kind of box thing that.....well, you've already had your laughs for today...no need to continue :)

Any thoughts or comments?

Slackmaster 2000
 
Hey Slack,

About two and half years ago I built my own whisper room. Its small 31/2 x 4 feet insulated room inside a bedroom...not very big. Its framed with 2x4's, with the outside faced off by 1/4 inch plywood. The front wall has a door, with a window (double glass angled). I also have it wired so with two XLR plugs and a 1/4 female plug (mic & phones) and a double electrical outlet (light and what have you) I used medium grade insulation for sound proofing between the studs and then finished both sides and the ceiling with indoor/outdoor carpeting. It is actually 5 sections (4 walls and 1 top) and they are held together by 8 (2 on each corner) metal "L" backets that screw into the frame. The top fits in snuggly...and there you have it...my whisper room. Its about as dead as you can get get a space. You can fool around and add some bass reflects, or what have you to change the acoustics, or go with as is. Total cost of the project...around $300.00. I use it for Voice-Overs...it works for me!
 
iso box for your head

iso box for your head!!! yeah boy!!!! that is a great idea, you will appear to be such a tremendous jerk that noone will bother you when you are tracking. You could even post signs on the ouside of your "head-mounted shelf of towels"

Brilliant!
 
Makes sense to me, although you are probably corner loading like a Motherf****r.

I talk to guys all the time that ask me questions about far mic'ing, my usual stumper question to them is; "Well, does your room sound good?" If the answer is no/kinda/maybe...don't mic it. I don't care what so and so does in whatever studio. If your room stinks, don't mic it.

The same applies to vocal mic'ing. Without room treatment you're going to hear the room in all it's splendor or all it's shame.
 
Of course I've never been to your house (while you were home anyway...heh), but you must have a closet of some kind you can sing into right? All the clothes should give you roughly the same effect.

We used to do that all the time. I had a walk-in closet that was big enough to set up a mic stand. It was great. Now you've got me thinking...I might do that again here. I'd have to stretch some cables.

I've got to go check this out now.

By the way Slack, what is an V67? I've been looking around my catalogs to find out but nothing is showing up.

One more thing...it appears that this is my last post as a "Force of Nature". 999 posts and one to go!
 
Your room problem is because of a couple of things. Ideally, you never want to have two parallel walls in a mic room. Delays in reflections off of the walls will add a disgusting effect to your vocal. Also, windows (if you've built one between the mic room and some sort of control room) should never use two sheets of glass of the same thinckness, and one sheet should be set in at an angle to the other sheet (space the sheets of glass as far apart as you can). Otherwise, you'll get sympathetic resonance between the glass.

If you are using a project studio, if you don't choose to treat a wall with absorbant material, then build a movable wall (called a gobo) that is covered on one side with absorbant material. (Office room deviders work good, but you can cheaply build one).

The effect is that you can 1) change the shape of your room and 2) get rid of some of those nasty room reflections.

Another tip I was given by a studio guru (but I haven't tried it myself) is to get ahold of some cheap mahogany bi-fold closet doors and stand them up to create a mini hut with three walls. Try singing into it. (If someone cares to try this trick out, let me know how it works).

Cheers
 
lavoz: what you did sounds very interesting... might be a nice shop project... can you eleborate a bit on what you put inside to 'deaden' it?

thank you
 
I've often thought about building a small "room", but I'm just not sure there's enough free space to do it. Building a box that fits over my head, now there's an idea :) I could even install a skylight maybe!

CMiller, no there really aren't any open closets....you know how in cartoons the messy dad's closet is always packed totally full and when he opens the door it all falls out on him? That's the situation. Hehe. Altough I guess I could sing INTO the closet, but the nearest closet has a....well I won't go into detail.

The V67 is of course the Marshall MXLV67 LD Condensor. A decent mic for the price.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Lucid,

In between the studding I used insulation (your basic R-11), but there are other materials that could be used too. I'm not sure in your location you can get hold of regular fiberglass insulation. Both inner and outer walls have your standard indoor/outdoor carpeting. Go to whisperroom.com, there you can look at several different sizes and designs. I decided to save money and build my own.

-I did install a a widow (using broadcast specs) that is small (12x12) in the door, allowing me to monitor levels...this has no effect on the sound what-so-ever!

Take a look and let me know what you think!

Regards
 
thank you for the reply! i would really like to do this. would guitar amps sound better recorded in a room like yours?
 
lavoz, you wouldn't happen to have any technicals drawings of the room you made would you?

if i cannot find the foam you used, what else can be used to 'almost' the same effect?

what do you mean you put a window in to monitor levels?
 
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