The impact of recording environment on a recording

[RainbowStorm]

Hi!

Do you know how big impact the recording environment has on the final recording quality, I mean the acoustic treatment, room size etc... My question is, what will give the best final recording result:

A) Perfectly treated room, high quality mics close to the sound source, no EQ and reverb added/needed

B) Perfectly treated room, high quality mics far away from the sound source, no EQ and reverb added/needed

C) High quality mics close to the sound source, EQ and reverb added/needed

Please choose one option that is the winner and one option that is the loser and give us a reason why it is the best as well as a percentage of how much better you think it is compared to the worst (100% = twice as good). The winner also needs to be the simplest to succeed with in practise long term as a recording engineer. You are free to add an option if it is a winner.

End your reply with your best guess on how big impact your chosen option has on the final recording result.

If you don't want to reply with any options, please just post a comment on how big impact the room has on the final recording result and WHY you think/know that.

[gainreduction]

The room makes a bigger difference than anything else further down the chain, performer excluded.

[nobtwiddler]

Get the book "Temples of Sound" and you will see how important the room is!

Paul
www.millbrooksoudstudios.com

[AlexLakis]

Ummm...It's not really a matter of guessing. It's a matter of what gets you the sound YOU'RE looking for. If the room is big, and your mics are further away, you'll get more of the room sound in there or "natural reverb," if you'd like to think of it that way. It's all about what you prefer. The room is biggest factor in getting a good recording, I'd rather have an awesome room with just SM57s and Mackie pres to record an album than any amount of gear in a crappy room. But, if the name of this forum was "Roomslutz," it wouldn't be as fun and exciting, now would it?

[Jose Mrochek]

the room!

even though like mentioned above roomslutz is not very common but it should.

[djui5]

Originally Posted by TonyCrazyMan

Hi!

Do you know how big impact the recording environment has on the final recording quality, I mean the acoustic treatment, room size etc... My question is, what will give the best final recording result:

A) Perfectly treated room, high quality mics close to the sound source, no EQ and reverb added/needed

B) Perfectly treated room, high quality mics far away from the sound source, no EQ and reverb added/needed

C) High quality mics close to the sound source, EQ and reverb added/needed

All 3. Whatever you need to do, you need to do.

I'm a huge believer in having the right room. I personally am not really a big fan of recording drums in a small room, unless it's for a pop record or something where you want a tight, close drum sound.

Also, the room has a huge impact on the musicians. If your live room sounds good enough, the players will play better because they enjoy hearing their instrument in the room.

[Ethan Winer]

Tony,

> what will give the best final recording result: <

I'd rather have a bunch of Radio Shack microphones fed through a $90 Behringer mixer into a $25 SB Live sound card in a great sounding acoustically treated room than $1 million dollars worth of high-end mikes and other gear in a crappy room.

--Ethan

[mixerguy]

well Ethan, you don't sell mics, do you.

[Marcus B]

A great room really can make a recording. I'm interested to hear any tips or tricks you guys employ to make the most of a less than ideal room. Lately i've been doing a lot of projects lower down the food chain often having to make records in less than ideal conditions, i've found you need to get pretty creative to get the best out of a bad situation.

I did have some great results tracking some drums in a house, kit in the small carpetted loungeroom with a mono room mic in the kitchen really delivered the goods. What I tend to have found is less is most definitely more in terms of micing in these situations.

Anyone else got any great tips particularly with guitars and vocals.

Cheers,
Marcus

[AlexLakis]

I think good advice for recording vocals in a less-than-desireable room (and in most other rooms too) would be to try to keep the room out of it! A lot of times, even if I'm in onna the best sounding rooms ever made, I'll still set up baffles around the mic/vocalist. More times than not, vocals should be close and intimite, and the room doesn't need to be a part of that. Reverb can be added later.

[bongo]

I remember the first time I recorded Phil Woods. He plays a few notes and says: This room makes my horn sound fukin great!
Now I know it doesn't take my room to make his horn sound great. But, in general, players like to hear themselves back in the room. I think it makes for a better performance.



.

[max cooper]

I think it was Sam Phillips (the Sun Records guy, not T-Bone Burnett's wife) who said that he would get the band sounding great in the room and then mic the room.

Obvious? Maybe.

[Ruphus]

Wow, that´s exactly my current topic ( and which has me a bit -ing too ).

Due to lack of options I had shelled out a silly amount for a god damn booth and tried insanely to make the situation usable.

Result:
You need an incredible amount of time and fiddling trying to repair the crap and after all still won´t come even close to recordings with nice ambience ( and proper mic placement, naturally ).

Whereas with a good room and some knowledge ( naturally again ) you can have the stuff recorded and roughly or even finally mixed within days.

It is truely a difference of night and days.
Actually so much that I´m sitting here and hesitating to call up a band who was wanting to track with me. They are good and I don´t want to screw up their great sound ( and am being ambitious too ).

Reluctant to record under crappy room conditions again

Granted, some guys are so skilled they can do even fine with crappy rooms. Like W. Wittman who recently explained that his wonderfully sounding drums in a certain mix were tracked practically in a garret, ... but for me one thing is sure: I´d kill for a good room.

Ruphus

[James 'LA' Lugo]

For me I think it matters more with drums than anything. I don't like roomy sounding guitars, I like them up close and in you face. I just edited a record that was tracked at Avatar and there were eliments of the record that bothered me. Mostly it was this big roomy sound on everything, it just doesn't sound like what I hear on modern rock radio and that's the style of music I do. My room is much tighter sounding.

An issue that came up this past week when doing multi amp guitar tracking was it got so intensly loud in the booth that the walls started making rattling sounds. We tented the cabs and it was cool.

I would rather track music in a bathroom and some moving pads with kick as mics and pres than the other way. Cheap mics and pres sound cheap!

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by AlexLakis

I think good advice for recording vocals in a less-than-desireable room (and in most other rooms too) would be to try to keep the room out of it!...

Trouble is that you can't keep the room out of the performers' ears and if you manage to keep it out of the mikes, you are likely to have problems caused by the performers moving around.

[bongo]

Originally Posted by James 'LA' Lugo

For me I think it matters more with drums than anything. I don't like roomy sounding guitars, I like them up close and in you face. I just edited a record that was tracked at Avatar and there were eliments of the record that bothered me. Mostly it was this big roomy sound on everything, it just doesn't sound like what I hear on modern rock radio and that's the style of music I do. My room is much tighter sounding.

I wouldn't necessarily blame the room for that. In this day and age, there is no reason not to close mic a guitar amp and put a room mic on another track. Unless they wanted a roomy sounding guitar and didn't want to give you a choice!

I read threads about engineers struggling over drum sounds. I did a session this spring with Steve Smith, who is an amazing drummer, which of course is half the battle. Sound check was done in ten minutes.

In my book, the room is everything.

[RainbowStorm]

One thing I have to point out when it comes to mixing drums is their impact on the final loudness of the song. Over the last 10 - 20 years the drums usually have been mixed very loud. That's because engineers realised how important a rock steady groove is. This creates a risk though, if the drums are processed in such a way that the amplitude of the sound decreases drastically, it will have a big negative impact on the overall loudness of the song since the amount of noise increases. This is a typical case:

You mic the drums and place a few mics on the room as well. When you mix the song the producer goes: "The drums should be really powerful..." What the mixing engineer now does is to increase the amplitude of the room mic tracks in order to increase the size of the ambience until it creates a large enough room.

When the amplitude of the room mic tracks increase the sound in itself actually decreases in amplitude. The result of this is that you either lower the volume of all the rest of the tracks or increase the volume of the drum tracks in order to make it enough dominant in the mix. In this process a lot of dB goes to waste and putting a compressor on top of it only makes the whole song much more noisy.

Another way of doing it is actually putting a high- and low pass filter on the drums that should be more powerful, increase the volume and add reverb very moderately. By applying the low pass filter the drums are still in the back even though you increase the volume and much less dB go to waste even though you get the ambience result you need. Remember that you need to place the reverb effect after the low pass filter, else it will cut off the reverb tail. Use the hi pass filter for taking off as much dB as you needed to increase for the ambience to become large enough. This way you have got a less muddy drum sound, saved the loudness of the song and are able to have the room mics setup the way they were in the first place.

[James 'LA' Lugo]

if the room is everything, than every record done in a great room should sound great.

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by James 'LA' Lugo

if the room is everything, than every record done in a great room should sound great.

I agree. I think that mixes can have ambience on only some tracks of the song and still sound very good. In fact I'm even close to saying a good room can sometimes be a negative thing because all of a sudden every track on the song should have ambience properties because of the great room and you easily lose the focus. But when natural ambience is needed the recording environment becomes very important.

A good sounding control room is different though, that really needs to be very good else the whole mix easily fails...

[gsa]

Some of my favourite albums were recorded in barns. Not renovated barns.. actual barns.. probably with livestock still inside. Others still were recorded in people's houses.. probably your regular, run of the mill, 15x20 rooms, 8 foot ceiling'd houses. They sound great.

I think its better not to fret about the space you have.. unless that is you're recording in a 5x5 tin box. If you want to make a great sounding record, you can. You might have to work harder and be more creative, but it is possible.

[Ruphus]

My booth is ~ 2,30 m x ~ 1,5 m inside ( 2m hight ) with one corner cut where the doors are. That thing is about unusable. Will be taking off some absorbtion from the walls to regain some highs in the the low-mids-to-sub-bouncing-waves mess, and will try with very close miking, but you´d never do any recording in there that would finally yield airy results, I say no matter what EQ, delay / reverb ... whatever tool.

The early reflections mudden up the sound from mids to bottom and you end up with cutting out most of the body to escape the nasal image while in the same time the highs can´t unfold in such small space.

I think that it needs at least some distance for the waves to travel, and also that especially the room behind the source needs to be reverberate / delaying. ( That is the spot where I´m thinking of to remove absorbers.) Could it be that you need "rudimentary" ambience in the recording at least to get best results afterwards with FX echo?

Ruphus

[James 'LA' Lugo]

My buddy just did a record that sounds insane. It was done in one room in an apartment. Control room and tracking room as one.

It's not the toys it's the noise.

[bongo]

Originally Posted by James 'LA' Lugo

if the room is everything, than every record done in a great room should sound great.

If it doesn't - don't blame the room. If you don't want a room sound - move the mic closer. If you're recording a Marshall stack with a mic close to the speaker, the mic won't notice the room as much as the guitar player.
It works for me. Maybe it doesn't work for everybody.

[charles maynes]

My personal list of requirements-

1- Great Song
2- Great performance
3- Do as little to disprupt the first two- (this is a little bit of Steve Albini paraphrase)

As Ethan said - he would rather have cruddy gear with a great room,

I would only say I would rather have a great artist and song over everything else.
Great gear or rooms will not get in the way, but if the songs are not good- well you are then polishing turds.

charles maynes

[Jules]

The impact of recording environment on a recording?

= A BIG ONE!

(even when close micing)

[robot gigante]

Originally Posted by RainbowStorm

In fact I'm even close to saying a good room can sometimes be a negative thing because all of a sudden every track on the song should have ambience properties because of the great room and you easily lose the focus.

No way. That's why you put up close mics on some stuff, room mics on other stuff, both on still others and balance it all in the mix. And as Jules says, a good room helps even when you're close micing.

Speaking of, I love recording electric guitar in a good sized room with a close mic on the amp and a room mic on the other side of the room. You can hear something like that on a couple songs on the first Jet album, which is what inspired me to try it. You just blend in a tiny bit of the room mic, it thickens things up in a good way.

FWIW, some untreated rooms sound great, others don't...

[Mark Warren]

The room makes a difference in the sound even when everything is close mic'd. And even with close mics if you put up tube traps around the source it changes the sound further. The room effects how anything resonates, including the mic.

[Jules]

Originally Posted by Mark Warren

The room makes a difference in the sound even when everything is close mic'd. And even with close mics if you put up tube traps around the source it changes the sound further. The room effects how anything resonates, including the mic.