Studio/Jam Room Layout

[D'red Centr]

I'm building a home and will be including space for my band to rehearse. I would like to be able to do some recording while we are playing and get something of reasonable results. Do I need an isolated control room? If the whole band is playing in one room am I going to be able to get a decent live recording or will I need isolation booths. Is there a book that is worth while on studio layout and design that you could recomend?

 

[blues-hacker]

hey guy - I just did the same thing about 4 years ago - In my case I had a contractor put a room up over the garage, it's a jam room/ studio, 24ft x 24 ft.

To your questions, and some points to think about -

books - check out Amazon - there are a few books out there, some more pro oriented, some heavy in theory and such, some oriented to us little guys.

I did not do a seperate control room - I have no aspirations of pro recording, but I almost always record my bands practices, and the occasional jam session that happens with friends. I have set up a recording station on the side of the room, and learned to dial in a good set of levels, so that I can let the rig run hands off, while we play, and then check things out later.

One of the keys here is a long running recording medium - I've gone from the board to a variety of 2-track sources - stereo hifi VCR will give you 2 hrs. of recording with good quality, and lately I've gone to a reel-reel tape machine, just for the sound. I have a digital hard drive rig, but don't use it for primary recording - I have to stop every hour to down load and clear the drive.

Without a control room - I rely on meters/LED's, and a set of headphones for initial level settings and mix.

A key thought for you is going to be - sound control -where in your home is this room, when do you want to use it - how will the sound affect others - sound "proofing" can get quite expensive. By building over the garage I got a measure of seperation which helps, but I still can't crank the amps at late night without PO'ing the fambly.

hope that helps some

b-h

 

[D'red Centr]

Thanks, this is exactly what I'm wanting to do. I'm planning on having the room separate from the house. I've read a fair bit on sound proofing I think I've some of the basics. I've also read that the dimensions of the room are important. I don't remember where I read it but I was planning on following room dimensions of 1h x 1.6d x 2.6w, so with 8' ceilings I'd have 12.8'd and 20.8'w. Is this a good rule of thumb?

On your recordings are you mic'ing up everything or are you just using a couple of mic's in the back of the room?

 

[blues-hacker]

I've had pretty good luck using a combination of room mic's and direct.

At the moment, I've got a Tascam 414, a Fostex Dmt-8vl, a Sony stereo hifi VCR, and a Teac 2 channel reel to reel. In the band, the PA head and the bass head are Peavey's, both have line out capability. I also have a stereo compressor / gate, and dual 15-band EQ in rack units.

What I do is use the T-414 as a mixer, with 3 room mics - 2 SM-57s, one of which is set up to look down over the drummers left shoulder (drummer is set up in the right side of the room) the other 57 is set up on the other side of the room, about equal to the drum side mice, and a Rode NT1 at the back of the room. Then I direct line in from the bass and PA. I take the stereo mix out to the reel - reel. Note - I used to use the VCR, but found it is much more sensitive to levels setting, and as it has no Vu meters of its own, it's hard to get the levels right - and when they're too high, the distortion sounds like digital overload distortion - crappy!!

On playback, I run the tape out thru the compressor and the EQ into the Fostex hard disk recorder. This has all the digital editing stuff, so it's real easy to chop out the start of song counts and stuff like that... just lay down a patch from tape without fussing about start and end points, and then trim to taste later. With the digital at this point, I know I'm not adding any color, and I can concentrate on the mix and ride the levels so it doesn' distort.

At this time I don't have any reverb unit to add in, but the back of room mic is getting me some depth, the vocals have rev on the line out, and my guitar amp has a touch set in. All in all, this set up has worked quite well, and a number of tunes recorded have made it out to the compilation CD's put together by some of the musicians forums that I participate on. Oh yeah - another nice thing about the Fostex Dmt-8 is it goes light pipe out to a Pioneer stand alone CD recorder - so once i've got the mix, it stays digital out to the CD, without any more D-A or A-D conversions.

long, but.... hope that helps some

B-H

 

[D'red Centr]

b-h,

Thanks again, this sounds like an approach I could also entertain. We won't start building for another 6months but I've still got alot of research to do on the room and sound proofing. In the mean time I'll keep my eye's open for a good reel to reel deck. I'm planning on also getting a delta 44 card for the computer so I should have some reasonable digital editing tools with that as well.

I'm currently playing in a friends finished basement and he's been trying to get some digital recordings directly off the board with everything mic'd up (mackie cfx16) and the quality so far has been average at best. We've been using primarily sm 57's for instruments, 58's for vocals and DI on the bass. I've just picked up a couple Oktava MK012 small condenser mic's. I was planning on using these for cymbals on the drums at live gigs but may try them in the back of the room and back off the direct mic's on some of the intruments and see what we can get.