Home Made Echo Chamber

[Rockin Daddy]

I've got a project studio in my basement, and adjacent to my work space is a decent sized crawl space. The space has concrete walls, tile floors and some steel beams. Unfortunatlely the ceilings only about four foot high. Although it is strewn with household junk, I was thinking of rigging up some type of primitive echo/reverb chamber...any suggestions as to whether this is worthwhile and, if so, what do I need to do to make it happen???

I'm running Pro Tools LE and I have a mess of plug-ins...I was just wondering whether a real echo/reverb space would give me another flavor???

[Drumsound]

Buy some used active monitors (Event or the like) and put 'em sown there. Put a pair of mics at the other end. Feed with a pair of outputs from the 001. Since you seem to be mixerless, or mixing ITB record the mics back to two tracks. Experiment with placement of the mics and monitors, and how much stuff you keep in there.

Oh, the most important part...


















Have Fun!

[Bob Olhsson]

First off, ALL echo chambers are home made!

The best chamber drivers I ever heard were BOSE 901s! A lot of prople used guitar amps. Chambers are a great place to get seriously creative and experimental.

[inaudio]

Bob, have you ever compared 901s with the old 800s? Dugan has a bunch of them and I wish I had a use for them, but haven't dragged them out for a test drive... Wonder if you have thoughts about them for chambers or for live sound?

He keeps them in case we get another gig where we need to make Grace Cathedral into a chamber as we did in 78.

<L>

[tINY]

Bose 901's for an echo chamber.... Finally a good place to put them (besides the bottom of the lake).




-tINY

[BrianK]

Just try to make sure it diffuses as much as possible - place some random concrete blocks around, stacking them so they bounce the sound in different directions. Maybe use some bowls or rounded objects too. No hard echos.

Only one rule: DON'T face the speaker into the mic: you don't want "direct sound" at all.

Other than that, positioning is a case of "listen, then move". Try the mic in various places, try the speaker in various places. It might even be good to put a little "wall" behind the speaker so the cabinet sound does not bounce drectly toward the mic.

PRE-delay the sound before it hits the chamber - any DDL would work. You can even send Reverb into the chamber for more character and detail.

REAL chambers are not too adjustable, but send them different sounds and they respond differently. They have SO much detail and richness that even your basement will blow away any digiverbs...

[WDG]

BrianK wrote:
"Only one rule: DON'T face the speaker into the mic: you don't want "direct sound" at all. "

I think that was one of the reasons for using the Bose 901. If I remember correctly I think they had rear fireing drivers. [2 forward and 6 or 8 rear??]

The Bose 800 was the PA line before the 802. These do not have rear fireing drivers. I guess you could always point them backwards or away like BrianK suggested.