room treatment - acoustic and voice

[mookie]

i'm recording primarily vox and acoustic guitar, often at the same time. and i'm looking around my apt for the best place to record. the bedroom is pretty dead, the kitchen is very live and has some natural verb to it. i'm thinking i might like the acoustics of the kitchen better, but am not sure if it will lead to problems down the line. maybe recording in a dead space is safer.

how do other people like to record stuff like this? think elliott smith meets cobain (for a sonic picture)

thanks.

[jgrif08]

I'm predicting the general train of thought you'll hear around these parts is that recording in a dead room is preferrable. I would have to subscribe to that opinion as well.

Easy to add 'verb after the fact, impossible to remove after the fact.

Although you may really like the natural sound of some rooms and choose to go with that on occasion as well.

As with most everything, I guess the actual answer is 'there is no right answer'. whatever sounds good

[mookie]

i'm definitely going to try a few things out and, in the end, go with my ears. still, i'd like to hear if anyone has any experience with this.
what about dulling a few surfaces in a live space? don't some people sing in the bathroom? any home acoustic recordists out there?

[RusRant]

I'm in the process of setting up a new studio in a older 3 bedroom house with all hardwood floors and plaster walls and high ceilings. Very live to say the least. We are not moving any furniture other than a few chairs and some folding chairs. It's gonna be all open and airy. But that being said, we have already invested in some heavy packing pads to hang as need to deaden the rooms. This way when we need live room verb, it's there, but when we need dead, we got that too. May work for you as well. So far, our test recordings are sounding wonderful in these rooms. But I can see it not working a lot of the time and wanting to deaden the sound. Or a tleast tune it a little.

[scrubs]

Definitely experiment. If you're in a small, boxy room, your recordings will tend to end up sounding like a box. Treating the room will allow you to incorporate more miking out of the near field, which will add depth to your recordings, imo.

[deegone]

hi,



i record at home too ,recently ,i started to use the kitchen/dinning room as my main 'room' .
since the room itself sounds like crap ,i bought a hanger stand ,those that come with wheels ,and you can adjust the height .i hang a thick blanket on it and position it behind the source ,sometimes i might position it in front of a nasty rerflection source(big windows).if you have a big space,2 of those could help ,to put the 23nd one behind the mic to cut the reflections coming from behind ,i tried it before with good results.
i think that with some blankets and a carpet on the floor you can pretty much control the room ,then pay attention to the miking ,and you'll be set.
good luck!


d.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by mookie

the kitchen is very live and has some natural verb to it. i'm thinking i might like the acoustics of the kitchen better

I'd avoid any small live sounding room. What sounds good to you in person will likely not sound good at all through microphones. Natural reverb is a great thing! But not usually in a small room. Small rooms usually have a boxy sound unless you put the microphones very close to the source. But extreme close miking often causes other problems. As was already pointed out, it's easy to add ambience later, but impossible to remove.

--Ethan

[Timothy Lawler]

For ac gtr in a small room I'd rather have the room be fairly dead. A small live sounding room might fool the ear into thinking it sounds better when it really just sounds louder but things are actually out of balance. I rarely mic ac gtr closer than a couple feet and I've never used a small room that had anything beneficial to add in ambience.

[mookie]

thanks evevryone for all the advice. i have more than a few ideas to try out now. i may just head back into the bedroom, but i'll try a few other places first.

any other suggestions for treatment besides moving blankets? anything i can stick to the walls of my breakfast nook perhaps?

[Glenn Kuras]

I would agree with Ethan on this. You are can try to the kichen but I bet you that it really is not going to sound all that great. Unless you are going for that sound.

Glenn

[Acoustic Cloud]

Dead room, good acoustic= best bet. If you are trying to use a space for room sound though, make sure to monitor on headphones. If your monitor station isnt in a dead room, playback wont give you an accurate idea of what the space sounded like with speakers.

[KevWind]

If It were me, I would use the living room with some treatments in corners etc...Hey Glenn I see ya now have Red , as you can see by my Avatar It works for me. I will call ya

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by KevWind

If It were me, I would use the living room with some treatments in corners etc...Hey Glenn I see ya now have Red , as you can see by my Avatar It works for me. I will call ya

Sounds good man..

Glenn