Recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter FadingMusic
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FadingMusic,

If you look at high-end studios, you will note the amount of engineering that has gone into making the recording environment stable, soundproof and acoustically neutral (for example, suspended acoustic clouds, floors suspended on rubber . . . and so on). Getting this sort of environment is neither easy nor cheap. There are very few home recordists that have the money, time or engineering skills to go to those lengths.

But there are quite a few who attempt to emulate them.

Doing this without the necessary science is like putting a turbo in a Skoda and wondering why it still doesn't go fast.

Vocal booths have their place . . . if they are designed and constructed with a great deal of attention to detail. Something that looks like a vocal booth isn't one,and isn't going to work . . . as you have discovered.

So don't sweat on trying to make things that look like something the big-timers might be use. Work with what you've got. A plain old lounge room is way better than a cardboard box.

I have not done any acoustic treatment at all in my recording space (i.e. lounge room). The recordings I get from it are fine. I am fortunate in that the room is an acoustically friendly space to begin with due to some pre-existing features.

Start simply. Your ears will tell you (as they have already done with your booth), as you get more experience, when things are needing to be fixed.
 
I do not claim that I own this thread, I just like to be treated with respect.
I don't see how calling people names makes a person more grown up than I am.

If you want to keep fighting over this, then go ahead.
This is my lost post concerning this.
 
FadingMusic said:
This is my lost post
Click to expand...
Very appropriate Freudian Slip. You are "lost".

I called you "names" after you came in here with no idea how this place rolls and tried to dictate how people that have been helping others here for years should act. Respect is something that's earned, and you deserve none.

That's why you got called names..........idiot. :)
 
Thanks for your reply.

I've already accepted the fact that I don't have a high end studio.
What I'm trying to accomplish with this thread is to know how to treat my room acoustically and what pattern I should use for guitar and vocal before I actually start recording.
I always thought it would be ok to treat my room with foam to cancel the reflections a bit, but I didn't knew it would cut off the high frequencies and causes such a muddy sound.

@gecko zzed

You're right about that.
To make matters worse, I'm using carpet in my room, and I'm afraid it won't do my recordings any good, too. ( will it? )
I'm not the kind of guy who want a pro like status and show off al my studio stuff, I just want to record a album the best I can.
And to do so, I need to learn a lot before I acually start recording.

And I've obviously made a huge mistake by using this foam.
So thank you everyone for pointing that out ^^
 
Since I'm past the 5 post rule, a picture of my failed H/M vocal booth.

 
I've got carpet in my room. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. However, I believe it is usually better to have a reflective floor rather than a reflective ceiling.
 
Thanks, that's a relief.

What is the best way to record a acoustic guitar with only one mic?
What I've tested so far is LEFT - between bridge & soundhole and RIGHT - 12th fret.
I sounded great, ( believe it or not, it sounded even better than spaced pair method with my previous AKG C212 stereo pair ) but is hard to keep in sync all the time.

I'm doing almost everything digitally btw ( drums, piano, etc.. ) Exept the vocals/guitar/tamb
 
The best way is whatever works for you.... so many variables.

Personally I use an AKG 451B at about 12th fret, pointing slighlty up the fretboard, at about 15 inches out... and I take the pickup output, run it through a "clean preamp" setting on a GT10 and fold a little of that in...

Depends upon the style of music as well, obviously...
 
foam

yah,........ i got a question about vocal booths........ lol.... jk
 
Armistice said:
The best way is whatever works for you.... so many variables.

Personally I use an AKG 451B at about 12th fret, pointing slighlty up the fretboard, at about 15 inches out... and I take the pickup output, run it through a "clean preamp" setting on a GT10 and fold a little of that in...

Depends upon the style of music as well, obviously...
Click to expand...

Up the fretboard??? 15 inches out?? I heard your last song posted, I'm going to have to try that. Cool.
 
Chili said:
Up the fretboard??? 15 inches out?? I heard your last song posted, I'm going to have to try that. Cool.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I play a Maton Messiah which is a pretty loud beast with quite strong bass resonance, and I'm always struggling with the final bass result and shelving it off. Thats what I do for that type of playing, which (assuming you're talking about the OSC tune) is played with pick between thumb and forefinger and next two finger nails picking as well... so it's a reasonably loud sound being generated... I'd bring it closer if I was pure fingerpicking and further away if purely strumming...

I've gone up even higher sometimes, up to 7th fret, depending upon what I'm trying to fit in with... almost never do I go anywhere near the bridge on that guitar... just too boomy... good luck!

Cheers
 
So are you standing facing into the vocal booth? Try standing with your back just inside the booth, set the mic to cardioid pattern and most of the rest of the room will be rejected. Not ideal but might sound OK. By having your back to the foam it will reduce the room acoustics, experiment by standing further into the room and using the booth as a reflection screen. I usually record my vocalists with their back to a theatre curtain that I have along 1 wall of the studio.

By the way how is the rest of the room set up? how does it sound?

Cheers
Alan.
 
Thanks for al your comments.

My failed vocal booth doesn't sound "that" horrible, as long as you don't stand in it to record.
If I were to stand a bit out of the booth, it sounds good.
I've experimented with it a bit yesterday, and I will continue experimenting today and perhaps post the results in here.

My room dimensions are about 4 by 4 meters and about 2,3m in height.
I'm using carpet on the floor, and a "couple" (5) foam plates attached to the wall.
I've also attached some of these foam behind my E-MU PM5 monitors.

It can sound roomy, reflective and muddy ( and good ) depending on mic placement.
Here some pictures of my room that I'm using to record.



@RAMI : You'll have to excuse my attitude, I was a little on edge.
I've spend years trying to perfect my ways of recording and mixing and everytime I think I'm getting the picture, the is always something new that I didn't know about but render my recordings pretty much useless. It can be very demotivational if you spend a lot of time and money on it, thinking you made the right choice.
 
Sound levels drop with distance. Since the distances are small in a booth the sound doesn't have time to drop very low before bouncing back to the mic. Then when you treat it with foam you kill most of the high frequency reflections, but the lower frequency reflections are still present, which adds a bunch of low/mid crud to your recording. That's the problem with a booth. Just recording in a bigger room will increase the indirect distances the sound has to travel to the mic while leaving the direct distance the same. The net result is a cleaner sound. Because sound levels fall in inverse proportion to the square of the distance the biggest drop in reflection levels occurs when going from a tiny space to a medium one. Going from a moderately large space to a larger space has less effect than going from a booth to a room.

Omnidirectional pattern mics don't exhibit proximity effect, so there are no tonal differences in the direct sound path when you move toward or away from one, but you will change the balance between direct and reflected levels. Most directional mics do have proximity effect. They have increased low and low-mid output relative to the highs when used close to a source. For example, in live sound for loud bands it's common to sing with lips on grill. This helps reduce bleed from other sounds on stage but requires significant eq to yield a natural vocal sound.
 
Thanks bouldersoundguy! ^^

I've experimented stereo recording by using one mic pointed at the bridge on mono-left and guitar-out on mono-right.
The results were horrible phasing, you can obvious tell when you playback in mono.

To correct this problem, I've inverted the phase of mono-right, and now the phasing problem does not occur and stays excellent in stereo field.
I've narrowed the stereo down a bit.
I've added this recording to my privous post on soundcloud. ( it's a bit noisy recording )
 
FadingMusic said:
Thanks bouldersoundguy! ^^

I've experimented stereo recording by using one mic pointed at the bridge on mono-left and guitar-out on mono-right.
The results were horrible phasing, you can obvious tell when you playback in mono.

To correct this problem, I've inverted the phase of mono-right, and now the phasing problem does not occur and stays excellent in stereo field.
I've narrowed the stereo down a bit.
I've added this recording to my privous post on soundcloud. ( it's a bit noisy recording )
Click to expand...

It seems likely you have two mics wired with opposite polarity.

Note that polarity and phase are different. You can invert polarity. It's either in or out, no in between. Phase can be shifted, literally by degrees (referenced to a frequency). When two identical signals are offset in time there is a phase shift proportional to the frequency. A given time shift results in more phase shift at higher frequencies than at lower frequencies. Inverting polarity affects all frequencies equally.
 
Thanks for pointing that out, I don't like to use phase shifting much in my mixes.
Polarity seems much better. I will try that tomorrow.
 
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