Why do people set up microphones and recording desk in seperate rooms?

[6 String Dream]

Why do people set up microphones and recording desk in seperate rooms? Wouldnt it just be easier to have in the same room within a smaller space?

 

[Jim Lad]

I use figure 8 mics and very little backing so even the quiet hum from the Korg can be heard. So I use the adjacent room with only a curtain for separation.
Mind you, most other stand alone users, I've spoken to sit right next to the machine with no problems.
Computer fans are too noisy though.

 

[6 String Dream]

Doesn't it have anything to do with noise interference or am i making that up?

 

[dodgeaspen]

Background noise, squeaky chair, equipment noise ETC are not conducive to a good recording. Not just that, if doing vox you want to hear what's coming out of the monitors without hearing the live vox in the same room.

 

[Chili]

Why do people set up microphones and recording desk in seperate rooms?

I don't.

Wouldnt it just be easier to have in the same room within a smaller space?

That's what I do. And I suspect most home recordists do also. Many of us recording at home don't have the luxury or space for a separate control room or a live room, it's all in one space usually a spare bedroom or part of the basement. There are some advantages and disadvantages for working with one room.

Some advantages: it's easier to operate your recording system if you're in front of it (especially if you're the recording engineer, song writer and musician); Doesn't require another room eating up space in your house; don't have to run wiring everywhere; Only have to be concerned with sound isolation in one room; less acoustic treatment and such.

Some disadvantages: Acoustic treatment is a compromise between a live room and a control room; unwanted noise from computer, ventilation and such; difficult to judge mic placement/vocal mic/etc because you can't hear just the monitors.... there's probably more I can't think of right now.

For the most part, there's a lot of trade-offs either way.

 

[frederic]

Why do people set up microphones and recording desk in seperate rooms? Wouldnt it just be easier to have in the same room within a smaller space?

Originally, there were two reasons for putting the musician or vocalist in one room, and the mixing desk/recorders in another.

1. The room that is recorded in tends to add ambience to the room - grand live rooms, etc. The recording/mixing room tends to be engineered to be as dead as possible so only what is recorded on tape is reaching the engineer's ears.

2. Back in the day, tape decks were serious machines with gears, belts, flywheels, and big motors. They made a lot of noise, and having them in the room with the microphone would result in some of that noise being recorded.

In fact, in the very beginning of recording studio tape recording, things were often arranged like this:

a) recording room - live room with mic/artists.
b) console room - monitors, recording desk, outboards, patch bays.
c) machine room - tape decks and related equipment.

My first pro studio back in the late 80's was set up like that... we had two Otari 24 tracks in a machine room, and eventually added ADATs. All the recorders were in one room, separate from everything else. That room also had a finer temperature and humidity control which protected the media better than the rest of the place.

With today's devices, a lot of that machinery noise went away, especially with the solid state portastudio stuff, so the engineer and the gear can be in the same room as the artists. My home studio is set up that way, except for a vocal booth which I only use for vocals. Everything else is recorded in the main room, the console room. If my studio was 3000 sq ft or larger, I would have separated things into different rooms and acoustically treat them differently for different purposes, however my studio is in a garage loft so I just make due with what I have - all in one.

Now if I could keep the cat out of here, that would be wonderful.

 

[mattr]

Need to emphasise a big one that has only just been touched upon...

Getting the correct sound coming through the monitors (by adjusting instruments, mic choice, placement, etc) before you hit play is virtually impossible without good isolation between the control room and live room. If you're all in the same room you have to go through the endless cycle of recording a bit, listening back to it, tweaking the setup and repeating until you're happy.

 

[benherron.rrr]

It very much depends on what your trying to do, Like chili I am a singer/songwriter engineer and producer. having a control room and a dry room just isn't viable for me at the moment as I always have to do 2 peoples jobs, it would be like me seting up the mics trying to make a noise in the dry room simalar to what I was going to record, then runing into the control room to check levels etc, pressing record then running into the dry room to play. plus I use fairly cheap mics that arn't as sencitive than more expencive mics so I dont pick up the Hum of my equipment as much. I have seen an interesting ipod app for cubase which sounds pritty cool.

Most pro studios will have a dry room for recording control room for recording and then a room for all the computers and noise making equipment. It decreases noise, keeps the musicians away from the producer/enginner meaning the musicains can do their job while the engineers can do their job without distraction. creates different environments, I belive the emotion that a room gives can improve work. seperate monitoring/proforming environment. And one thing that people forget about is advertising, If you have a studio with 2 rooms it appears more professional than a studio which is all in one. making more people come to you. very much how alot of studios brag about using Macs and Protools. not that it makes much difference it just appears more professional

 

[Armistice]

My "performance room" is the lounge, which is large, high ceilinged and filled with soft furnishings, my "control room" is the media desk in the hallway adjoining the lounge. Like most people recording themselves, I get lots of exercise getting up and down from the control room into the performance room in time to hear the click track...

Noise is the reason I try to get further away - acoustic fingerstyle guitar recording involves minimising all extraneous noise as far as possible, and my recorder does make noise.

I also have to remember to turn the fridge off, and then, most importantly, turn it on again afterwards!

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Need to emphasise a big one that has only just been touched upon...

Getting the correct sound coming through the monitors (by adjusting instruments, mic choice, placement, etc) before you hit play is virtually impossible without good isolation between the control room and live room. If you're all in the same room you have to go through the endless cycle of recording a bit, listening back to it, tweaking the setup and repeating until you're happy.

This is the main reason I would do it, getting tones. You just can't judge tones without isolation.

 

[XLR]

As has been already said, the setup that will work best for you depends.

6 String Dream, are you recording yourself only, or do you record others? And if others, what exactly?

 

[6 String Dream]

Im just recording myself which is vocals and acoustic guitar. Everything is fine when just using two mics going into the soundcard. As soon as i add a third (room) mic using a mixer as a preamp, i start getting funny squeaky noises and the volume also cuts out in my recorded take. I thought as im recording in the same room, the number of cables being used might be causing some kind of interference with my recordings.

 

[Chibi Nappa]

Need to emphasise a big one that has only just been touched upon...

Getting the correct sound coming through the monitors (by adjusting instruments, mic choice, placement, etc) before you hit play is virtually impossible without good isolation between the control room and live room. If you're all in the same room you have to go through the endless cycle of recording a bit, listening back to it, tweaking the setup and repeating until you're happy.

Let me pile on to this one. Yes, this is why you would do that.

 

[grimtraveller]

As I've always recorded myself or my friends I've always needed to be close to the recorder, especially as I've always lived in small places. And when doing overdubs, there's always been a need to maintain eye contact. It is difficult to hear differences in sound when you're in the same room.........but not impossible. Experimentation is the order of the day. {That's my cute way of saying it's a random hit and miss affair ! }.

 

[pezking]

I'm fortunate in that I had a glass door between my two rooms (just happened that the house was that way). So it meant I still had eye contact as well as a relatively good level of separation.

Now my "control room" is upstairs, and I have a multicore going through walls/ceilings to get there I am contemplating using a pair of webcams over my network to get around the fact that I can't see the musicians.

When I'm recording myself, I take my laptop downstairs with me and use remote desktop over the wireless. This allows me to see the meters and to set things recording etc.

It means that I can't hear back over the monitors so conveniently, but I have headphone foldback so I can at least audition stuff that way.

 

[XLR]

Everything is fine when just using two mics going into the soundcard. As soon as i add a third (room) mic using a mixer as a preamp, i start getting funny squeaky noises and the volume also cuts out in my recorded take.

OK, you have two different issues with the room mic.

The volume cut is most likely a phase cancellation problem caused by adding a mic at a different distance from the guitar than the main pair. You should read up on phase coherence and comb filtering. I use more than two mic's on ac guitar occasionally. I record each mic to a separate track, then mix after. I also time-align the more distant mic's to the main pair when mixing by sliding the waveforms in the track window. If I only had two soundcard inputs, I'd avoid using a third mic, or I'd mix it in minimally so you get a touch of room sound but not enough phase cancellation to be noticeable.

You mentioned a mixer. When you add a third mic, using the mixer, are you running all three mic's through the mixer's pre's, then summing them to two channels in the mixer? Or is only the third mic going through the mixer's pre and then into a third input on the soundcard?

The squeaky noises are probably actual noises in the room, maybe a chair creaking or fretting-hand squeaking, that the mic is accentuating. Those things are easy enough to eliminate.

Im just recording myself which is vocals and acoustic guitar.

Then having a separate control room isn't going to help you much. Probably the only benefit would be if you had a room in the house with good acoustics for recording but couldn't set up all your monitoring gear there permanently, so had a separate room for that. That's what I do. My living/dining/entry is pretty big, with high ceilings. It's also decorated by my wife, heh. My control room is a bedroom a hundred feet away, acoustically treated with 703 panels. I have mic cables running through the wall and hanging coiled in a closet in the tracking room when not in use.

 

[Supercreep]

I record and mix in a single room and get pretty good results. I just have to audition sounds before committing to them.

 

[moresound]

Many moons ago we started recording in my barn which sounded beautiful. large room high ceilings all wood but then winter would set in and just got to dam cold.
Then we moved into a complex that use to house I Robot before they got BIG and moved to the Boston area. This is a 100 x 100 room with a two story ceiling a great sounding room and we were OK with having the control area in the same room with office dividers.
Then the office area became open that was attached to the large live room so we expanded to them as well.
Now we have a great live room, two isolation rooms, a kitchen, an extra bathroom, an office, a room for microphones,guitars,amp storage, a loft area 75 x 100 which is a lounge, and a great control room!
I think it makes a world of difference if you can have a separate room to record in and then one to do tracking and mixing in.