Advice on setting up my reverb chamber?

[Jetblack]

So in keeping with Max's interesting reverb thread, I wanted to ask what people's suggestions would be for seting up a room to be a reverb chamber.

We have a room that is not being used in our building. The demensions are:
H 8' 8"
W 12' 5"
L 20' 3

Its not huge, but it sounds like it can have potential. Its very live in there right now. The ceiling is poured concrete, the walls varnished blocks and the floor is tiled with lenolium (maybe?). Anyhow, what can I do to make maximum use of the room? Its in the basement of the building in a dead spot. My idea was to simply plcae a speaker on the back wall in the center and feed it via an aux, and set up a stereo mic on the other end of the room (Neumann SM 69 fet) and hear what happens. Should I do anything to the walls and floor? Any standard practices I should be aware of? I'm pretty excited about setting it up.

[Mike Tholen]

I duuno anything about treating or constructing a chamber but I've been in a few...

The chambers at Fantasy studios in Berkeley CA. are not so big, the ceilings were no more than 6' 1/2" and no wider than 11' and about 17' deep, but the walls and ceiling were NOT paralell with the other walls or floor. They are made of concrete.

The speaker was facingone end and the small pencil condensers were in a X/Y stereo setup facing the opposite end...

It sounded FANTASTIC!!!

Sunset Sound in LA has cool chamber as well, it was much smaller and narrower but still had a wonderful sound.

Motown's chamber is in the attic!!!

Sounds stupid good too!!

Mess with your enviroment to see what you come up with!

You might be surprised!

[pan60]

seems i had read somewhere that their should be no square corners.
maybe someone can comment on that as well.
i have been interested in a reverb chamber but i do not want to make a lousy one: (

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Jetblack

> We have a room that is not being used in our building. The demensions are:
H 8' 8"
W 12' 5"
L 20' 3

That's actually not too bad for a small room.

> Should I do anything to the walls and floor? <

You want all surfaces to be as reflective as possible. It's common to apply shellac or some other high-gloss finish to all surfaces to make them reflective to as high a frequency as possible. So you should consider that for the cement ceiling.

I wouldn't worry about having square corners, but you'll definitely want to experiment with the loudspeaker and microphone placements to obtain the flattest overall response. So for starters you should avoid having them too near to the corners. And don't expect a room that size to have an even response below a few hundred Hz. So plan on inserting a permanent low-cut filter in the loudspeaker's signal path.

--Ethan