recording in a sphere

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garth04

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This is a somewhat pointless question but out of curiousity what would recording in a perfect sphere be like?

I would imagine it would be either really nice or really terrible. Wouldn't the sounds get reflected in all various directions?
 
Terrible.

Next time you get in a building with a circular soffit, stand in the center and clap your hands.

Now imagine that magnified..............

The "most natural" sound is gonna be where there are no walls:

OUTDOORS!
 
why don't people record outdoors?? not a bad idea. i guess it would be tough for you city folk to do so but i could go in my backyard and it would be quiet. I may have to "get rid" of a few crows.... haha just kidding
 
Funny you mention it, I've been debating whether to do it outside in my patio. I was thinking about doing that but then we have birds in the patio and they would get into all the tracks and crap on my equipment and me. They also get really noisy when I play guitar. I think they get excited. Then when I dub more instruments even more things would get in making a symphony of background noises.

Lawnmowers, chainsaws, starting up at random times would probably not be very nice background noises. You're also limited to warm weather. I can't play well when my fingers get cold.

There's tradeoffs to indoors and outdoors.

I'm still thinking about it though. When it gets warm I'm going to experiment. It would be great for a casual recording.
 
Has anyone recorded in an anechoic chamber. When I was doing undergrad physics work I spent some time messing around in the university's anechoic chamber. The room sounded completely dead. I spent an afternoon checking if it really was as anechoic as it was designed to be, and it was. Basically, almost no sound was reflected. You could see the difference in behavior by just having someone stand in the room. Their body would reflect a measurable amount of sound, though it was pretty frequency dependent. Wish I was still there so I could mess around with recording some vocals and acoustic guitar in it.
 
A perfect sphere is possibly the worst acoustic environment imaginable. You know the problems with standing waves you get between two paralel surfaces right? Now imagine being in a room with every possible surface paralel to another surface. ahhhhhhh!!!!!! On top of that, everything is reflected and amplified striaght into the direct center of the sphere! Audio Engineers don't have nightmares about zombies or the devil; they have nightmares about being forced to record in a sphere....
 
Oh, and just for the record, Stone Temple Pilots recorded drums for one of their albums outdoors. The problem with recording outdoors is that most studios are located in urban areas and this would be very impractical. Even in a rural area sounds of nature become a problem when you are tracking quiet things like vocals, not to mention the weather. Also, most people like a nice ambient room sound. Why do you think we spend all this money on fancy reverb units? The natural reverb provided by a good room can be much more pleasing than some mathmatically calculated bs. However, recording outdoors can be a nice alternative to a bad sounding room.
 
also, outdoors a lot of music sounds weird. it is fairly normal to hear stripped down folk/country outdoors (the last june carter cash album had some tracking done on the front porch of her mom's house).

but i am sure many have experienced the strange sound of unreinforced drums outdoors, and unreinforced amps.

just odd sounding. you really need huge PAs to get it to sound sort of normal. the "sound" of rock music has a component which is the sound of the sorts of rooms you normally hear it in.
 
minofifa said:
why don't people record outdoors?? not a bad idea. i guess it would be tough for you city folk to do so but i could go in my backyard and it would be quiet. I may have to "get rid" of a few crows.... haha just kidding
Click to expand...

I got a mental soundscape of a beautiful acoustic song, and then "chk chk, bang! Damn crows!"

then back to that sweet sweet melody
 
:eek: Yo Outdoor recording.


MAKE SURE ALL OF YOUR GEAR IS GROUNDED....

If not, it could be a "shocking" experience.


Green Hornet :D :p :p :p :cool:
 
There was this group I can't rememeber the name Lester something, it was the same genre as Martin Denny. Anyway in the late 50's early 60's they recorde all of their stuff live in this aluminum geodesic dome. Those recordings were fantastic!!!! Les baxter? Les fuk fuk ufk....I can't remember....maybe it was Martin Denny.
 
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Les Baxter

Just looked it up. It is Les Baxter. I've got to get my vinyl out of storage, I forgot all about those albums until I read this thread.
 
noiseportrait said:
Oh, and just for the record, Stone Temple Pilots recorded drums for one of their albums outdoors. The problem with recording outdoors is that most studios are located in urban areas and this would be very impractical. Even in a rural area sounds of nature become a problem when you are tracking quiet things like vocals, not to mention the weather. Also, most people like a nice ambient room sound. Why do you think we spend all this money on fancy reverb units? The natural reverb provided by a good room can be much more pleasing than some mathmatically calculated bs. However, recording outdoors can be a nice alternative to a bad sounding room.
Click to expand...


I believe the STP album in question was "Tiny Music from the vatican gift shop" but I don't think all of the drum tracks were done outside. If I remember correctly, only 2 or 3 songs on the album were done outside in their backyard.
 
One of the songs on Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffitti was recorded outside... you can hear a plane fly overhead. Sounded fine. I'd be worried about ran or the heat of the sun on my gear though.
 
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